3.3 Viewing Objects

Compound documents may contain several OLE objects interspersed with objects that are native to the document. Because OLE objects support operations different from those supported by the native objects, it is convenient to be able to visually distinguish the two. For this purpose, client applications should provide visual indications of OLE object boundaries. The boundaries for a particular object should appear whenever the object is selected. In addition, client applications should provide a way for all object boundaries to be turned on or off at once, to facilitate easy viewing of all OLE objects in a document. For example, applications can reveal object boundaries and other normally hidden information with a Hidden Structure command on the View menu or a Show All check box in an Options dialog.

Figure 17 shows recommended boundaries for linked and embedded objects.

Linked object Embedded object

Figure 17. Recommended boundaries for linked and embedded objects

In addition, when an embedded or packaged object is open in the server application, its appearance should be masked in the container document. The masking applies to objects whose representation is an icon (like sound). There is no masking for open linked objects.

Figure 18 shows recommended visuals for the inactive, selected, and open (embedded or packaged objects only) states of an object.

Figure 18. Visual appearance recommendations