Processes and threads

Question

1a)Are MS Word and MS PowerPoint different processes or threads of a single process?

b)How does a spell checker routine (common to both, word and PowerPoint) used? I mean is the code copied 2 times for each of the processes in the main memory,

• if they are different processes
• if they are threads.

The question is not specific to Windows OS.

Answer 1

They are different processes that happen to have overlap in [certain] functionality.

Answer 2

1a) Different processes generally though there may exist some program out there that could try to run them both within the same process if you look at it as an O/S within an O/S sort of situation.

1b) The spell checker is likely just running over the existing entered data and confirming words are found in a dictionary along with some basic grammar preforming the odd correction here and there. Note though you don't specify which version of Office you mean as there are Mac and PC versions of the software that may have different behaviours among the versions.

On a Windows machine you could use Task Manager or Process Explorer to confirm the separate processes.