IBM Open Class Library

IBM Open Class Library


 * Collection Classes - abstract data types
 * Compound Document Framework
 * User Interface Classes - GUI on OS/2, AIX, Solaris, and Windows
 * Application Support Classes
 * Standard Class Library - I/O Stream, Complex library

This C++ class library provides a whole set of different functionality:
 * First of all a full OS/2 GUI support: from PM windows and messaging to standard and extended controls up to generating resizeable dialogs and 2D graphics output.
 * Application control, error handling and threading
 * Collections (flat and tree), supporting several implementation variants, together with helper classes (cursors, automatic pointers etc.)
 * Complex mathematics
 * Database access

Note: Printing is not supported out of the box: You would have to code everything to getting a "printing device context" directly in C, then you can use the 2D graphics functionality of IOCL to output your data to the printer.

The class library implements (besides the PM "messages" support) an own messaging system that allows all kinds of "objects" to "notify" any other "observers" about anything that might be interesting. This mechanism is mainly designed to being used with the IBM VisualAge C++ 3.0 Visual Builder, but it is also helpful when directly used.

There are two versions of this class library available for OS/2 that come with IBM VisualAge C++ 3.0 or IBM VisualAge C++ Professional 4.0, respectively. There are major changes from version 3.0 to 4.0 incorporated, so the two are not easily compatible, mainly not when switching from a 4.0 project to 3.0.

Related Articles

 * Open Class Library (OCL) FAQ by Stéphane Charette (Nov 1997)

Links

 * IBM Open Class Library Transition Guide