Talk:Object-oriented operating system

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Object-oriented operating system article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the subject of the article.

Add new text under old text. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Start a new topic Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed Article policies Neutral point of view No original research Verifiability

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Computing Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Computing, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of computers, computing, and information technology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ComputingWikipedia:WikiProject ComputingTemplate:WikiProject ComputingComputing Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Software: Computing Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Software, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of software on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SoftwareWikipedia:WikiProject SoftwareTemplate:WikiProject Softwaresoftware Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale. This article is supported by WikiProject Computing.

This should be added to the list of example systems.

Having taken the training courses back in 1991 for GO_Corporation PenPoint_OS, I can attest that it has a solidly OO core architecture even though what is written about it now focuses completely on the stylus centric user interface.

The OS was geared towards enabling active objects being able to contain embedded active objects (all the way down), creating smart live documents embedded within other smart live documents.

p.s. stumbled onto this summary of PenPoint technical highlights including the "Embedded Document Architecture (EDA)". Pen-Based Computing Journal: Is PenPoint the Way to GO?

Let's talk about this topic again. There's a lot more to tell about oo os systems than this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Edx.de (talk • contribs) 21:40, 13 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

Isn't it WAY to steep to consider Win9x systems front-ends for DOS? If you had said so for Win3.x, I would have agreed, but this sounds like a little too much to me...

Indeed. I fixed it. The role of DOS in Win 9x is fairly obscure, but can be rougly summarised as follows:

• There are two OSes, real mode and protected mode. The computer starts in one and then switches to the other. The real mode OS could loosely be called MS-DOS.
• Windows APIs often call DOS APIs which in turn call Windows implementations. This is for backwards compatibility. It allows interrupt hooks.
• From 95 to 98 to Me, features have been progressively ported from Windows 3.x era 16-bit code to 32-bit code. Backwards compatibility has been maintained.

-- Tim Starling 12:00 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Surely, the concept of an object-oriented OS has nothing to do with the concept of GUI widgets? I have always believed that an OS is object oriented in API design, rather than in GUI implementation.

As far as I can tell, most OSes have OO-like features in their APIs, for instance, in UNIX, everything is a file/stream; in Windows, only handles are passed around; in Darwin, the driver API is implemented in C++; in microkernels, messages are passed between processes (like invoking methods of objects); and naturally, widget-oriented GUIs are object-oriented. (Curiously, X11 isn't -- the only type of graphical object is a window, and apparently, windows don't nest)

---

It's much more complicated that than. And the article, which I dislike, does have a reference to common language in wide use in the early 1990s.

First of all, WIMP is a legitimate acronym, and was in common use in the late eighties. It was largely displaced by GUI. People needed a name for all of these strange new things like Digital Research's GEM and Apple's LISA and VisiCorp's VisiOn. IMHO both WIMP and GUI were deliberately conceived to be slightly derogatory; a lot of people at the time preferred command lines and didn't think this silly icon stuff would ever really take off. (In the MUMPS world the was once widespread use of the term "CHUI," pronounced "chewy," for character-based-UI... )Second... I personally hate the locutions and never understood what they were supposed to mean and thought they were marketing-speak... but there was a popular use of the word "object-oriented" to mean something... undefined. In the early nineties, it was widely asserted that OS/2's um... Presentation Manager was a "true" object-oriented operating system, in comparison to Windows (2.11, 3.0, 3.1), which were not. At the same time, there were various efforts--HP's NewWave, Wang's ClearView, etc.--to put new graphics shells on top of Windows, graphics shells which were always described as being "object-oriented." In other words, at the time, many people would have said that OS/2 was object-oriented, Windows 3.xx was not, and Windows 95 was claimed to be but wasn't. Similarly, draw-style programs such as MacDraw were widely described as "object oriented" and contrasted with paint-style programs which were said not to be. There's some kind of possible article there trying to explain what these terms apparently meant to people back then. Dpbsmith 13:13, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'm going to make notes here as a run across stuff that's relevant to what an "object-oriented OS" is supposed to be. This is difficult for me because I think it's all garbage and marketing, but, nevertheless...

http://www.os2hq.com/os2faq.htm says:

• The OS/2 GUI, Workplace Shell, is a true object-oriented interface, meaning that the screen elements are consistent and fully take advantage of system capabilities. The Windows interfaces are not object-oriented in the strictest sense, because they fail to adequately track the files to which they are pointing, as well as other inconsistencies.

