Finding out what other tasks are running

[Jeremy C B Nicoll]

Is there a cross-platform of determining what other processes (or in Windows
terms, other applications) are running?

Is it possible in a cross-platform way to ask some other application to shut
down, wait a while, and then test to see if it did shut?

Failing that are there separate Windows, Mac and Linux/Unix ways of doing
this?

-- 
Jeremy C B Nicoll - my opinions are my own.