Write a shell which can embed other application and run as a separate process

Question

I found an interesting article from HP website. They wrote a TouchSmart Shell application, and it allows other applications to embed in that shell, and run as a separate process. Of course, HP defined some restrictions with the embedded application. I don’t know if C++ and Win32 can do similar thing? http://www.touchsmartcommunity.com/article/95/An-HP-TouchSmart-Application-Development-Guidelines-Primer/?textpage=1

Answer 1

Isn't this what all the unix shells do? Embed applications into themselves. I hope I have understood your question correctly. A similar thing can definitely be done in Win32. MSYS (Minimal SYStem) and Cygwin all do the same. They have their own shells, though I would assume they're written in C and not in C++

Answer 2

Maybe I've missed something, but TouchSmart just looks like a way of starting a .NET application from within it. There are probably some API's that you need to call into for correct presentation or events to hook up to.