Barry Marshall Reporter
	Description • 24 years ago

Tested on my ususal TP770x with WSeB, 1101, SDD.

In order to use Nestcape/2 4.61 with Lotus Notes 4.5x for OS/2 without starting
a whole mess of browser sessions, I use a small program called NETSCDDE which
uses Netscape's DDE interface to send commands to the browser to display a page.

NETSCDDE comes with the XWorkplace package, which can be found at
http://www.netlabs.org.

I tried to invoke Mozilla with this program with the following example:
[C:\mozilla\bin]\xworkplace\bin\netscdde -X -p "mozilla.exe" http://www.ibm.com
but nothing really happened.  NETSCDDE started, looked like it tried to invoke
Mozilla, but didn't really do anything after exiting or give a return code.

Is the DDE interface available under Mozilla?

I'll also send a note to the author  Ulrich Möller
(ulrich.moeller@rz.hu-berlin.de) and see what he has to say.

	Mike Kaply [:mkaply]
	Comment 1 • 24 years ago

The DDE interface is missing Mozilla wide.

There is a tiny hook in Windows that allows a URL to be loaded, but the rest of 
the interface is gone.

	Barry Marshall Reporter
	Comment 2 • 24 years ago

Actually, a simple URL load was all I was looking for.

They're tracking this in http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25699
, but it's been dead for a while by the looks of it.

Even if this gets updated, from the comments in the XWorkplace doc it seems that
DDE on OS/2 is not totally the same as DDE on Windows.

To quote:
"This is done with the use of Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE), for the OS/2 versions
of Netscape understand just the same DDE commands as the Windows versions do.
These commands are (horribly) documented at
http://developer.netscape.com/library/documentation/communicator/DDE



 These documents assume a detailed knowledge of how DDE works, and believe me,
some things ARE different on OS/2."

Also, since COM replaced OLE which replaced DDE, are they going to implement
more than that?

	timeless
	Comment 3 • 24 years ago

It doesn't seem like we're going to get more than basic dde, helpwanted.

	timeless
	Comment 4 • 24 years ago

and send to the component owner

	Barry Marshall Reporter
	Comment 5 • 24 years ago

Updated dependency, retargeted milestone to match other bug, re-pointed back to 
OS/2, changed severity to match, and added Bill to the cc list  (since he was 
looking for applications that use DDE to figure out what to put in).

Component owner's call if they want to bump it back to mkaply at us.ibm.com for 
tracking with the rest of the OS/2 problems.

	Viswanath Ramachandran
	Comment 6 • 24 years ago

Since Don has left, Vishy is taking his bugs in bulk, pending reassignment.
thanks,
	Vishy

	Paul Chen
	Comment 7 • 24 years ago

nav triage team:

Don't think we'll get to this for beta1, marking nsbeta1-

	aaronr Assignee
	Comment 8 • 24 years ago

OS/2's DDE isn't there.  I've just started working on it so that we'll at 
least be where the windows code is.  But I'm also trying to figure out what 
mozilla has in mind, too, so I'm not doing all of this work for nothing.  DDE 
under mozilla uses service name of "mozilla", so you'll have to change that 
much, at least, in your application.  Newsgroup posts in 
netscape.mozilla.public.general on 03/05-03/08/2001 also suggests that the 
service name for Netscape 6.x is "Netscape6".  Mozilla supports only 
WWW_OpenURL.  And it gets this via XTYP_EXECUTE and not the XTYP_REQUEST like it 
did on 4.x.  I am right now altering a simple DDE testcase from 4.x to try to 
communicate with Mozilla under Win32 so that I can see how much different things  
are at the moment.  Then I'll try to get with Mr. Law (owner of 25699) to see 
what the plans are for DDE right now.

	timeless
	Comment 9 • 24 years ago

Barry: would you be the QA contact for this?

since this bug is for OS/2 and ibm is going to work on it, i'm moving it out of 
the netscape assignee pool.

aaronr/law: Is it possible XTYP_EXECUTE vs. XTYP_REQUEST was done in error?

	aaronr Assignee
	Comment 10 • 24 years ago

No, I don't think that it was a mistake.  It looks like 
mozilla will take the data passed in with XTYP_EXECUTE and 
treat it like a normal mozilla command line.  It parses it 
for the URL to open and if one isn't there then it looks 
for whether this should open chrome (xpapp), the composer, 
the mail UI, etc.  So this was done with some clear ideas 
behind it.

