Comments on: What Ever Became of Interoperability? http://dangerousintersection.org/2008/03/26/what-ever-became-of-interoperability/ Human Animals at the Crossroads of Culture, Science, Religion and Media Fri, 29 Aug 2008 08:46:23 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Dan Klarmann http://dangerousintersection.org/2008/03/26/what-ever-became-of-interoperability/#comment-17289 Dan Klarmann Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:40:37 +0000 http://dangerousintersection.org/2008/03/26/what-ever-became-of-interoperability/#comment-17289 "Services provided by the O/S" is a slippery phrase. I have watched as many obvious third party apps have been turned into parts of the Microsoft core. Such as un-erase (trash can/recycle bin), file compression (arc, zip, stuffit), defragging, programming languages (e.g: Basic was part of the o/s, then not, then was, now again not), the TCPIP stack (the internet), web browser (Mozilla and Netscape were selling in 2nd and third versions before IE came out), email, sound editing (my first few computers had no sound card), and many others. Because there is no standard concerning what API's or services an operating system must provide, application developers must have their own (for example) spell checker as part of their distribution. It is easier for them to just use their own than to figure out how to hook into all the others. There is no standard for that. This is true of other environments. It has always bugged me that there is no vector (line) drawing standard on the web (the graphical internet). It would have been so easy, but now (14 years later) one must still install Flash or Java (or ActiveX, the hacker's friend) to allow such a simple and obvious component to work on a web page. It seems to me that a vector interpreter should be as much a part of the operating system as bitmap drawing. "Services provided by the O/S" is a slippery phrase. I have watched as many obvious third party apps have been turned into parts of the Microsoft core. Such as un-erase (trash can/recycle bin), file compression (arc, zip, stuffit), defragging, programming languages (e.g: Basic was part of the o/s, then not, then was, now again not), the TCPIP stack (the internet), web browser (Mozilla and Netscape were selling in 2nd and third versions before IE came out), email, sound editing (my first few computers had no sound card), and many others.

Because there is no standard concerning what API’s or services an operating system must provide, application developers must have their own (for example) spell checker as part of their distribution. It is easier for them to just use their own than to figure out how to hook into all the others. There is no standard for that.

This is true of other environments. It has always bugged me that there is no vector (line) drawing standard on the web (the graphical internet). It would have been so easy, but now (14 years later) one must still install Flash or Java (or ActiveX, the hacker’s friend) to allow such a simple and obvious component to work on a web page. It seems to me that a vector interpreter should be as much a part of the operating system as bitmap drawing.

]]> By: Mark http://dangerousintersection.org/2008/03/26/what-ever-became-of-interoperability/#comment-17260 Mark Sat, 29 Mar 2008 10:02:57 +0000 http://dangerousintersection.org/2008/03/26/what-ever-became-of-interoperability/#comment-17260 To address the spell checker issue specifically, all Cocoa applications in OS X have access to the system spell checker, so your "learned words" are shared between most programs. On Linux, aspell typically fills this void. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft has a universal spell check API by now, too, but they waited so long to address this need that it will take some time for the applications to catch up. Your other interoperability concerns (i.e., those describing interoperability between third-party applications, rather than services provided by the OS such as a spell checker) are issues of open standards and file formats. Some of them actually are currently implemented – just not on Microsoft Windows. For just one example, on Linux I can use GNOME or XFCE or KDE as my desktop environment, for example, and yet all my panel widgets will still work, thanks largely to the efforts of the freedesktop project ( http://www.freedesktop.org/ ) To address the spell checker issue specifically, all Cocoa applications in OS X have access to the system spell checker, so your “learned words” are shared between most programs. On Linux, aspell typically fills this void. I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft has a universal spell check API by now, too, but they waited so long to address this need that it will take some time for the applications to catch up.

Your other interoperability concerns (i.e., those describing interoperability between third-party applications, rather than services provided by the OS such as a spell checker) are issues of open standards and file formats. Some of them actually are currently implemented – just not on Microsoft Windows. For just one example, on Linux I can use GNOME or XFCE or KDE as my desktop environment, for example, and yet all my panel widgets will still work, thanks largely to the efforts of the freedesktop project ( http://www.freedesktop.org/ )

]]> By: Niklaus Pfirsig http://dangerousintersection.org/2008/03/26/what-ever-became-of-interoperability/#comment-17202 Niklaus Pfirsig Wed, 26 Mar 2008 21:35:33 +0000 http://dangerousintersection.org/2008/03/26/what-ever-became-of-interoperability/#comment-17202 The grand idea of electronic data exchange was a victim of corporate greed and incremental copyrights and patents(some of these are absolutely absurd, such as the particular image used for an icon on the Desktop screen). As small computers became umbiquitous, the software houses grew into powerful legal entities, and realized that they could increase revenues by using proprietary, closed binary formats for their documents. Microsoft management has been on the forefront of inhibiting interoperability in order to enhance profits. However, things are quite different in the open source world, where open and non proprietary standards are the norm. Which is why Microsoft is scared silly of Open source. Take the example of Open Office. While it can read and write formats of many proprietary programs, its native format is compressed xml. XML is and open standard for data storage, and is based on older open standards. Microsoft has recently started "upgrading" their products to include XPS, which is a Microsoft-centric compressed xml format with "extensions". My guess is that Microsoft intends to patent XPS and then sue Sun for patent infringement. Recent changes to copyright laws have minimalized prior art as a chalange to patents, and prior art has been the cause of revocation of many of microsofts patents in the past. The grand idea of electronic data exchange was a victim of corporate greed and incremental copyrights and patents(some of these are absolutely absurd, such as the particular image used for an icon on the Desktop screen). As small computers became umbiquitous, the software houses grew into powerful legal entities, and realized that they could increase revenues by using proprietary, closed binary formats for their documents.
Microsoft management has been on the forefront of inhibiting interoperability in order to enhance profits.
However, things are quite different in the open source world, where open and non proprietary standards are the norm. Which is why Microsoft is scared silly of Open source.
Take the example of Open Office. While it can read and write formats of many proprietary programs, its native format is compressed xml. XML is and open standard for data storage, and is based on older open standards. Microsoft has recently started “upgrading” their products to include XPS, which is a Microsoft-centric compressed xml format with “extensions”. My guess is that Microsoft intends to patent XPS and then sue Sun for patent infringement. Recent changes to copyright laws have minimalized prior art as a chalange to patents, and prior art has been the cause of revocation of many of microsofts patents in the past.

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