commodities can give you something similar for GUI based applets
Commodities don't necessarily have GUI, what makes you think so?
AutoPoint, ClickToFront and NoCapsLock for example, don 't.
what's the use case? here's one - every time you want to use an external rexxport, you need to check if the port exists, and if it doesn't, run the host for that port, if you even know where to find it.
Not sure what you mean with "external rexxport", but if you mean an arexx port of a program, and your complaint is that you need to run the program to make the port available... yes, is that hard? What I hear is that you want the system itself to detect that something is trying to open an arbitrarily named arexx port, and then launch the software that's somehow is registered with this arbitrary port name... correct? The question becomes, how to detect what port is attempted, and how to ensure the right software is started so that something can answer on the port correctly before the client gives up. In principle you can have a script that listens to all the ports you have set up in a "servers" like file, and when something connects, it will shut down its port and launch the software so it can open the real port... however, the client may have become unhappy at this point, because of the port "hand over", or simply because launching the software may take too long.
Or you want to open on a named PUBSCREEN. But you're first to arrive, and the screen isn't open yet.
Well, there's a (badom-tish) commodity for that - MUI:PSI, it can do just this, and I am sure there are other pub screen handlers that do the same. Should the OS come with a pubscreen commodity handler built in? In my view - Absolutely! But certain OS developers didn't think it's worth wasting time on, as there are already third party tools for this.
