Editing OpenDoc (section)

===Background===
{{Unreferenced section|date=February 2018}}
[[Microsoft]] approached Apple asking for input on a proposed OLE II project. Apple had been experimenting internally with software components for some time, based on the initial work done on its [[Publish and Subscribe (Mac OS)|Publish and Subscribe]] linking model and the [[AppleScript]] [[scripting language]], which in turn was based on the [[HyperCard]] programming environment. Apple reviewed the Microsoft prototype and document, and returned a list of problems with the design. Microsoft and Apple were very competitive, were unable to agree on common goals, and did not work together.<ref name="Apple1998">Apple Inc. "Technical Note TN1142: Mac OS 8.5". October 26, 1998.</ref>

At about the same time, a group of third-party developers had met at the [[Apple Worldwide Developers Conference]] (WWDC '91) and tried to establish a standardized document format, based conceptually on the [[Interchange File Format]] (IFF) from [[Electronic Arts]]. Apple became interested in this work, and soon dedicated some engineers to building and documenting such a system. Initial work was published on the WWDC CDs, and several follow-up versions on later developer CDs. A component document system would only work with a known document format that all the components could use, and so soon the standardized document format was pulled into the component software effort. The format quickly changed from a simple one using tags to a very complex [[Object-oriented programming|object oriented]] persistence layer called Bento.

Initially the effort was [[codename]]d "Exemplar", then "Jedi", "Amber", and eventually "OpenDoc"<ref>{{Cite web |title=Apple Code Names |url=https://applemuseum.bott.org/sections/codenames.html |access-date=2025-05-18 |website=applemuseum.bott.org}}</ref>.