OpenDoc is a defunct multi-platform
software componentry
Component-based software engineering (CBSE), also called component-based development (CBD), is a style of software engineering that aims to construct a software system from components that are loosely-coupled and reusable. This emphasizes the sep ...
framework standard created by
Apple
An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...
in the 1990s for
compound documents, intended as an alternative to
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
's proprietary
Object Linking and Embedding
Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) is a proprietary technology developed by Microsoft that allows embedding and linking to documents and other objects. For developers, it brought OLE Control Extension (OCX), a way to develop and use custom user ...
(OLE).
It is one of Apple's earliest experiments with
open standards
An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a common prerequisite that open standards use an open license that provides for extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in their development due to ...
and collaborative development methods with other companies. OpenDoc development was transferred to the non-profit Component Integration Laboratories, Inc. (CI Labs), owned by a growing team of major corporate backers and effectively starting an industry consortium. In 1992, the
AIM alliance
The AIM alliance, also known as the PowerPC alliance, was formed on October 2, 1991, between Apple Inc., Apple, IBM, and Motorola. Its goal was to create an industry-wide open-standard computing platform based on the IBM POWER architecture, POWE ...
was launched by Apple,
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
, and
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...
, with OpenDoc as a foundation. With the return of
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, inventor, and investor best known for co-founding the technology company Apple Inc. Jobs was also the founder of NeXT and chairman and majority shareholder o ...
to Apple, OpenDoc was discontinued in March 1997.
[Apple. "AppleShare IP 6.3 Does Not Require OpenDoc". Apple Support. December 18, 2003.]
Overview
The core idea of OpenDoc is to create small, reusable components which are responsible for a specific task, such as text editing, bitmap editing, or browsing an
FTP
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and dat ...
server. OpenDoc is a framework in which these components can run together, and a compound document format for storing the data created by each component. These documents can then be opened on different networked machines of different operating systems, on which the OpenDoc frameworks can substitute suitable components for each part, even if they are from different vendors. In this way, users can "build up" their documents from parts. Since there is no main application and the only visible interface is the document itself, the system is known as ''document-centered''.
OpenDoc was conceived to allow, for example, smaller, third-party developers to enter the competitive
office suite
Productivity software (also called personal productivity software or office productivity software) is application software used for producing information (such as documents, presentations, worksheets, databases, charts, graphs, digital paintin ...
software market, and build small, specialized applications instead of having to provide a complete suite. It was envisioned to facilitate a new future of online
app store
An app store, also called an app marketplace or app catalog, is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not i ...
s.
History
Background
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
approached Apple asking for input on a proposed OLE II project. Apple had been experimenting internally with software components for some time, based on the initial work done on its
Publish and Subscribe linking model and the
AppleScript
AppleScript is a scripting language created by Apple Inc. that facilitates automated control of Mac applications. First introduced in System 7, it is currently included in macOS in a package of automation tools. The term ''AppleScript'' may ...
scripting language
In computing, a script is a relatively short and simple set of instructions that typically automation, automate an otherwise manual process. The act of writing a script is called scripting. A scripting language or script language is a programming ...
, which in turn was based on the
HyperCard
HyperCard is a application software, software application and software development kit, development kit for Apple Macintosh and Apple IIGS computers. It is among the first successful hypermedia systems predating the World Wide Web.
HyperCard com ...
programming environment. Apple reviewed the Microsoft prototype and document, and returned a list of problems with the design. Microsoft and Apple were very competitive, were unable to agree on common goals, and did not work together.
[Apple Inc. "Technical Note TN1142: Mac OS 8.5". October 26, 1998.]
At about the same time, a group of third-party developers had met at the
Apple Worldwide Developers Conference
The Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is an information technology conference held annually by Apple Inc. The conference is currently held at Apple Park in California. The event is used to showcase new software and technologies in the macO ...
(WWDC '91) and tried to establish a standardized document format, based conceptually on the
Interchange File Format (IFF) from
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by former Apple Inc., Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry ...
