Where Does OpenDoc Fit?

February 1996 / Reviews / OpenDoc: Small Is Beautiful / Where Does OpenDoc Fit?

OpenDoc is a cross-platform component architecture . It provides the communications framework into which developers plug components with standardized programmatic interfaces. Programming to OpenDoc standards ensures your components are both transportable to other OSes and accessible by other components in a consistent manner. OpenDoc further isolates you from machine dependencies by providing Bentos, a cross-platform object-storage format that ensures data written on one platform can be read on any other platform supporting OpenDoc.
What OpenDoc does not do is provide a complete cross-platform development solution. The OpenDoc charter does n ot include user interfaces. Actually presenting information to the user is still beyond OpenDoc's scope. The user interface is still platform-specific.
Don't despair, though, because there's a solution in the works. The OpenDoc Development FrameWork (ODF) is a cross-platform development environment that sits on top of OpenDoc itself. The ODF provides cross-platform user-interface components and a custom resource editor for moving your GUI controls (called Gadgets) across platforms. ODF is scheduled for shipment several months after the official release of OpenDoc.

OpenDoc: Creation in Less Than 7 Days
illustration_link (106 Kbytes)
As a multiplat form standard, OpenDoc simplifies the creation of applications.

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Matthew Wilson
My approach to software engineering is far more pragmatic than it is theoretical--and no language better exemplifies this than C++.

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