---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING VENDORS CHOOSE OPEN LOOK SunFLASH Vol 22 #2 October 1990 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- SAN JOSE, Calif. --October 3, 1990-- Many leading vendors of electronic publishing applications, including Altsys, Harris and Kodak, are porting their products to the easy to use 3-D OPEN LOOK(R) graphical user interface, Sun Microsystems reported today at the Seybold Computer Publishing Show in San Jose, Calif. As a result, OPEN LOOK has become the leading UNIX(R) graphical user interface in the electronic publishing marketplace. Twenty-two publishing applications now support OPEN LOOK, including seven new applications that have recently ported to OPEN LOOK. These new applications are from Altsys Corporation, Electronic Book Technologies, Harris, HSD Microcomputer, Kodak, Pectronics Corp. and Wright Technologies. The emergence of OPEN LOOK applications gives electronic publishers a much-needed consistent interface across software packages. DeskSet(TM), a suite of 3-D window-based personal productivity tools, provides Sun's desktop metaphor and utilizes a "drag and drop" method of directly manipulating visual objects with a mouse, allowing work to become very fast and intuitive. DeskSet lets users "drag" iconized OPEN LOOK files from one vendor's application and "drop" them into OPEN LOOK applications from other vendors, thereby integrating data from different applications and various systems. "We had a lot of customer requests for an X Window version of our DigitalPhoto product," said Helen Chiu, vice president of marketing for Pectronics Corp., a manufacturer of color image editing and retouching software. "We chose OPEN LOOK because it provides an advanced and stable graphical user interface. Also, the porting effort required to move from SunView(TM) to OPEN LOOK was minimal." The proliferation of OPEN LOOK's easy to use graphical interface enhances Sun's growing presence in electronic publishing. Sun is the leading UNIX workstation vendor in electronic publishing and estimates its market share to be 28 percent. Open Platform Is Key to Innovation One of the advantages of OPEN LOOK is that development and porting are rapid. "Our port was accomplished in less than two weeks," said Jeffery Vogel, lead engineer for Electronic Book Technologies' DynaText product. "Sun's OpenWindows(TM) applications development environment, which includes the OPEN LOOK Intrinsics Toolkit (OLIT), gives vendors an easy way to port to the standard X Window system platform thereby providing the power of UNIX and ease of use advantages of OPEN LOOK to their end users." Sun's OpenWindows is an application development environment that includes the OPEN LOOK graphical user interface, three OPEN LOOK toolkits, the X11/NeWS(TM) windowing system, DeskSet productivity tools and OpenFonts(TM) font technology. Since OPEN LOOK is independent of any particular hardware or software implementation, it lets software developers offer a consistent interface across various platforms. For example, one of the OPEN LOOK toolkits, XView, is being ported to 35 computer systems in addition to Sun's SPARC(R) systems. These include UNIX workstations from Digital Equipment Corp., Hewlett-Packard and IBM. Furthermore, third-party software developer TGV of Santa Cruz, Calif., is porting XView to DEC's VAX/VMX environment; Integrated Computer Solutions of Cambridge, Mass., will offer XView for A/UX, the version of UNIX for the Macintosh; and QuarterDeck Office Systems will offer XView for DOS systems. Electronic Publishing Vendors Porting to OPEN LOOK Altsys Corp. -- Fontographer, one of the industry-standard typeface editors, enables users to create and edit F3(TM) format fonts. Pectronics Corp. -- DigitalPhoto Color Edition is a powerful 24-bit color image editing and processing software for desktop publishing and business presentations. Wright Technologies -- The Wrightplan JUPITER systems offer cost-effective electronic page composition, visualization and output. Electronic Book Technologies -- DynaText is a software system that enables in-house publication groups to turn existing reference documentation into dynamic electronic books. Harris -- IMAGES (image management and graphic enhancement system) is a portable, open-architecture electronic darkroom that stores and retrieves photos and graphics within a relational database. Kodak -- AP/PS (advanced printing/publishing software) is a group of four independent application packages that handle all communications, printing, file management and systems administration functions. HSD Microcomputer US, Inc. -- Scan-X Professional is a scanning and image editing package that incorporates an 8-bit, 1,500-dots-per-inch scanner, an Artisan grey-scale image editing package from Media Logic and an Artscan scanning module. Existing Sun Applications Incorporating OPEN LOOK SoftQuad, Inc. -- Based on SGML, SoftQuad's Author/Editor lets the user create information and mark components of that information with code that can be understood by virtually any type of computer hardware. Elan Computer Group -- Avalon Publisher is an object-oriented WYSIWYG electronic publishing system that provides all of the sophisticated tools necessary for technical documentation and book building. Dux -- Quintet is a low-cost, modular suite of five powerful Microsoft Works-like applications: writing, spreadsheet, personal database, graphing and communications. GEMS of Cambridge, Ltd. -- The Color Solution is an electronic color editing and retouching package. The Page Solution allows page planning for images before output. Interleaf, Inc. -- TPS 4.0 is a comprehensive product for the creation and management of complex documents. It integrates fast text processing with sophisticated graphics and high-end typographic control. Frame -- FrameMaker is a WYSIWYG, fully integrated text and graphics software package that enables users to interactively maintain large documents containing any mixture of complicated layouts. Island Graphics Corp. -- IslandWrite is a word processing and desktop publishing program; Island Paint has pixel editing tools for touching up Sun raster images; and, IslandDraw is an object-oriented graphics editor with tools for creating charts, maps and diagrams. Agfa Compugraphic -- Agfa Catalyst is a PostScript-based color composition and page layout system designed to speed production of magazines, newsletters, retail advertising, annual reports, catalogs, packaging and other documents. Agfa PIX is a color retouching and separation system that supports 32-bit color. A-R Editions -- A-R Music Engraving System is a high-end music typesetting system designed to satisfy the complex needs of music publishers, scholars and performers. Bristol Group -- IsoFAX uses an external FAX modem to send and receive standard Group 3 facsimile documents. Easy-to-learn database tools allow retrieval (browsing) of FAXes by keyword, correspondent and/or date from either departmental or personal archives. Conceptual Structures -- Vibrant Draw is an easy-to-use, icon-based paint/draw package designed for a wide range of users. Krohm International -- KI/Composer V5.0 is an easy-to-use, electronic publishing package used by graphic arts professionals to create high-quality, camera-ready copy. Knowledge Set -- Graphic Knowledge Retrieval System (KRS) enables users to access databases that contain both text and graphic information such as reference manuals, technical documentation and illustrated parts catalogs. Sun Microsystems, Inc., headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., is a leading worldwide supplier of network-based distributed computing systems, including professional workstations, servers and UNIX operating system and productivity software. ### DeskSet, F3, SunView, OpenFonts, X11/NeWS and OpenWindows are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. SPARC is a registered trademark of SPARC International, Inc. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based on an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. OPEN LOOK and UNIX are registered trademarks of UNIX Systems Laboratory, Inc. 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