The Windows 3.x interface was, of course, a mess. There were icons that seemed to be files, but if you deleted the icon you weren't deleting the file.

I think that what you have is a second-order definition. An object-oriented application means an application that has the characteristics of applications that are coded using object-oriented programming. Possibly this arose in the Xerox PARC days? Maybe an object-oriented application is one in which the things which appear to be physical objects on the screen are, in fact, objects within the programming system?

http://www.contact.net/os2/TOUR/page1.htm says:

OS/2 is fully Object Oriented via SOM and the base concept of Object Orientness is that everything is built on the same code. This means that all of the objects resemble the way the other objects function too. In OS/2 this also translates into drag and drop. For examples, you know how to change the icon for a program object, you now can do it for any other objects (ie.: folders, data files, templates, etc.). Just like in real life! If you have a spread sheet data file, it is a spread sheet data file since it is defined using the data file codes, it is not a binary junk that some program will decode: a toaster is a toaster, but a better toaster is still a toaster.

Clear as mud.

http://pws.prserv.net/sgwylan/aboutos2.html says

The real strength of OS/2, however, is Presentation Manager (PM) and the Workplace Shell (WPS) - OS/2's object-oriented user interface. Outside OS/2, true object-oriented programming hasn't been that obvious to the end user outside, perhaps, the growing use of Java. Objects are nice in that every object of the same type exhibits some of the same behavior, and adds to that behavior. All files behave like other files; all programs behave like other programs in basic behavior.

This was the theory, at any rate. In practice, this has been less true than it should have been, largely because of IBM's decision not to adequately improve its development software (such as Visual Age for C++) which took advantage of OS/2's System Object Model (SOM), roughly similar to Microsoft's Common Object Model (COM) but fully CORBA-compliant. As a result, writing OS/2 programs became a much more difficult chore than writing for Windows.

I dunno, I dunno... I think IBM marketroids heard the phrase "object-oriented" and thought it sounded cool, so it became the secret ingredient, like Vitalis' V-7, that made OS/2 better than the competition. Then Microsoft had to retaliate by calling Windows 95 "object-oriented." Well, after all, they already claimed that "window classes" were object-oriented... Dpbsmith

---

Hm. User:Dpbsmith's comment explains how the original author was confused. Our question is no longer "keep or delete" but "delete or rewrite to explain that OOOS is a nonsense-term invented by marketroids to pitch a handful of OSes that are no longer in common use." 128.112.225.67 03:22, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

A lot of the confusion does come from marketing people, since OO is fashionable and marketing types have tried to make everything OO. I've rewritten it to really describe an OO OS and to note the distinction between what's presented to the user and a real OO OS. Not that there's no more work to be done, but at least it's no longer as silly as it was. Jamesday 20:21, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

