History: open software in education

OpenDoc was a multi-platform software componentry framework standard for compound documents which IBM and Apple almost brought to the desktops of the world in the mid-1990s. It failed in the sense that robust implementations never became available. It is fondly remembered by developers and designers who had experience with it. Many of us feel that it might have dramatically improved the content and interactivity for e-learning.

The question I want to put here is: Would an Open Source OpenDoc have succeeded?

For about a year now, Apple, IBM, WordPerfect, Novell, and Borland have been trying to get attention for a standard for compound documents that they refer to as OpenDoc. This Object-oriented technology is the chief competition to Microsoft's OLE 2.0 as a way of constructing automatically updatable documents from elements selected from multiple applications.

The best way to compare the two technologies is to see a demonstration of OLE and a demonstration of OpenDoc, side by side. IBM would love to have you do that, because it shows off OpenDoc's best side (see below).

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

OpenDoc was a multi-platform software componentry framework standard for compound documents, inspired by the Xerox Star system and intended as an alternative to Microsoft's object linking and embedding (OLE).

Since Steve Jobs put "a bullet through the head of OpenDoc" these links have begun to rot. Many are still active, so I leave the list here as a memorial to OpenDoc.

These links may no longer be active, but the list is of historical interest in any case.

CI Labs and OpenDoc

Since Apple's announcement that it will withdraw support, OpenDoc is no more. In my opinion, many of the concepts underlying OpenDoc were extremely important to the future of the WWW.

...more (verbatim) from the WPCMath list:

CI Labs and OpenDoc

Since Apple's announcement that it will withdraw support, OpenDoc is no more. In my opinion, many of the concepts underlying OpenDoc were extremely important to the future of the WWW. Much of that development will now doubtless be taken up by the JavaBeans effort, with WPCMath doing its small part. With OpenDoc we have also lost CI Labs, which I think is a major loss. I am offering the following resources since I believe that the underlying concepts should be preserved and renewed.

• Farewell from CI Labs
• Some unfortunately obsolete (August 27, 1996), but still interesting, news: NETSCAPE AND APPLE ANNOUNCE PLANS TO DEVELOP NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR FOR APPLE'S CYBERDOG
• Feiler, Jesse and Anthony Meadow. Essential OpenDoc. Addison Wesley, 1996.
• Jacob, Bart and Henri Jubin. Part Development for OpenDoc. Prentice Hall. 1997.