🚀 go-pugleaf

ldo@waikato.ac.nz (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) writes:

>Is anybody working on a scheme for breaking down the seams between applications?
>That is, not only can they share data, but they can share it in a transparent
>fashion by directly invoking each other's services when appropriate, without
>the user having to remember which application to use to perform which function.

Microsoft's OLE is targeted specifically at this. Assuming they can overcome
the ill will that's accumulated and convince the industry that they ought to
be trusted on this one, I think that OLE could do really well. I am no expert
on it, but I did have to get familiar with some of the guts of OLE as part of
a summer internship I worked at Microsoft last year.

>Apple's AppleEvent Object Model seems to me to be one step on this road, which

Yes, but it's only a step. I would love to be wrong on this, but AppleEvents
seems to be more of a kludge based on the existing Event architecture that is
inherent in the Mac GUI. I have not been keeping current on this but as of last
summer I was not too impressed by AppleEvents. I hope it has improved since, or
that I did not get to see the whole story, because what I did see looked quite
lacking when compared to OLE.

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ cco.caltech.edu