macOS iWork API?

[AlmostThere]

Is there an iWork API or Framework, similar to OLE (or whatever MS are calling it now, I haven't touched it for 6 years), so that I can incorporate functionality from, for example, Numbers into my own app? Nothing started yet just one or two ideas brewing.

I have only seen some documentation relating to iWork file formats on Apple's developer site.

 

[Krevnik]

If there was, you can bet your ass that Apple would have posted it already. So, no.

 

[AlmostThere]

In case this comes up for anyone else, I found this on the developer site (link):

Mac OS X does not have a technology for embedding software objects from different applications into the same document (such as Microsoft's OLE). If your Win32 application uses OLE, you will need to decide whether or not to provide similar capabilities in your Mac OS X version and, if so, how to implement them.

Not sure I am really up for re-implementing large swathes of existing functionality.

 

[Krevnik]

Not sure I am really up for re-implementing large swathes of existing functionality.

I feel your pain on this one, but at the same time, OLE is a very odd technology that Apple at one point did try to reproduce (OpenDoc back in the late 90s), and killed it because nobody was interested in it. Not that OLE is bad, but from my perspective, it is one of those features done for the sake of the feature, despite the security issues it posed an aren't exactly easy ones to solve. Microsoft has put tons of work into making it work.

Apple lately has seemingly decided the route is to offer file format views as frameworks, to help you embed other document types you don't understand. Images, PDFs, Web views, are all pulled in via Apple-provided frameworks. It would be kinda nice if QuickLook could be used to embed/view data like that, but I am not sure that will happen anytime soon. :|