Dcop

dcop ( d istributed c omponent o bject p rotocol) is KDE's lightweight CORBA implementation. It enables you to send messages to KDE applications. That means, after starting an application you can control it from the command line, without interacting with the application itself. The command-line tool to do this is named dcop. As an example, if you have konqueror started, the following command will maximize the windows of your first konqueror instance: dcop $(dcop | grep konqueror) konqueror-mainwindow#1 maximize By just typing dcop, you can find out what programs can be accessed.

dcop is e.g. useful
 * for writing automated tests
 * for writing benchmarks
 * for using parts of a program in another (e.g. a webserver that uses dcop to enable an irc chat)
 * for maintenance-shutdown of database clients
 * for stopping timers when going to hibernating mode

With KDE 4, dcop is substituted by dbus because dbus is not limited to the KDE environment.