I remember being excited about these architectures back in the day. It was quite exciting to think about the ability to pick and choose what you wanted to use, so that I could use a real dictionary with definitions in my word processor, or use a real graphics program to create the artwork. The demos that really got me giddy were the ones that showed the level of integration. Imagine the user interface of CorelDRAW blending into the user interface of Word as though they were the same program. It was an unbelievable level of integration.

Click to expand...

The level of inter-application integration that you describe is possible with Microsoft Office and other Windows applications. A low end implementation that does not require specialist IT skills is mail merge: the data is in an Excel spreadsheet (the world's widest used flat file database!) and the mail merge engine is Word.

The downside is that OLE was a Microsoft technology, thus suffering from multiple implementations (OLE, COM, ActiveX) and confusing APIs. OpenDoc had parents (Apple, Novell) who abandoned the baby; OLE had a single dysfunctional parent.

The thing is, I don't think that many consumers were interested in extending their applications.

Click to expand...

OpenDoc was never designed as a consumer technology, although Apple made a good attempt at a friendly interface. The big partners intended OpenDoc for use in corporate environments where multiple platforms were in use. For Apple, pre-press publishing would have been another big market. In the end, OpenDoc became irrelevant owing to the Windows 95/Office steam roller and the slow decline of Apple and Novell in big companies.