Can one desktop app invoke another?

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I’d like to put a custom front-end on tk-multi-publish. I’m thinking one way to do it is I could create a small desktop app with my custom front end, write the saved items info somewhere, and then have my app invoke tk-multi-publish in such a way as to pick up the items I saved from the front end app (via a custom hook) and not use its own drag & drop initial dialog.
Is that possible? Can one app “call” another one?

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Through the engine member you’d have access to the other apps in the current context.

See this hook in tk-nuke for tk-multi-publish2 that expects tk-nuke-writenode app to be available: tk-nuke/collector.py at master · shotgunsoftware/tk-nuke · GitHub

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Thanks @Halil. I’m trying this now, and have some initial things working. Thank you for the pointer!

Perhaps someone could help with one thing I’m hung up on:
My app gets the tk-multi-publish app and its module OK, and then I call

tk_publish_module.show_dialog(tk_publish_app)

which shows the usual publish UI. But I then want a handle to that widget so I can call its _on_drop() method with my files. And unfortunately that show_dialog method doesn’t return anything.

I can do this if I modify tk-multi-publish to return the widget in its show_dialog() method, but is there a way to get the app’s widget without modifying tk-multi-publish? I’d like to keep that pristine, and just put my selection UI in front of it.

Any ideas?