A Proposed OpenMath
Object Compatibility Standard 

Basic thesis

On a given platform with a rich object model, e.g., Windows 95 or the Macintosh, the full OpenMath standard with universal representations and transmission protocols is overkill.

For example ...

• Under Microsoft Windows, ActiveX/OLE allows you to publish the availability of custom data formats for clipboard storage, OLE Automation transfer, or drag and drop.
• A techexplorer example ...

On other platforms ...

• SOM and OpenDoc allow similar functionality for the Macintosh, OS/2, Windows 95/NT, and AIX, with more UNIX to follow.
• DSOM and DCOM will allow the marshalling of objects across machine boundaries.

OpenMath Object Compatibility

• For each object model on each supported platform, the OpenMath Object Standard describes how to construct a native object from an OpenMath object, and vice-versa.
• For example, on Windows we define a CF_OPENMATH clipboard format and specify the corresponding representation.
• An application is OpenMath Object Compatible if it can create or receive an ObjectMath object stored in native object format.
• In effect, we encode/decode with respect to the native object format and leave the transmission of the object to the underlying system.

OMOC examples (Windows)

• techexplorer would be OMOC if it supported the creation of OM ActiveX objects for drag and drop or copy to the clipboard.
• Maple would be OMOC if it could both create and receive OM ActiveX objects.

Intermachine object transfer

• We don
  ,t care! That
  ,s the responsibility of the OM Network Compatibility Standard.
• However, we should support DCOM and DSOM, if possible, for the ActiveX and SOM object models.

Nested standards

+-----------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                           |
|  +---------------------------------------------+          |
|  |                                             |          |
|  | Object Compatibility                        |          |
|  | Probably single computer (today)            |          |
|  +---------------------------------------------+          |
|                                                           |
|  Network Compatibility                                    |
|  Probably multiple computers or UNIX                      |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+

A necessary requirement

• OM native objects are transferred on demand, without the chance for a conversation between the sender and receiver.
• Indeed, either may be the clipboard, which is notoriously math-inept!

The actual representations

• The problem of working with the native representation is equvalent to working with the OpenMath data structure level.
• Minimally (and inefficiently) we could define a CF_OPENMATH_STRING representation which encapsulates our standard ASCII representation.

Suggested starting points

• Windows NT/95 and ActiveX:
  
  techexplorer ---> Maple <---> AXIOM <--- techexplorer
  
• Macintosh and OpenDoc/SOM:
  
  Mathematica <---> Maple