As part of its much vaunted and as yet unrealised object-oriented software strategy, Microsoft Corp intends to create and employ a group of class libraries it calls the AFX, for Application FrameworX, Class Libraries. With its eyes watching Borland International Inc race ahead, Microsoft told Microbytes that these will be part of a total software environment resting on top of the operating system and graphical user interface that will work both as part of Windows and as extensions to Windows. Microsoft says the AFX Class Libraries are not a closed system, and it intends for other software vendors to use them and their architecture to extend Windows. The company calls its current procedural Windows programming tools, which lie directly above MS-DOS and Windows, the Microsoft Windows Framework and Foundation. The AFX class libraries will be the next layer up: programmers will be able to call them to simplify the work of creating Windows applications. Extensions to Windows, such as those already developed for multimedia and pens, will fit into the same model at the level of AFX class libraries. Because this will be an open architecture, Microsoft expects that third-party class libraries will also be added to the Windows environment – let’s hope so because developers badly want them. The class libraries will be programmed in future object-oriented languages from Microsoft, such as its C++, and an object-oriented version of Basic or Visual Basic – all of which have no delivery date.
