johnston@minnie.me.udel.edu (Bill Johnston) (06/22/91)
I am interested in development strategies for writing small applications that work similarly on PCs and Macintoshes. Both Windows 3.0 and Mac System 7.0 support interapplication communications (DDE in Windows-speak). This enables the developer to treat IAC/DDE-aware applications as engines; instead of reinventing the wheel, one could send an IAC/DDE message to Excel like "open dataFile ... crunch numbers ... print result". This is probably old news for some Windows 3.0 users, but as more applications emerge that support IAC/DDE, new opportunities for custom software development will emerge. I am thinking of small applications that perform particular sets of functions (this could be like a software-only 'turn-key' solution tailored for a particular client). A more amibitious project would be to create an IAC/DDE 'master' application -- sort of a super script authoring tool. The 'turn-key' type of application could be rather simple ... it could just prompt for a file name and print it with a another application (or something equally straight-forward). Short programs of this type could a good place to start learning a coding style that places platform-and-OS-dependent parts in their place. How close are the existing Windows and OS/2 object-oriented development tools to facilitating this? -- Bill (johnston@minnie.me.udel.edu)