. Apple became interested in this work, and soon dedicated some engineers to building and documenting such a system. Initial work was published on the WWDC CDs, and several follow-up versions on later developer CDs. A component document system would only work with a known document format that all the components could use, and so soon the standardized document format was pulled into the component software effort. The format quickly changed from a simple one using tags to a very complex
object oriented
Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of '' objects''. Objects can contain data (called fields, attributes or properties) and have actions they can perform (called procedures or methods and impleme ...
persistence layer called Bento.
Initially the effort was
codename
A code name, codename, call sign, or cryptonym is a code word or name used, sometimes clandestinely, to refer to another name, word, project, or person. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage. They may also be used in ...
d "Exemplar", then "Jedi", "Amber", and eventually "OpenDoc".
Competing visions
In March 1992, the
AIM alliance
The AIM alliance, also known as the PowerPC alliance, was formed on October 2, 1991, between Apple Inc., Apple, IBM, and Motorola. Its goal was to create an industry-wide open-standard computing platform based on the IBM POWER architecture, POWE ...
between Apple, IBM, and Motorola, was launched with OpenDoc as a foundation.
Taligent
Taligent Inc. (a portmanteau of "talent" and "intelligent") was an American software company. Based on the Pink object-oriented operating system conceived by Apple in 1988, Taligent Inc. was incorporated as an Apple/IBM partnership in 1992, and ...
was formed as a primary objective of AIM, adopted OpenDoc, and promised somewhat similar functionality although based on very different underlying mechanisms. OpenDoc progressed, but Apple greatly confused developers by suggesting that it should be used only for porting existing software, but new projects should instead be based on Taligent as the presumptive future OS for Macintosh. In 1993, John Sculley called Project Amber (a
codename
A code name, codename, call sign, or cryptonym is a code word or name used, sometimes clandestinely, to refer to another name, word, project, or person. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage. They may also be used in ...
for what would become OpenDoc) a path toward Taligent. Taligent was considered the future of the Macintosh, and work on other tools like
MacApp was considerably deprioritized.
Through OpenDoc's entire lifespan, analysts and users each reportedly "had very different views" of the OpenDoc initiative. They were confused about their role, regarding how much of OpenDoc-based development would be their responsibility versus IBM's and Apple's responsibility. There were never many released OpenDoc components compared to Microsoft's
ActiveX
ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide W ...
components. Therefore, reception was very mixed.
Starting in 1992, Apple attempted to replace MacApp development framework with a cross-platform solution called
Bedrock
In geology, bedrock is solid rock that lies under loose material ( regolith) within the crust of Earth or another terrestrial planet.
Definition
Bedrock is the solid rock that underlies looser surface material. An exposed portion of bed ...
, from
Symantec. Symantec's
Think C was rapidly becoming the tool of choice for development on the Mac. While collaborating to port Symantec's tools to the
PowerPC
PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...
, Apple learned of Symantec's internal porting tools. Apple proposed merging existing MacApp concepts and code with Symantec's to produce an advanced cross-platform system. Bedrock began to compete with OpenDoc as the solution for future development.
As OpenDoc gained currency within Apple, the company started to push Symantec into including OpenDoc functionality in Bedrock. Symantec was uninterested in this, and eventually gave up on the effort, passing the code to Apple. Bedrock was in a very early state of development at this point, even after 18 months of work, as the development team at Symantec suffered continual turnover. Apple proposed that the code would be used for OpenDoc programming, but nothing was ever heard of this again, and Bedrock disappeared.
As a result of Taligent and Bedrock both being Apple's officially promised future platforms, little effort had been expended on updating MacApp. Because Bedrock was discontinued in 1993 and Taligent was discontinued in 1996 without any MacOS release, this left Apple with only OpenDoc as a modern OO-based programming system.
Partnerships and adoption
The development team realized in mid-1992 that an industry coalition was needed to promote the system, and created the Component Integration Laboratories (CI Labs) with
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
and
WordPerfect
WordPerfect (WP) is a word processing application, now owned by Alludo, with a long history on multiple personal computer platforms. At the height of its popularity in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was the market leader of word processors, disp ...
