Making the web better. With blocks!
Conversation
Was Joel around for OpenDoc and OLE?
People have been trying to make plug 'n play software components for a lonnnng time.
Good luck!
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same, old is new again. Next is in place activation, monikers
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What do you think went wrong that held the OpenDoc vision back?
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I'm not familiar with it but my guess is that Windows at that time had the market dominance over Apple and prevent it to gain popularity. I think Sun also had initiative. OLE was really easy to implement (on Windows) and got a lot of early support from vendors
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reading the wikipedia page, it seems that Apple also messed thing up a lot, lack of leadership, trying to merge unrelated projects. It was not a good period for them. The Sun thing was CORBA, also a big mess (this one I tried). Then OMG. Tried too.
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the core of the problem was the opendoc was made in reaction of OLE and not based on an original idea. Lack of vision more than a vision in fact.
Block seems to represent an existing need and an opportunity but the proposal lack a general perspective yet is already very complex
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there are assumptions on what links & entities are, what could components do which is very limited. Works fine for a few examples (embed, pictures calendar) but will not allows new types of apps to strive. Especially those who interact w/ each others or w/ other of their blocks
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Ah, so it would struggle with use cases aimed at forming a semantic web?
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possibly, There are some typeId like in kneaver but I don't know the use of them. I need to take a second look. After coffee :)
Maybe could do a sketchnote of the spec to help us. It's pretty dense and not fun to read. Tons of details but not enough 20k feet view
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Plenty of diagrams and visual explanations coming in v2+
The current homepage doesn't explain it well (my doing), but we shipped a flawed draft to get feedback
The spec will stay reasonably technical/detailed, but the docs surrounding it can/will provide larger (visual!) context
Please do share specifics of where you get stuck / requests for visuals 🙏
Here to listen and make it comprehensible to others. We know too much within the team and hard to see it with fresh eyes.
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which uses cases do you want to enable ? Sketch a few user stories.
Insert, render looks old fashion but decent. The entities part is awkward. Hyper restrictive, heavy for a host, not reusing web standards like RDF or at least explain why you didn't use it. some logical flaws
well a paper full of SHOULD & MUST without starting with the benefits and features made possible us not inviting for discussion and creativity.
It looks like a fully bolted proposition.
IMO best to start over with sketches on a napkin.