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Graham Stalker-Wilde
Re: Integrating OpenDoc/OLE and HTML/Java

Re: Integrating OpenDoc/OLE and HTML/Java

Fri, 10 May 1996 15:43:38 -0400 CS First Boston Corporation
Newsgroups:
comp.soft-sys.middleware.opendoc,comp.infosystems.www.misc,comp.infosystems.www.browsers.misc,comp.infosystems.www.authoring.misc,comp.lang.java
References:
<31869CAC.41C6@physics.uq.edu.au> <4maca5$avd@si-nic.hrz.uni-siegen.de> <318E2D15.20FB@sdu.com> <3191a99e.3670639@news.uni-linz.ac.at>

!!!Religious Issue Alert!!!

Werner Punz  wrote:
> From the technical aspects point of view OpenDoc is by far superior to
> OLE. OLE is one of these typically huge complicated  Microsoft API's.
> It takes thousands of lines of code in OLE to do what can be done with
> a few hunderd in OpenDoc. OLE doesn't support inheritance which is one
> of the main causes why OLE apps consist of so many lines of code (80 %
> of OLE code is inheritance simulation). OpenDoc does. OLE has no
> standardized interfaces for apps. Opendoc has. 



OLE (COM) doesn't have inheritance because inheritance is a risky strategy
of code reuse unless the code is being developed under one roof. (or using
known libraries/frameworks) 

That's what Stroustrup said anyway... 
 
"80% of OLE is inheritance simulation" do you mean delegation? Where does that 
figure come from - delegation is a one liner!

OLE has tons of interface specs - remember that huge API you complained about?
And why should COM decide what interface apps should use? That's for the 
app writers. COM provides an absolutely standard way for apps to discover 
what interfaces are being exposed. Isn't that more useful?

OLE is certainly huge, but any decent framework should free the developer from 
rewriting those "thousands of lines" hey - I didn't say inheritance wasn't
cool, I just said it wasn't safe for massively distributed systems.

COM's implementation has a lot of problems (efficiency, thread safety)
but the architecture is very sound.

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