Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!uh2
From: UH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Clipboard support, and DDE
Message-ID: <89286.094909UH2@PSUVM.BITNET>
Date: 13 Oct 89 13:49:09 GMT
References: <4272@sugar.hackercorp.com> <4998@cbnewsm.ATT.COM> <14083@well.UUCP>
Organization: Penn State University
Lines: 22

In a demo of OS/2 a couple of days ago, I saw what looked like the next
generation of clipboard capabilities, at least in one dimension.  Forgive
me, but I am rather fuzzy on the details.

They called it Dynamic Data Exchange.  In the demo, a block of numbers
in a spreadsheet was marked, and then the DDE menu option allowed that
block to be given a name, say 'SALES'.   Then, a bar chart drawing utility
from another vendor was run, and the DDE menu option allowed the user
to select from a number of currently open DDE objects, including SALES.
A bar chart of the numbers in SALES appeared.

So far, this seems pretty clipboard like (and I don't know how many
of the capabilities of IFF are there).  The difference was that when
the user goes backt to the spreadsheet, and changes some of the numbers,
the bar chart changes, too, without even a 'redraw' command from the
user.

I suppose this can be hacked using REXX and IFF, and so on, but it
looked pretty elegant to me.  Did Microsoft sream this up, or is it
something they borrowed from somewhere else?

                                            lee