Welcome to the second developer release of Apple Live Objects™ Essential Kit (formerly known as “KickStart”), a set of standard OpenDoc components from Apple that will give developers free and easy access to some of Apple's most popular technologies.
The goal of these components is to make life easier for you, the developer. Instead of working to keep up with Apple's technology, Apple will take over the job for you. Simply make your software OpenDoc-aware, and Apple will provide OpenDoc viewers for some of the technologies you are interested in. For those developers who have already embraced the OpenDoc standard, there's a lot of functionality here that will make your life a whole lot easier and help get your products to market faster.
On this CD we have pre-release versions of:
Apple Audio: Annotate documents with sounds recorded through a built-in microphone or from the CD player.
Apple Button: Drag-and-drop AppleScripts, text-to-speech, Cyberitems, and sounds for easy, one-click playback
Apple Draw: A simple draw container for embedding Apple's parts as well as your own.
Apple Image Viewer: View PICT, GIF, JPEG, and TIFF files.
Apple 3DMF Viewer: Make your OpenDoc-aware software 3D-capable with this component.
Apple QuickTime™ Viewer: Embed traditional QuickTime movies as well as VR scenes into OpenDoc documents!
In the coming months, also look for:
Apple Write: A simple text container that provides a rich environment for your OpenDoc parts to work in.
Apple Notes: Finally, stickies that actually stick to your documents!
In its final release, each and every part will have its own online help provided via Apple Guide, and will also be localized to a variety of languages to support worldwide software deployment.
At a later date, any developer supporting OpenDoc will be able to re-distribute any or all of the Essential Live Objects parts along with their software to provide a richer, more interesting environment for their software. In the future, expect each of these components to get rolled into Mac OS as a standard part of the OpenDoc runtime environment. Between the Live Objects Essential Kit and Cyberdog, never has the case been more clear for adopting OpenDoc. Make the jump now!
Keep checking the OpenDoc home page (http://www.opendoc.apple.com) for more information on the Live Objects Essential Kit components as they reach completion.