But the fact that Mozilla uses XTYP_EXECUTE won't hurt.  If 
anything, it is extending the possibilities for DDE apps 
since it will treat it like a command line.  It shouldn't 
cause any harm because I don't believe that 4.x ever 
worried about XTYP_EXECUTE.  An app written to Netscape 4.x 
won't be using XTYP_EXECUTE for anything so Mozilla won't 
have to take that possibility into account.  But I think 
that it would be bad form to not respect the current 4.x 
DDE implementation in Mozilla (and, indirectly, Netscape 
6x).

	Barry Marshall Reporter
	Comment 11 • 24 years ago

I'll admit I know nothing about DDE (other than what it does), so bear with me 
if these are a bit naive questions...

1)  Is it possible for an application to register itself with more than one 
identifier?  Could you register Mozilla as both "mozilla" and "Netscape6" at the 
same time?  I'm just thinking that if someone hard-codes their application to 
look for Mozilla when they only (or also) support Netscape 6.x you could have 
some badness.

2)  Would it be possible to have a run-time switch to switch the service level 
name from "Mozilla" to "Netscpe6" identifier?  If the goal is for 4.x 
compatibility, could it also support Netscape4 (or whatever NS/2 4.61 had... ala 
NS/2 2.02's  -3 switch to set the useragent to Netscape 3.0 for tables support)? 
 This would save some external application providers effort re-coding for the 
new agent.

	aaronr Assignee
	Comment 12 • 24 years ago

The problem with all of this is that it is absolutely 
possible to have Netscape 4.x, Netscape 6x and mozilla all 
on the same machine and all running at the same time (I'm 
doing it right now, as a matter of fact, as I track down 
these problems).  Since Netscape4.x, 6.x and Mozilla are 
all distinct applications, I don't see anything wrong with 
them having different service names.  And don't forget, I 
think IE supports DDE, too, so apps would already have to 
worry about different browsers with different service names 
running on the same machine.  Hopefully the apps have the 
ability to pick and chose which browser they want to 
communicate with.

I guess that Mozilla could try to handle all 3 service 
names or to pick one based off of a user preference.  But I 
don't think that it is the right thing to do just because 
the app might really want to start a new 4.x window and NOT 
a new mozilla window.  In my opinion it should be up to the 
application to properly target the browser it wants to use.
The only change I think might be valuable is if Netscape6
also honored the "netscape" service name just because
it is the upgrade path from Netscape 4.x.  But I imagine 
the powers that be at Netscape already considered all of 
this and decided against it for what were probably valid 
reasons.

	achimha
	Comment 13 • 24 years ago

I'll take this bug for the implementation of the Windows alike DDEML interface.
OS/2 does contain a DDEML compatible library which is also used by
Netscape 4.61 but it is not officially documented.

I have attached a working header file that contains the definitions from
Odin and some OS/2 adjustments. I put it under NPL/MPL.

Mike, who's going to work on it?

	aaronr Assignee
	Comment 15 • 23 years ago

I am working on this problem.  I've got os/2 working as 
well as the Windows version, at least.  If not, please let 
me know.  I basically am reporting 
nsNativeAppSupportWin.cpp to nsNativeAppSupportOS2.cpp so 
that we have the latest stuff.

	Christopher Blizzard (:blizzard)
	Comment 19 • 23 years ago

sr=blizzard

	Mike Kaply [:mkaply]
	Comment 20 • 23 years ago

Fix checked in

	Barry Marshall Reporter
	Comment 21 • 23 years ago

So what DDE Application Name does this register as?  If it's not the same as 
NS/2 4.61, there'll be no way I can verify it with NETSCDDE.

Maybe it's worth having a switch  (either in PREFS.JS or via commandline) that 
would be able to modify the name, just as we currently can modify the useragent 
field.

I'm guessing this will be in tomorrow's nightly?

	aaronr Assignee
	Comment 22 • 23 years ago

The DDE application name is "Mozilla" (ID_DDE_APPLICATION_NAME in 
splashos2.rc).  For Netscape 6.x, I believe that the application name 
is "Netscape6".

	Mike Kaply [:mkaply]
	Comment 23 • 23 years ago

marking verified - basic dde support is working consistent with windows.