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Starting other programs
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In KDE 2 and KDE 3 there are several ways to start other programs from within
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your application. Here is a short summary of your options with reasons why
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you should or should not use them.
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1. fork + exec
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You never want to use this unless you have a very good reason why it is
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impossible to use TDEProcess.
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2. TDEProcess
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You want to use this if you need to start a new process which needs to be a
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child of your process, e.g. because you want to catch stdout/stderr or need
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to send it data via stdin. You should never use this to start other KDE
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applications unless your application is called kgdb :-) If you need to
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send/receive text like data to/from the process, you are probably better
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off with KProcIO
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3. KProcIO
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Like TDEProcess. Unlike TDEProcess, this class actually makes it easy to
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send data to and receive data from the process.
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4. startServiceByDesktopPath
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Preferred way to launch desktop (KDE/Gnome/X) applications or KDE services.
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The application/service must have a .desktop file. It will make use of
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KDEinit for increased startup performance and lower memory usage. These
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benefits only apply to applications available as KDEinit loadable module (KLM)
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5. KRun
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Generic way to open documents/applications/shell commands. Uses
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startServiceBy.... where applicable. Offers the additional
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benefit of startup-notification.
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KRun can start any application, from the binary or the desktop file,
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it will determine the mimetype of a file before running the
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preferred handler for it, and it can also start shell commands.
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This makes KRun the recommended way to run another program in KDE 2.
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