---

• Object-oriented operating system - "Object-oriented operating system is an operating system that uses the concept of WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer...)" --- I have never seen this term before, and my (admittedly brief) searches for the term on the Internet turn up nothing but more links to this article (and articles on operating systems written in object-oriented *languages*.) AFAIK, WIMP has absolutely nothing to do with OO; this article has no basis in reality and should be nixed. jdb 06:59, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)
  • It's quite possible to have an object-oriented user interface for an OS. Of course, the Windows GUI is emphatically no such thing, and the author is utterly full of BS. Perhaps some OS/2 guru will emerge from his cave and write an article about the real concept. As to this: Delete. Dandrake 08:08, Feb 22, 2004 (UTC)
  • Agreed. The author is confused. Delete. Josh Cherry 08:49, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)
  • Kill. The "article" mixes up OO <b>software design</b> with OS GUI shell. Humus sapiens 10:56, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete. The claim that it was an object-oriented OS was part of the sales pitch of Win95, but it was no such thing. That's probably the source of this. It would be possible to write a good article on this subject, but a stub would probably just attract more like this. So until someone is prepared to write the article (and it's not on my high priority list) IMO better nothing. Andrewa 12:36, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep for a while in hopes someone will rewrite... list on "pages needing attention or whatever." it's much more complicated than that. The present detestable article nevertheless references real parlance that was common in the early nineties. OS/2 advocates always described Presentation Manager as "object-oriented," and many columnists agreed. Windows 3.x was said not to be. Windows 95 was said by Microsoft to be O-O, Microsoft advocates agreed, OS/2 advocates didn't. And, yes, WIMP was a legitimate acronym in wide use, gradually displaced by GUI. In other words, the current article is a mishmash of historical concepts that have been abandoned. See my more extensive comments on talk page. Dpbsmith 13:18, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)
  • KDE is far more OO than Windows... Move to Pages Needing Attention. Fennec 15:44, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete: the author is confused. Wile E. Heresiarch 23:56, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. I've rewritten it so it makes sense and really does describe an object-oriented operating system instead of an object-oriented user interface. Jamesday 20:16, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. Just because the original article is crap doesn't mean the article always will be crap. Assuming that the first person to write an article about the United States of America wrote a completely biased and inaccurate article, would this mean that the article should be deleted? I don't believe so. I say keep in the hopes somebody will improve this. --Johnleemk 08:26, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep; furthermore, mention AmigaOS's datatypes. It was a kewlness I'm ashamed not to have appreciated at the time, it's my own answer to "why bother with an OOOS", and I really wish the Unixen had it. (I'm past hoping Winduhs would catch on.) 142.177.171.132 19:58, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

in the ReactOS section, part of the Windows NT section it says the "Unix Architecture", but links to Unix itself, should that be changed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_architecture? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bumblebritches57 (talk • contribs) 19:26, 4 June 2014 (UTC)Reply

Did I miss something,or was this not mentioned:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_%28operating_system%29 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.116.92.84 (talk) 18:36, 6 June 2014 (UTC)Reply

Amiga-OS has some object orientation for example on the filesystem and drives. You can give diskettes and partitions names and then you can tell "cd name:foldername". The system will tell then "insert disk "name:" into any drive. And after insert the disk with the volume name "name" into any drive the OS wil jump there into the folder foldername. This also makes installing software to harddisk quite easy, you can copy the content of the files of the disk "name:" to somewhere on the harddisk, example to "dh1:software/example" and then you launch the command "assign name: dh1:software/example" and then the OS knows that when opening "name:filename.txt" that it has to open "dh1:software/example/filename.txt". Amiga-OS uses these shorts like s:, c:, lib: by default for system files and so on has been released in 1985. Also the GUI has some object orientated functionality.

Syntrex of New-Jersey was a company which designed a very special wordprocessing system and released that somewhere in 1981/82 under the name Aquarius I and II. Besides 3M also Olivetti licenced this and sold these systems under the name ETS 1010 and ETS 2010 in Europe and elsewhere. The Syntrex-OS was basded on an earley Berkeley-Unix kernel, but the rest is totally different and it looks like it is object orientated. The user manual does not talk about drive letter, pathes, filenames, but about document, text-module, database, and so on organized in domains and registers inside of folders where the folder is a synonyme of a diskette or harddisk. Each of these things have names and by naming a document to open it requests the diskette where it is stored. This seems to be hirarchical and object based. Also daisywheels of the printers with different pitches and font names are requested by the user by a name when printing a document. See here for current researches for this: https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/olivetti-ets-1010-2010-syntrex-aquarius-what-is-the-operating-system.1252039/