---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Florida SunFlash Third Party Product Announcements SunFLASH Vol 51 #26 March 1993 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FrameMaker 3.1.2 for Solaris 2.1 Galaxy Distributed Application Environment Advent IMAGER APERTURE CARD scan software for Vidar AC20-2 Liken 1.3 from Xcelerated Systems. E-mail and Meeting Maker Support ACCENT ToolKit -- Motif and OPEN LOOK Graphical Interface ToolKit -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: FrameMaker 3.1.2 for Solaris 2.1 email: frametec@frame.com (Frame Technical Support Mailer) Contact: Trish Dailey Mudgett Manager, Technical Support Org: Frame Technology Corporation Phone: 1-408-433-3311 and ask for your Frame sales representative. Email: comments@frame.com (U.S., Canadian, and Pacific Rim) intltechsup@frame.com (all others) FrameMaker and FrameViewer for Sun's Solaris 2.1 The Frame products that support Solaris 2.1 are: Products Languages Licenses -------- --------- -------- FrameMaker/FrameViewer 3.1.2 for Sun X/Motif US English Floating UK English Fixed French Personal German Swedish Italian FrameMaker/FrameViewer 3.1.2 for Sun OPEN LOOK US English Floating UK English Fixed French Personal German All products began shipping February 26, 1993. The products are available on CDROM and 1/4" cartridge tape. The CDROM also contains FrameMaker and FrameViewer 3.1A for Sun X/Motif, FrameMaker and FrameViewer 3.1.1 for Sun OPEN LOOK, FrameMaker and FrameViewer 3.1A for HP X/Motif, FrameMaker and FrameViewer 3.1A for IBM X/Motif. FrameMaker 3.1.1 for Sun OPEN LOOK and FrameMaker 3.1A for Sun X/Motif support Solaris 1.0/1.1. FrameMaker 3.1.2 for Sun OPEN LOOK and FrameMaker 3.1.2 for Sun X/Motif support Solaris 2.1. All customers have been sent a letter announcing the availability of the product. Customers who have Frame Support Subscriptions & Media Subscriptions contact Frame for a free copy of FrameMaker 3.1.2. Customers who do not have Frame Support Subscriptions can contact Frame to purchase FrameMaker 3.1.2. If you would like more information about FrameMaker 3.1.2, call 1-408-433-3311 and ask for your Frame sales representative. If you reply to either of these aliases requesting more information about 3.1.2 or you wish to upgrade to 3.1.2, please be sure to include information about your location: telephone number and street address. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Galaxy Distributed Application Environment From: Dick_deReus@porsche.visix.COM (Dick deReus) Contact: Barry Libenson (National Sales Manager_ Phone: 800.832.8668 email: galaxy@visix.com Visix Software Announces Availability of Galaxy-- the First Distributed Application Environment Also Announces Major Endorsements from Cadre, LEGENT, Unify and Other Early Adopters RESTON, VA--February 26, 1993--Visix Software Inc. announced today the general production release of the Galaxy Application Environment(TM). Galaxy is a comprehensive development and runtime environment designed specifically for building large-scale, distributed graphical applications. Several major independent software vendors (ISVs) and leading corporations have already standardized on Galaxy to develop their next-generation applications. Commenting on the announcement, Jay Wettlaufer, founder, president and chief executive officer of Visix said, "Galaxy signals a new era in application software--the era of the virtual operating system. Galaxy represents a superset of the capabilities of native development and runtime environments, yet allows applications to run across multiple platforms with very high performance." Wettlaufer continued, "Building Galaxy took six years of effort using some of the best software talent in the industry. We've produced a distributed application environment that protects the application developer from having to gamble on who will win and who will lose in the operating system horse race of the 1990s." George Hoyem, Visix's vice president of sales, said "Even in a rigidly controlled release, Galaxy sales have exceeded our most optimistic forecasts. We're now in the process of significantly expanding our sales and support staff in the U.S. and internationally to keep pace with intense customer demand." Galaxy is aimed at Fortune 1000 in-house development staffs and sophisticated ISVs who build high-end applications. While the product is designed to implement the most sophisticated applications including CAD/CAE and page layout packages, the richness of its API also benefits less demanding programs such as forms-based database front-ends. The Need for Galaxy - The Galaxy Application Environment targets the growing need for comprehensive productivity tools based on higher-level system abstractions, replacing tools that are platform or function-specific. Galaxy includes capabilities far beyond the limited tools available today, such as cross-platform GUI builders. Galaxy offers an ideal environment in which developers can build sophisticated distributed graphical applications with less effort than that required to build a single-user Macintosh or Windows application. Cross-platform Capabilities - Galaxy offers the developer a single-platform view of a multi-platform distributed world. Applications developed with Galaxy run enterprise-wide across a broad range of desktop and server platforms, networks, and graphical interfaces. Developers who work with the Macintosh Toolbox, Windows SDK (Win3.1, Win32s, Win32), Motif, and OPEN LOOK toolkits can use Galaxy instead. Galaxy provides a superset of the capabilities of these toolkits and enables Galaxy-based applications to be compiled and run across UNIX, OS/2, Microsoft Windows 3.1, Microsoft Windows NT, Macintosh, and VMS platforms with no code changes. Galaxy Functional Overview - The Galaxy API offers comprehensive abstractions for operating system, window system, and networking functionality. Galaxy delivers high runtime performance by building on the very lowest system primitives available in each functional area. (For example, under Windows 3.1 Galaxy uses the Graphics Device Interface layer as the highest level system service to implement its graphics and imaging model.) The Galaxy environment includes a sophisticated graphical development tool set and a software tool backplane that is open to integration of third-party development tools. The object