3 ms·
I was told at the time (but I have no clue if it's true or not; it sounded plausible), that the dream was that companies/users could just roll their own applica
by anonzzzies 3y ago
I was told at the time (but I have no clue if it's true or not; it sounded plausible), that the dream was that companies/users could just roll their own applications from OLE components. So if your company workflow for some of the staff would require Word + Excel + Photoshop working in some way together, you would add these 3 to an empty application, hook them up with VBA (which was already included with the empty application) and then write it to an installer. The file format out/in would indeed combine these 3. It still sounds plausible when I write it. And not a bad idea (besides maybe the fileformat, unless you can easily untangle maybe).
- tsujamin 3y agoThe file format exists, its Compound Document Files which are effectively just a little FAT filesystem in a file from memory. both Microsoft and 3rd parties (...Autodesk maybe?) use them. My favourite example of seeing them is VBA macro projects in office documents. The macros used to be stored in CDFs equivalent of a subfolder within a wider Word CDF document. When Office 2007 migrated from .doc to .docx, they just made the VBA project folder its own CDF file and stuck it in the new zip archive format
- pjc50 3y ago> that the dream was that companies/users could just roll their own applications from OLE components Since at least the 70s there has been a dream of the software industry that it could be more like the electronics industry: you purchase a set of components and assemble them into something that does what you want. This has never quite worked out like that. It always develops its own unique pathologies, like npm's sprawling software BOMs of hundreds of thousands of libraries.
- anonzzzies 3y agoYes, and we keep trying!