“This suite is far more than it appears to be. And that’s a good
thing, because it appears to be quite lame. … The key to
understanding the value of Applixware is to think of Applixware
Office not as a suite of limited applications, but as a nearly
limitless repository of features that have been preassembled into a
few sample applications.”
“The glue that melds Applixware Office’s features together into
coherent applications is an object-oriented macro programming
language called ELF (Extension Language Facility). The entire
Applixware Office user interface has been built using the ELF macro
language (see Resources for a link to learn about and download
ELF).”
“Armed with ELF, the powerful application development tools
that come with the suite, and some programming skills, you can make
Applixware Office do just about anything imaginable. With a
little ambition, it is a simple matter to add all the usability
features that are missing. With a moderate amount of ambition, you
could tailor Applixware to precisely meet the needs of your
business. And with a lot of ambition, you could build entirely new
applications that hardly resemble the ones you get in the box.”