. IBM introduced to OpenDoc, its already mature
System Object Model (SOM) and Distributed SOM (DSOM)
shared library
In computing, a library is a collection of System resource, resources that can be leveraged during software development to implement a computer program. Commonly, a library consists of executable code such as compiled function (computer scienc ...
systems from AIX and OS/2. DSOM allows live networked linking of data between different platforms, which OLE and COM did not have.
SOM became a major part of Apple's future efforts, in and out of OpenDoc.
In March 1995, many OpenDoc announcements came. CI Labs ownership included Apple, IBM, Novell, and SunSoft. IBM pre-announced at Object World Boston the future release of the OpenDoc OS/2 Developer Toolkit version 2, containing the complete API, and then the final release of OpenDoc 1.0 for OS/2 3.0.
Taligent
Taligent Inc. (a portmanteau of "talent" and "intelligent") was an American software company. Based on the Pink object-oriented operating system conceived by Apple in 1988, Taligent Inc. was incorporated as an Apple/IBM partnership in 1992, and ...
's CommonPoint application framework has compound document features based on OpenDoc.
Novell
Novell, Inc. () was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as NetWare. Novell technolog ...
announced at the Brainshare conference, a plan to break up most or all of its products into OpenDoc components, beginning with
WordPerfect
WordPerfect (WP) is a word processing application, now owned by Alludo, with a long history on multiple personal computer platforms. At the height of its popularity in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was the market leader of word processors, disp ...
applications and then its
NetWare
NetWare is a discontinued computer network operating system developed by Novell, Inc. It initially used cooperative multitasking to run various services on a personal computer, using the IPX network protocol. The final update release was ver ...
operating system. NetWare was intended to become a managed Compound Document Service for networks, to manage object links and compound document searching. Novell announced a plan for OpenDoc to become the basis for building
UnixWare applications. It acknowledged that its operating systems lack a component architecture, and that Microsoft would never license the source code for OLE or COM, so Novell needs to support those also via OpenDoc. More than 20 more companies announced their products' support for OpenDoc, citing its technological superiority to Microsoft's OLE and COM, and its wide cross-platform support.
In 1996, OpenDoc was adopted by the
Object Management Group
The Object Management Group (OMG®) is a computer industry Standards Development Organization (SDO), or Voluntary Consensus Standards Body (VCSB). OMG develops enterprise integration and modeling standards for a range of technologies.
Busin ...
, in part due to SOM's use of
Common Object Request Broker Architecture
The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a standard defined by the Object Management Group (OMG) designed to facilitate the communication of systems that are deployed on diverse platforms. CORBA enables collaboration between sy ...
(CORBA), maintained by the OMG.
CI Labs never publicly released the source code, but licensed it to developers for feedback, testing, and debugging.
Release
In September 1994, the OpenDoc subsystem was launched on
System 7.5,
and later on
OS/2
OS/2 is a Proprietary software, proprietary computer operating system for x86 and PowerPC based personal computers. It was created and initially developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci, ...
Warp 4.
Products
After three years of development on OpenDoc itself, the first OpenDoc-based product release was Apple's
CyberDog web browser
A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...
in May 1996. The second was on August 1, 1996, of IBM's two packages of OpenDoc components for OS/2, available on the Club OpenDoc website for a 30 day free trial: the Person Pak is "components aimed at organizing names, addresses, and other personal information", for use with
personal information management
Personal information management (PIM) is the study and implementation of the activities that people perform in order to acquire or create, store, organize, maintain, retrieve, and use informational items such as documents (paper-based and digital ...
(PIM) applications, at ; and the Table Pak "to store rows and columns in a database file" at . IBM then anticipated the release of 50 more components by the end of 1996.
The WAV
word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features.
Early word processors were stand-alone devices dedicated to the function, but current word ...
is a semi-successful OpenDoc
word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features.
Early word processors were stand-alone devices dedicated to the function, but current word ...
from Digital Harbor LLC. The Numbers & Charts package is a spreadsheet and 3D real-time charting solution from Adrenaline Software. Lexi from Soft-Linc, Inc. is a linguistic package containing a spell checker, thesaurus, and a simple translation tool which WAV and other components use. The
Nisus Writer software by Nisus incorporated OpenDoc, but its implementation was hopelessly buggy.
