An application that is defining a new mechanism must completely specify the naming conventions for objects rendered in that mechanism. This information typically includes both the name of the data and preceding information describing the exact location of the data. Any special rules concerning uppercase and lowercase or character sets to be used in naming also must be specified. The semantics for using these mechanism names, as well as an algorithm for deriving location information, also must be defined.

An application that is defining a new rendering mechanism must completely define the set of messages that a target and source application must support, and must specify the appropriate action to be taken for each message. The message IDs (above WM_USER) for the messages must be published.