Notification

Notification is a means by which an application can receive a message whenever a certain file of interest is modified. By establishing "hot links" between applications, notification allows a change made to a file with one program to be automatically reflected in another application that is using the same file.

Hot links allow a change made to a file with one program to be automatically reflected in another application which is using the same file.

An example would be a paint package in which the user could save a brush and, using notification, automatically have an image processor application modify the brush and return it in a separate file. The scenario would work like this:

1. PAINT PACKAGE

2. IMAGE PROCESSOR

3. PAINT PACKAGE

There is only one style standard to worry about with notification: keep RAM usage reasonable. Because RAM is a limited resource, applications that have very large amounts of data should not store directly in RAM:.

Notification may not work in a network situation because it is not implemented with some file systems. It does work on RAM:, FFS and OFS.