NeoOffice and OLE

I thought OLE was a Windows only capability. I have been using Object-Linking-and-Embedding (OLE) since the it stabilized in the early 1990s in Windows 3.1. To my surprise, OpenOffice.org 2.x and more specifically NeoOffice 2.2 for Mac OS X does it just as good as it works on Windows. In any OpenOffice document (i.e. text, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing) I can embed any other object via OLE!

I was working an a project and needed to create a presentation with embedded objects on my MacBook and not realizing I was on my Mac I just started doing the embedding like I normally do in Window applications. To my surprise I did not really think about what I had accomplished until the next day. The implications are tremendous.

I have been working on documents, spreadsheets, presentations and drawings in a cross-platform environment for the past few years. However, I had always resorted back to Windows when I needed rich compound documents (with OLE objects) embedded in them. Now I know that this is possible in a cross-platform manner with OpenOffice.org based technology. I can't wait until OpenOffice.org 3.0 is released which will provide native Mac support.

Next innovation would be to extend this OLE capability into Google Docs. Now that would be true innovation and make my migration to Google Docs complete. Wishful thinking but then again, Google continually surprises me with their continuous fast-forward innovation.