Bare Bones Software
Bare Bones Software is a private North Chelmsford, Massachusetts, United States software company developing software tools for the Mac (computer), Apple Macintosh platform. The company develops the BBEdit text editor, marketed under the registered ...
tested the market by making its
BBEdit Lite
BBEdit is a proprietary text editor made by Bare Bones Software, originally developed for Macintosh System Software 6, and currently supporting macOS.
History
The first version of BBEdit was created as a "bare bones" text editor to serve as a ...
freeware text editor available as an OpenDoc editor component.
RagTime
Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that had its peak from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its Syncopation, syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers ...
, a completely integrated office package with spreadsheet, publishing, and image editing was ported to OpenDoc shortly before OpenDoc was cancelled. Apple's 1996 release of ClarisWorks 5.0 (the predecessor of
AppleWorks) was planned to support OpenDoc components, but this was dropped.
Educational
Another OpenDoc container application, called Dock'Em, was written by MetaMind Software under a grant from the
National Science Foundation
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...
and commissioned by The Center for Research in Math and Science Education, headquartered at
San Diego State University
San Diego State University (SDSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Diego, California, United States. Founded in 1897, it is the third-oldest university and southernmost in the 23-member California State University (CS ...
. The goal was to allow multimedia content to be included in documents describing curriculum.
Several
physics
Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...
simulation
A simulation is an imitative representation of a process or system that could exist in the real world. In this broad sense, simulation can often be used interchangeably with model. Sometimes a clear distinction between the two terms is made, in ...
s were written by MetaMind Software and by Russian software firm Physicon (
OpenTeach) as OpenDoc parts. Physics curricula for high school and middle school focused on them. With the discontinuation of OpenDoc, the simulations were rewritten as Java
applet
In computing, an applet is any small application that performs one specific task that runs within the scope of a dedicated widget engine or a larger program, often as a plug-in. The term is frequently used to refer to a Java applet, a program ...
s and published from the Center as The Constructing Physics Understanding (CPU) Project by Dr. Fred Goldberg.
Components of the E-Slate educational microworlds platform were originally implemented as OpenDoc parts in
C++ on both MacOS and Windows, reimplemented later (after the discontinuation of OpenDoc) as
Java applets and eventually as
JavaBeans.
Cancellation
OpenDoc had several hundred developers signed up. Apple was rapidly losing money at the time and many in the industry expected the company to fail.
In March 1997, OpenDoc was discontinued with the return of
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, inventor, and investor best known for co-founding the technology company Apple Inc. Jobs was also the founder of NeXT and chairman and majority shareholder o ...
to Apple, who had been at
NeXT
NeXT, Inc. (later NeXT Computer, Inc. and NeXT Software, Inc.) was an American technology company headquartered in Redwood City, California that specialized in computer workstations for higher education and business markets, and later develope ...
during its development. He said Apple's management "put a bullet through
penDoc'shead", and most of the
Apple Advanced Technology Group was laid off in a big reduction in force.
Other sources noted that Microsoft hired away three ClarisWorks developers who were responsible for OpenDoc integration into ClarisWorks.
Since
Mac OS 8.5, OpenDoc was no longer bundled.
AppleShare IP Manager from versions 5.0 to 6.2 relied on OpenDoc, but AppleShare IP 6.3 eliminated this, as the first Mac OS 9 compatible version, released in 1999.
Apple officially relinquished the last trademark on the name "OpenDoc" on June 11, 2005.
See also
*
Orphaned technology
Orphaned technology refers to computer technologies that have been abandoned by their original developers. As opposed to deprecation, which tends to be a gradual shift away from an older technology to newer technology, orphaned technology is usua ...
for similar fates
*
KParts for an open source alternative
References
External links
*
*
*
Last release of OpenDoc for OS/2 (for education purpose only)Video of Steve Jobsat Apple's annual developer conference in 1997, defending Apple's decision to kill OpenDoc.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Opendoc
Apple Inc. software
IBM software
Orphaned technology