OpenDoc or Irrelevance: A User View of Why Lotus's Customers and Business Partners Need Lotus and IBM to OpenDoc-Enable Lotus Smartsuite and Lotus Notes January 1996 Background ---------- I work for a company that is one member of a confederation of about 70 companies. During 1996, I will be connecting to our inter-company electronic mail environment. Currently, about half of the companies have gateways between their inhouse mainframe and/or LAN based email system and our current inter-company electronic mail system. In our environment, I expect a mix of inter-company electronic mail. The electronic mail will mostly use ASCII or Microsoft Office 3.x, 4.x formats. There will also be some SmartSuite document formats and some PerfectOffice document formats. Initially, I expect little or no use of embedded OLE objects in the electronic mail documents. However, over the next one or two years, I expect the number of embedded OLE objects to grow significantly. I will need to be able to edit some of these documents and some of the embedded OLE objects. I and many other Lotus SmartSuite users in our confederation and in other businesses and homes will have THE REQUIREMENT. THE REQUIREMENT: LOTUS SMARTSUITE (4.0, 96, ETC) MUST BE ABLE TO EDIT EMBEDDED MICROSOFT OFFICE OLE OBJECTS. Analysis -------- According to the IBM Visual Revolution roadshow that I attended in June of 1995 (see attachment), OpenDoc is more flexible than OLE when editing embedded objects: Editing of embedded objects. - OLE requires the user to use the exact editor to edit the embedded object in a compound document. For example, Excel must be used to edit embedded Excel objects. - OpenDoc allows the user to use an equivalent editor to edit the embedded object in a compound document. For example, an OpenDoc enabled version of Lotus 1-2-3, Mesa Spreadsheet for OS/2, Quattro Pro or StarCalc could edit embedded Excel objects. Lotus SmartSuite 4.0 for Windows and SmartSuite 96 for Windows 95 support OLE and cannot fulfill THE REQUIREMENT. Lotus SmartSuite 96 for OS/2 Warp does not support OLE or OpenDoc and cannot fulfill THE REQUIREMENT. However, Merlin, the code name for the next version of OS/2 Warp, which IBM says will be available in mid-1996, is supposed to support OpenDoc. This is a start. Furthermore, a rumor says that the BonusPak will be OpenDoc enabled. This might help with THE REQUIREMENT if the following were true of the IBM Works component of the BonusPak: 1. IBM Works becomes a series of OpenDoc parts. In particular, the word processor and the spreadsheet become OpenDoc parts. 2. IBM Works includes import/export filters for file formats for current suites: Office 4.x, SmartSuite and Perfect Office. As an extra piece of information, the Office 95 word processor (WinWord 7) and spreadsheet (Excel 7) are supposed to use the same file formats as the Office 4.x word processor (WinWord 6) and spreadsheet (Excel 5) respectively. IBM MUST MAKE SURE THAT IBM WORKS IS OPENDOC ENABLED AS DESCRIBED ABOVE. However, an OpenDoc enabled BonusPak will only carry me (and other users) so far. The functionality of the IBM Works word processor and spreadsheet are only a small subset of the functions included in Microsoft Office/Office 95 and SmartSuite 96. Conclusions ----------- I and many others require SmartSuite to become OpenDoc enabled. Otherwise, in the current marketplace with Microsoft Office's 80 percent market share, we will have to transfer our activities eventually to Microsoft Office/Office 95/Office 97... In other words, if and only if Lotus and IBM OpenDoc enable SmartSuite as a series of OpenDoc parts, will they be able to grow SmartSuite's market share significantly. Furthermore, Microsoft is reported to be tying Microsoft Office into Microsoft BackOffice, including Microsoft Exchange, the client/server electronic mail product. Microsoft is also adding replication for nomadic users to Exchange. Finally, Microsoft is Internet enabling Microsoft Office and BackOffice. As these Microsoft product improvements occur, corporate users of Microsoft Office will tend naturally to want to buy Microsoft Exchange. They will only buy notes in situations in which they believe they have true groupware applications (beyond Microsoft Exchange's capabilities) for which they wish to commit development resources. In other words, if Lotus does not OpenDoc enable SmartSuite and grow its market share, sales of Lotus Notes will also be negatively affected in one to two years. On the other hand, if Lotus OpenDoc enables SmartSuite (and Notes), Notes and the Notes VARs could add value through sales of SmartSuite in many situations that would otherwise be closed to them. Lotus' attitude on OpenDoc has been remarkably provincial. Lotus and IBM must decide to enthusiastically OpenDoc enable Lotus SmartSuite and Lotus Notes. Lotus's attitude on OpenDoc is that "OpenDoc-enablement of Lotus SmartSuite and Lotus Notes is an idea that is Not Invented Here(NIH)". If Lotus and IBM do not enthusiastically OpenDoc enable Lotus SmartSuite and Lotus Notes, then I believe IBM squandered $3.5 billion when it bought Lotus in 1995. Finally, I attended the local broadcast of the Lotus Notes Release 4 launch that originated at LotuSphere '96. It did not have any relevance to THE REQUIREMENT. ---- Attachment Comparison of OpenDoc vs OLE Source: IBM Visual Revolution Roadshow, June 1995. Presenter: J. C. Love The following are notes that I took at the roadshow followed by some other notes from earlier information that I gathered elsewhere. 1. Shapes - OLE only uses active areas that display as rectangular shapes in compound documents. (see Note A) - OpenDoc can use active areas that display in any shape in compound documents. 2. Number of active parts. - OLE only supports one active part at a time in a compound document. - OpenDoc supports multiple simultaneous active parts in a compound document. 3. Dragging of nested objects. - OLE only supports dragging of a nested object inside of an outer object in a compound document. - OpenDoc supports dragging of a nested object to outside of an outer object in a compound document. 4. Editing of embedded objects. - OLE requires the user to use the exact editor to edit the embedded object in a compound document. For example, Excel must be used to edit embedded Excel objects. - OpenDoc allows the user to use an equivalent editor to edit the embedded object in a compound document. For example, an OpenDoc enabled version of Lotus 1-2-3, Mesa Spreadsheet for OS/2, Quattro Pro or StarCalc could edit embedded Excel objects. Notes: A. Microsoft says that they will extend OLE to support active areas that display in any shape in compound documents. I believe that no date has been announced for this improvement in OLE. B. Microsoft seems to have implemented (perhaps only in beta test) the ability of OLE to support overlapped objects. Concluding Remarks The author, Jonathan Handler, welcomes comments, constructive criticism and additional information. The author may be contacted via Compuserve: 71702,1620, or via the Internet: 71702.1620@compuserve.com.