Embedded Objects are now available on Macintosh

[Jerry Krinock]

For the last 5 years at least, word:Mac has been missing a feature which
Word for Windows has had: the capability of embedding files (objects) into
documents (besides other Microsoft Office files). I have been told that
this was due to a limitation in the MacOS.

(For readers unfamiliar with the above: In Word for Windows, you can do menu
Insert > Object > From File and insert any file, for example a .pdf. If you
try this with, say, a .pdf on the Macintosh, you get a square picture
instead. Not even an error message. Furthermore, if you open a .doc made
in Windows with embedded files such as .pdfs, the icons are distorted and
you get a "no can do" message when you doubleclick on it. On Windows it
displays the .pdf.)

But last week I read on Apple's Cocoa Developer's mailing list an
announcement that a third party has now released a "technology" (framework?)
which "brings embedded objects to the Mac OS X platform". It is
open-source. I asked the author of this message about the technical
possibility of Microsoft using this in Word, and he thinks it should be not
difficult. In particular, Microsoft would not have to port Word to Cocoa.

Of course, I immediately wrote a message to Microsoft's "feedback" team, but
of course, have not received a reply. How else can we encourage Microsoft
to look into this as a possible fix for this long-open hole in word:Mac?

Jerry Krinock. San Jose, CA

Here is the announcement:

***************

Nisus Software, The Omni Group, and Blacksmith announced LinkBack, a
new technology that brings embedded objects to the Mac OS X platform.
LinkBack makes it possible to edit text or graphics pasted from another
application by double-clicking on it. The technology will be included
in future releases of Nisus Writer Express, OmniOutliner, OmniGraffle,
and Chartsmith. It is also available today as an open source SDK for
use by other Mac developers at:

http://www.linkbackproject.org

Other technologies exist to do this, but none of them are widely
support at least in part because they take so much effort to implement
in your application. We designed LinkBack so that it takes the minimal
amount of work to integrate into your own application. If your app is
NSDocument based, it can happen in as little as a few dozen lines of
code.

We are releasing LinkBack open source to encourage as many developers
to support it as possible since this is good for all of our users. If
you do want to add support for LinkBack, be sure you let us know and we
will add your product to the LinkBack website's list of applications.

Cheers,
-Charles

Charles Jolley
Nisus Software, Inc.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi Jerry,

You are correct that Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) in Microsoft
Macintosh products is not up to par with their Windows counterparts.

I took a peek at the link you provided and note that there is no claim
that using linkback technology that the documents created would be
cross-platform with Windows. Being able to work equally across Mac and
Windows versions of Office would be a major requirement for Microsoft
Office.

It seems to me that Microsoft would probably not be able to use linkback
within Mac office. They will have to "roll their own" so to speak
because their current Windows OLE mechanism is more robust than linkback.

Currently some linking and embedding is supported in Mac Office. Let's
call the current level of support Level 1. What is needed is to
encourage Microsoft's MacBU to ramp that up a level to be on par with
Windows Office.

That's easy to say, but incredibly hard for Mac BU to accomplish. On the
Windows side there is a long history of OLE that can be matched, but
there is also the upcoming change in Windows OS to Longhorn. I would
imagine that by now Microsoft has some firm plans about OLE in Office
for Longhorn, but I doubt that the plans are final and certainly have
not yet been implemented or tested. So MacBU probably has to wait at
least until that issue is settled before they can begin to make
decisions about how to provide additional OLE support.

Which means that right now is a good time for anyone who desires
improved OLE to let Microsoft know that you would like to see
improvements made. Jerry did the right thing: use the Feedback option on
Office application help menus to alert Microsoft that you desire better
OLE support. The feedback is tracked and ranked for importance in part
by the number of requests. Requests that describe specific scenarios
that would increase sales of Macintosh Office products get the most
attention.

-Jim

 

[Jerry Krinock]

I took a peek at the link you provided and note that there is no claim
that using linkback technology that the documents created would be
cross-platform with Windows.

I understand how this could be a show-stopper, but I'm not sure, Jim. There
are a lot of things in Office that require different actions in Mac vs.
Windows. For example, when you command "Print", the Mac office calls some
Mac printing routine, Windows calls the Windows printing routine. The same
could be done for embedded objects. In Windows, it would use Windows OLE,
and in Mac it could use this Linkback.

There are not that many cross-platform applications whose docs you'd expect
to be embedded and actually launch cross-platform anyhow. Other Office
apps, Adobe Reader .pdfs, and ConceptDraw drawings are the only ones that
come to mind.

At least the icons should be displayed without distortion. I think this is
all do-able.

Hey, it's pretty disgusting to think that we would have to wait for
Longhorn.

 

[Priyanka Singhal [MSFT]]

Hi Jerry ,
Thanks for posting this . I have forwarded your request to the program
manager .
Thanks,
Priyanka