Thank you for this article, Peter.
I responded to the list in a one-liner suggesting to save the file out
of Pages as a pdf and for Malcolm to send that to his daughter but I can
not recall seeing my comment in any follow-up string.
Cheers
Merv
On 5/08/10 9:09 AM, Peter Hinchliffe wrote:
On 04/08/2010, at 12:38 PM, Malcolm McCallum wrote:
I have been sent an .ocx file which 'pages' has happily opened but
when I send it to my daughter whose computer is on the darkside she
cannot open it :-(
Where do I go next?
Mac
While the general suggestion has been made that your .ocx file may be
interpreted as a misnamed ".docx" file, this may not necessarily be the
case. Taken from <http://www.file-extensions.org/ocx-file-extension>,
the following is their explanation of the .ocx file extension:
File extension OCX description:
An OCX is an Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) custom control, a
special-purpose program that can be created for use by applications
running on Microsoft's Windows systems. OCXs provide such functions as
handling scroll bar movement and window resizing. If you have a Windows
system, you'll find a number of files in your Windows directory with the
OCX file name suffix.
Object Linking and Embedding was designed to support compound documents
(which contain multiple information types, such as text, graphic images,
sound, motion video). The Windows desktop is an example of a compound
document and Microsoft used OLE to build it. OLE and the Component
Object Model (COM), a more general concept that succeeded OLE, support
the development of "plug-and-play" programs that can be written in any
language and used dynamically by any application in the system. These
programs are known as components and the application in which they are
run is known as a container. This component-based approach to
application development reduces development time and improves the
program capability and quality. Windows application development programs
such as PowerBuilder and Microsoft Access take advantage of OCXs.
Microsoft now calls an OCX an ActiveX control, the component object
under Microsoft's set of ActiveX technologies, of which the fundamental
concept is the Component Object Model (COM) and, in a network, the
Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM).
An OCX or ActiveX control is actually implemented as a dynamic link
library DLL module. (You can think of a DLL program as a "subprogram"
that can be used by any number of application programs, each of which is
a "container" for the DLL or OCX/ActiveX control "object.") Visual Basic
and C++ are commonly used to write OCX or ActiveX controls.
Clear as mud? Thought so. The fact that the file opened for you in Pages
is probably a happy coincidence. Take Daniel K's suggestion: export it
as a Word or PDF file and send that to your daughter. This simply
reinforces the fact that the three-character file extension is one of
the greatest crimes against the world of computing that Microsoft has
committed in its long existence, and there have been plenty of others.
The great tragedy is that has forced everyone else, even Apple, to
comply purely for compatibility reasons.
Peter Hinchliffe Apwin Computer Services
FileMaker Pro Solutions Developer
Perth, Western Australia
Phone (618) 9332 6482 Mob 0403 064 948
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