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OLE and OpenDoc feel a bit nostalgic because they were the last time anyone tried to really rethink the desktop paradigm (and therefore computing productivity),

OLE and OpenDoc feel a bit nostalgic because they were the last time anyone tried to really rethink the desktop paradigm (and therefore computing productivity), spinning it away from a machine-oriented "app" mindset towards a data-oriented "doc" mindset. The idea of everything revolving around apps is in some ways a bit odd, if you think about it. App is short for application, and we call apps apps because in the earliest days of computers the most common question was "but what are they good for?". Well, here's an application of computers: running the numbers. Here's another application for computers: writing letters. Etc. If you think in terms of justifying expensive machines, then making everything revolve around individual "apps" makes sense, but once you're beyond that and think in terms of productivity workflows an app-oriented makes less sense. Computers are not about abstract applications of the tech, they're about produced work artifacts, which we can generically call compound documents, and those may be rich multi-media affairs with many different kinds of program contributing to the final experience. At least, this was the OLE/OpenDoc argument. Things didn't work out that way but it's worth asking if that was due to implementation deficiencies or because the actual vision was bad. Primary evidence in the case against OLE-style compound documents is that it's gone out of fashion and is hardly used anymore outside of office suites, and only hardly even there. Users don't seem to care and aren't asking for it back. Primary evidence in the case for compound documents is the web. Web pages are arguably very similar to OLE style documents, but less engineered and without the ability to edit them. Nonetheless, the <iframe> or <object> tag is roughly similar to OLE's IOleInPlaceSite [1]. In earlier versions of Internet Explorer the <object> tag could in fact embed OLE objects, they are so conceptually similar. URLs are similar to "monikers", XML+XSLT had similar goals to OLE's structured storage (what OpenDoc called Bento) and so on. I guess the critical difference is that the developer usability of the web is much higher. OLE/COM were the product of C++ architecture astronauts who didn't seem to care much about developer usability. Writing OLE components was a horrifically difficult experience even if you were using Borland's tools instead of Microsoft's. Writing web pages was easy. OpenDoc was the ultimate expression of compound document purism. In OLE apps could embed other apps, but in OpenDoc there were no apps. Everything started with a blank generic document into which you embedded components and tied them together. Pre-made document templates were available that could approximate apps but they were always editable. It was a highly fungible and malleable computing environment, somewhat similar maybe to Squeak. Jobs was right to kill it though. Apple needed to focus on shipping a good implementation of a proven paradigm at that point in its history, not trying to reinvent the basics. [1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/oleidl/nn-oleidl-ioleinplacesite https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/oleidl/n...

fidotron 3y ago
> At least, this was the OLE/OpenDoc argument. Things didn't work out that way but it's worth asking if that was due to implementation deficiencies or because the actual vision was bad. I think our machines weren't up to it in the 90s. Simply the amount of memory it uses caused problems, and the tooling was a horror show. Part of the reason I submitted this was imo it's how a virtual reality system should work, yet as you point out everyone now is in a "that's an app" mindset.
MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
I suspect OLE was mainly useful when you didn’t have networked file storage that was easy to link to, so you had to stuff a file into another file in order to easily access both. Thats just a guess tho, I only remember it being used for graphs that you made in Excel and could then paste into Powerpoint and still be able to make changes.
pjc50 3y ago
> Primary evidence in the case against OLE-style compound documents .. is Word macro viruses. The old security model assumed that the "system administrator" and "apps" could be trusted, it was just the users which had to be segregated. The modern world has that the other way round: "system administrator" doesn't scale, apps absolutely cannot be trusted not to violate your privacy, and most devices are single-user. Protecting user data in a component system from hostile components is .. conceptually impossible?
- fidotron 3y ago
  I think that is a good enough point to be worth trying to counter it. The modern app environment (especially mobile) leans heavily on app scoped permissions, and sometimes even app session level permissions. Has anyone tried a component system that attempts component instance level permissions? (And maybe time gated ones at that).
  - mike_hearn 3y ago
    The web again. iframes have limited permissions and both host and child page are sandboxed from each other to some extent.

fidotron 3y ago

> At least, this was the OLE/OpenDoc argument. Things didn't work out that way but it's worth asking if that was due to implementation deficiencies or because the actual vision was bad. I think our machines weren't up to it in the 90s. Simply the amount of memory it uses caused problems, and the tooling was a horror show. Part of the reason I submitted this was imo it's how a virtual reality system should work, yet as you point out everyone now is in a "that's an app" mindset.

MrBuddyCasino 3y ago

I suspect OLE was mainly useful when you didn’t have networked file storage that was easy to link to, so you had to stuff a file into another file in order to easily access both. Thats just a guess tho, I only remember it being used for graphs that you made in Excel and could then paste into Powerpoint and still be able to make changes.

pjc50 3y ago

> Primary evidence in the case against OLE-style compound documents .. is Word macro viruses. The old security model assumed that the "system administrator" and "apps" could be trusted, it was just the users which had to be segregated. The modern world has that the other way round: "system administrator" doesn't scale, apps absolutely cannot be trusted not to violate your privacy, and most devices are single-user. Protecting user data in a component system from hostile components is .. conceptually impossible?

fidotron 3y ago
I think that is a good enough point to be worth trying to counter it. The modern app environment (especially mobile) leans heavily on app scoped permissions, and sometimes even app session level permissions. Has anyone tried a component system that attempts component instance level permissions? (And maybe time gated ones at that).
- mike_hearn 3y ago
  The web again. iframes have limited permissions and both host and child page are sandboxed from each other to some extent.