seeking advice on communication to external programs

["Eric S. Johansson" <esj eggo org>]

I'm working on a tool for speech recognition users that I call "memory 
pad".  basically it's a Python dictionary with a speech UI on top. The 
key being what you say and the data being either what you inject to the 
input queue  or you set  with daily you've just dictated or typed.

This is where I need advice:

what is the "approved"/"official" method of talking to applications in 
the Linux environment? From what I can tell it's dbus  but I'm not sure 
how hard/easy it is to use.

 whatever the "official" method of communicating to applications is, 
will it work cross-platform from Windows to Linux.  Part of the reason 
why I ask is I  am really not happy with the state of  RPC style of 
communications in Linux.  For example, I was using rpyc  in speech 
bridge. It worked really well. It was easy to get running but it seems 
like support is no longer there and I'm questioning whether or not it 
still being developed/maintained.

 I'd like something I could use to call methods on either side.

 This is also where I'm hoping that I can find a volunteer to help. I 
need someone that knows Linux GUIs and can help me build the visual/GUI 
aspect.  it should be fairly simple. The basic display is just a text 
region. There are no menus to speak of because that's all speech driven. 
There would be some need to type into this text region  because not 
everything is speakable.

 Obviously, some of this would evolve as I try out UI elements and 
figure out what would work and not work.

 thanks in advance for any advice on the RPC problem and any volunteers 
on the UI problem.

 --- eric