Additionally, the Borland C++ Builder has included OWL in the 'companion CD'.
In August 1997, Borland C++ 5.02 was introduced with slightly updated a version of OWL 5. In 1996, Borland launched Borland C++ 5 for Windows, which included OWL 5, which was a major revamp of the library. The instability of the original Borland C++ 4.5 and quirky treatment of OWL also persuaded many developers to drop Borland C++ and OWL in favor of Visual C++ and MFC. The nearly seamless transition of MFC projects from Visual Studio 1.5 and Visual Studio 4.0 also contributed to its popularity. By 1995, Visual Studio 1.5 had already eclipsed Borland C++ in shipments, due partly to the volume and quality of documentation included with Visual Studio.
Contrary to popular belief, the inclusion of the MFC40.DLL with Windows 95 did not have a huge impact on the adoption of MFC. In August 1995, Microsoft released Windows 95 and Visual Studio 4.0. OWL 2.5 also included the Object Component Framework (OCF) to ease OLE development.
As it was launched before Win95, Borland promised a free upgrade for any incompatibility present in the final Windows 95 (when available). Įarly in 1995, Borland C++ 4.5 with OWL 2.5 was launched.
In the same year, Software UNO (offered a commercial port for OWL 2.0, to several platforms: AIX 3.2.5, DEC OSF/1 AXP, HP-UX 9.03, Linux 1.2, Solaris 2.x, Sun OS 4.1.x, and SVR4 fox x86, it was called WM_MOTIF. In 1995 a group of original team members bought AppBuilder. Novell expansion plans were reconsidered, AppWare development was stopped and so was OWL for AppWare. Late in 1994, Novell CEO Raymond Noorda resigned. Win16, Win32s and Win32 was supported (Windows 95, the Win32 successor of Windows 3.x appeared in August 1995). It added Doc/View support, VBX controls, OLE. In January 1994, Borland launched Borland C++ 4.0 for Windows which also included OWL 2.0. The main tools for developing in AppWare were OWL and AppBuilder (a visual tool to link Application Loadable Modules through an 'Application Bus'). AppWare Foundation was an API designed by Novell to be cross-platform, allowing deploy apps in Mac, Windows and Unix clients and with several Networks services. In April 1993, Borland and Novell settled an agreement to port OWL to Novell AppWare Foundation. OWL 2.0 used BIDS, the newer template library for 'container' or 'class library'. In 1993, Borland launched Borland C++ 2.0 for OS/2 which included a version of OWL 2.0. The Windows version was simply a wrapper around Windows API, and was criticized for not being truly object oriented.
A conversion tool (OWLCVT) was included to migrate code from OWL1.0 to OWL2.0. In the next version of OWL, DDVT was replaced with a RESPONSE_TABLE, a macro based mechanism, which is maintained today. This mechanism avoided saturating the OO virtual function system with one function for each window message. The first version implemented a proprietary extension called Dynamic Dispatch Virtual Tables (DDVT), this allowed objects to bind 'events' (windows messages) with 'methods' (functions).
C++ was just beginning to replace C for development of commercial specially with the rising of Windows platform (and the complexity that involves) this allowed to OWL to gain some popularity.
In 1991 Borland introduced Borland C++ 3.0 with 'Application Frameworks' which included Turbo Vision for developing DOS applications and OWL for the Windows platform. In the early 1990s, Borland dominated the C++ market.
It was eventually deprecated in favor of the Visual Component Library (VCL), which is written in Object Pascal and included in Delphi and C++ Builder Studios.Īn open source internet community has released OWLNext, a series of improvements and patches to the original OWL which also allows newer compilers (Borland C++ Builder 5–6, GCC, Microsoft Visual C++ 6, 2003–2010, BDS C++ 2006, CodeGear C++ 2007–2010). OWL had incomplete support by the Borland C++ IDE and wasn't always upwardly compatible from release to release. It was a competitor to the Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC). It was used in Turbo Pascal for Windows, Borland Pascal and their Borland C++ package. The Object Windows Library (OWL) is a Borland C++ object-oriented framework originally designed for Windows API.