OS / 2 also includes a radical advancement in application development with compound document technology called OpenDoc, which was developed with Apple.

OpenDoc proved interesting as a technology, but was not widely used or accepted by users or developers.

The system also added a component-based document model that was similar to Apple's OpenDoc.

There was a technology, called OpenDoc, which tried to compete with OLE.

A consortium called the Component Integration Laboratories (" CIL ") was established in 1993 by some Microsoft competitors to create OpenDoc as an " open-source " standard for cross-platform linking and embedding.

A serious problem with the OpenDoc project that Cyberdog depended on, was that it was part of a very acrimonious competition between OpenDoc consortium members and Microsoft.

OpenDoc was forced to create an interoperability layer in order to allow developers to use it, and this added a great technical burden to the project.

OpenDoc had several hundred developers signed up, but the timing was poor.

Before long, OpenDoc was scrapped, with Steve Jobs noting that they " put a bullet through head ", and most of the team was laid off in March 1997.

The basic idea of OpenDoc was to create small, reusable components, responsible for a specific task, such as text editing, bitmap editing or browsing an FTP server.

It was envisioned that OpenDoc would allow smaller, third-party developers to enter the office software market, able to build one good editor instead of having to provide a complete suite.

OpenDoc was initially created by Apple Computer in 1992 after Microsoft approached Apple asking for input on a proposed OLE II project.

Initially the effort was codenamed " Exemplar ", then " Jedi " and " Amber ", then released under the name " OpenDoc ".

Kurt Piersol from Apple was the best-known architect of OpenDoc, but Jed Harris ( later president of CI Labs ) was just as critical to the early designs.

While OpenDoc was still being developed, Apple confused things greatly by suggesting that it should be used by people porting existing software only, and new projects should instead be based on Taligent since that would be the next OS.

OpenDoc was initially released to run on Mac OS System 7. 5.

From IBM ’ s involvement in Taligent, there was an implementation of OpenDoc in OS / 2 Warp 4.

The WAV word processor was a semi-successful OpenDoc word processor from Digital Harbor, the Numbers & Charts package was a spreadsheet and 3D real-time charting solution from Adrenaline Software, the Cyberdog web browser was created by Apple as an OpenDoc application.

For instance, a " live " Cyberdog web page could be embedded in a presentation program, one of the common demonstrations of OpenDoc.

Another problem was the fact that each part saved its data within Bento ( the former name of an OpenDoc compound document file format ) in its own internal binary format, and it was very common to find one component could not open a document created by another, even though the internal data represented similar objects ( spreadsheet data for instance ).

Apple as one of the OpenDoc consortium ( which included Adobe, Lotus, and others ) touted OpenDoc as the future foundation for application structure under Mac OS.

Apple's 1996 release of ClarisWorks 5. 0 ( the predecessor of AppleWorks ) was planned to support OpenDoc components, but this was dropped.

Claris Works, a principle product in Apple's wholly owned subsidiary Claris Corporation, was demonstrated as an example of a pre-OpenDoc component architecture application modified to enable it to contain functional OpenDoc components.

OpenDoc allowed users to view and edit information across applications, directly in competition with Microsoft's proprietary OLE standard.

Microsoft initially announced that applications using OpenDoc would be deemed compatible with OLE, and would receive certification for Windows 95.

After Apple terminated Cyberdog along with the rest of OpenDoc, Cyberdog's web browser component grew outdated as web standards evolved.

This plan died along with Taligent, leaving OpenDoc as the future of the Mac application base.

RagTime, a completely integrated office package with spreadsheet, publishing and image editing was ported to OpenDoc shortly before OpenDoc was cancelled.

Another issue was that OpenDoc had little in common with most " real world " document formats, and so OpenDoc documents could really only be used by other OpenDoc machines.

But certainly the biggest problem with the project was that it was part of a very acrimonious competition between OpenDoc consortium members and Microsoft.

Before long, OpenDoc was scrapped, with Steve Jobs ( who had been at NexT Computer during this development ) noting that they " put a bullet through head ", and most of the team was laid off in a big reduction in force in March 1997.

* Last release of OpenDoc with mostly all sources ( for education purpose only )

* OpenDoc Society Association with members around the world that promote best practices in office productivity such as OpenDocument format.

In 1996 he left Apple to form a software development and consulting company specialising in OpenDoc development, 6prime, with another OpenDoc technical lead Eric Soldan, however in 1997 Aladdin Systems purchased 6prime's main product REV releasing it as Flashback.

One of the reasons for their problems was the creation of OpenDoc, which was itself developed into a cross-platform system that competed directly with Bedrock.

Soon the project looked less like a new operating system and more like a huge collection of new technologies ; QuickDraw GX, SOM and OpenDoc became core components of the system, while completely unrelated technologies like a new file management dialog box ( the " open dialog ") and " themes " support appeared as well.

Instead, Apple took out a perpetual license for the software and was re-purposing it an OpenDoc development platform.

OpenDoc allowed these components to be reused and embedded in other documents by the user.

These documents could then be opened on other machines, where the OpenDoc frameworks would substitute suitable components for each part, even if they were from different vendors.

As proof of the concept, Apple demonstrated a new end-user product called CyberDog, a comprehensive Internet application component suite offering users an integrated browser, email, FTP, telnet, finger and other services built completely of user-exchangeable OpenDoc components.

It was most widely used in their OpenDoc framework, but saw limited use in other roles as well.