Autor: Gregorio Kus (Grego_at_RMnet.IT)
Data: Thu 04 Apr 1996 - 04:10:03 MET DST
Artykul wydal mi sie na tyle ciekawy ze pozwalam sobie
go tu wrzucic - mam nadzieje ze nie bedziecie mi mieli za zle.
Grego
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PC Week Online
Soft Talk
March 25, 1996
OpenDoc: Ready for the Acme of Success?
By Peter Coffee
With last week's announcements regarding Microsoft's Internet
plans, I'm forced to rethink my past predictions of gloomy prospects
for OpenDoc. Where OpenDoc used to be vapor, while Microsoft's OLE was
here and now, today it's OLE that seems to have a continuing identity
crisis. OpenDoc, with OS/2 tools shipping now and Windows tools close
to release, delivers what it promised all along.
Last May, I compared the contest between OpenDoc and Object Linking
and Embedding to a "Garfield" comic strip, with Microsoft in the title
role. Garfield challenges the hapless Odie to a running-into-the-wall
contest; Odie wins, and Garfield cheerfully concedes as he walks away
from the remains. But it looks as if I picked the wrong characters.
I suggested that meeting the challenge of OLE 2.0 compliance would
divert OpenDoc away from developing its own distinctive appeal, and
that the OpenDoc API might never become an attractive development
target in its own right. I suggested that winning a compatibility game
by Microsoft's rules is a tiny victory wrapped in a much larger loss.
But what if this isn't a "Garfield" strip, but a "Road Runner"
cartoon?
Picture Microsoft as Wile E. Coyote, painting a fake tunnel entrance
on the side of a cliff. "Mainstream market share: Enter here," says
the sign, and Wile E. hides behind a rock and waits for the Road
Runner to hit the wall.
But then the Road Runner comes screaming down the highway and goes
right through that false entrance, disappearing within. Wile E.
stares, then tries to give chase--only to collide with the solid rock
that the coyote can't get through.
This was the image that came to mind when I saw the Windows
implementation of OpenDoc, soon to ship from IBM following this
month's release of tools for OS/2. Not only did I see OpenDoc
applications providing mix-and-match compatibility with OLE; I also
saw OpenDoc parts continuing to deliver capabilities, even while
pasted into an OLE container, that OLE alone does not provide.
I didn't think this was architecturally possible, but IBM pays these
people to surprise me. And PC Week pays me to tell you about it. And
you get paid to prove your value to your organization by producing
applications with new flexibility and power. Does OpenDoc make it
easier for you to do that?
The OpenDoc consortium has finally learned to answer questions of this
kind, and it looks as if the answer is yes. Being based on IBM's SOM
(System Object Model), OpenDoc offers networked capabilities today
through Distributed SOM. The equivalent in OLE is still very much in
preparation. Microsoft, in fact, is already working on its latest
chapter of "it's just the same, only different" by renaming OLE custom
control modules as ActiveX controls and incorporating Sun's Java
language.
Microsoft's application framework and OLE in particular have always
been aimed at speeding the adoption of Microsoft platforms and
services. OpenDoc, like Borland's OWL, is designed with more general
abstraction in mind, leading to more concise code with much less
developer attention to low-level details.
OpenDoc is present tense. And about time, too. Give it a serious look.
Copyright (c) 1996 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
-- /------------------------------------------------------------------ Gregorio Kus Grego_at_RMnet.it Grego_at_cyberspace.org ROMA, Italy http://www.RMnet.it/~grego Grego_at_FreeNet.hut.fi
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