technology used to develop Galaxy is highly extensible, and supports end-user customization as well as the future evolution of the Galaxy API and development tools. Galaxy also supports the application runtime environment. Galaxy mediates at runtime between the system requirements of an application and the unique characteristics and limitations of particular system platforms. With Galaxy, ISVs and corporate developers can build and deploy very high-end graphical, client/server applications without having to tailor different versions of the applications to the strengths and weaknesses of particular system platforms. Analyst Comments on Galaxy - Judith Hurwitz, publisher of Client/Server Toolwatch and leading independent tools analyst said, "Visix has delivered a sophisticated and comprehensive application development environment that will run on a large variety of graphical user interfaces, and on most key client/server operating systems and major hardware platforms." Hurwitz continued, "The company's diligence and attention to detail has paid off. The market is ready for the type of complex development system that Visix is delivering." Stanley Dolberg, contributing editor for the Open Information Systems publication from the Patricia Seybold Group, said "Application developers need help coping with the difficult problems of building distributed applications and deploying them across platforms. Galaxy offers an impressively broad API and toolset to address these problems, but it's the object-oriented architecture and advanced technology under the hood that really puts Galaxy in a league of its own." Leading Developers Building Galaxy Applications Now - Visix's successful early adoption program has resulted in over sixty companies using Galaxy to build their next-generation software products. Galaxy has been adopted by leading independent software vendors (ISVs), Fortune 1000 corporate accounts, government agencies, universities, and educational research facilities. Many of Galaxy's strongest supporters are in the technology-driven ISV community including Cadre Technologies Inc., Unify Corporation and LEGENT Corporation who have all standardized on Galaxy. Don Miller, vice president, engineering of Cadre Technologies Inc. said, "As a leading supplier of open systems CASE tools, Cadre Technologies has extensive experience with developing and porting complex applications across platforms. In planning the next generation of Cadre applications, we intensively evaluated the best methods to both continue to develop leading-edge CASE tools and to provide them on the important commercial platforms in the marketplace. Galaxy stands head and shoulders above other tools in the industry by providing our developers with a comprehensive distributed development and runtime application environment. Galaxy will enable Cadre to deliver state-of-the-art integrated CASE environments across all the leading delivery platforms while allowing us to maintain one source code base." Bob Yellin, senior vice president of technology at LEGENT said, "As a key enabling technology, Galaxy allows us to develop distributed systems management applications that are not only portable across multiple graphical environments on multiple platforms but that are interoperable in a heterogeneous environment." "Unify is a leading supplier of client/server application development tools," said Bill Osberg, director of product marketing at Unify Corporation. "After evaluating Galaxy, we found an entire virtual operating environment which complements our internal development efforts. The Galaxy product from Visix is impressive." Pricing and Background - Galaxy for UNIX has been shipping in a controlled release since April 1992. Production releases of Galaxy for Microsoft Windows and OS/2 will be shipping in March. Versions for Microsoft Windows NT, Macintosh and VMS will be released during the second quarter. Galaxy is available for $7800--$9600 per developer seat, depending on platform, with no runtime fees. GSA pricing is available. Visix also offers developer support, training classes and consulting services. Founded in 1989, Visix Software Inc. develops and markets innovative graphical tools and high-end development environments for today's most advanced hardware and software platforms. In addition to Galaxy, Visix's products include the Looking Glass Professional(R) and Looking Glass Advantage(TM) graphical desktop environments. For more information contact: Barry Libenson National Sales Manager 800.832.8668 galaxy@visix.com ### Looking Glass Professional is a registered trademark and Looking Glass Advantage and Galaxy Application Environment are trademarks of Visix Software Inc. All other trademarks are proprietary to their respective manufacturers. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Advent IMAGER APERTURE CARD scan software for Vidar AC20-2 Contact: Clare Bamforth email: clare@advent.co.uk Org: Advent Imaging Ltd Tel: +44 491 411566 Fax: +44 491 411577 Address: Rotten Row, Hambleden, Henley-on-Thames, Oxon RG9 6NB England, UK Advent Imaging Limited of Henley-on-Thames, England recently announced support for the 350 card per hour Vidar AC20-2 aperture card scanner. The addition of the Vidar AC20-2 scanner to the IMAGER product range emphasizes Advent's position as one of the leading imaging suppliers in the industry. DESCRIPTION IMAGER APERTURE CARD is an Open Look application which provides a scanning interface for the Vidar AC20-2 automatic aperture card scanner. The AC20-2 is designed for electronic document management applications in which drawings held on film in aperture cards are converted to digital form ready for archiving, printing or for use as a backcloth in the CAD environment. The scanner generates 200 dot per inch images, relative to the original document size, for all of the standard camera reductions used in microfilming. In addition it reads the Hollerith data and can automatically determine document size and reduction factor, thus accommodating any mix of cards. An image editor provides image manipulation and clean up tools such as cropping, scaling, rotation, mirroring and geometric correction, allowing for the correction or warp, shear and stretch in original documents. IMAGER supports a wide range of image file formats including TIFF, RLC, DSI and CALS. Images can be compressed using Group3, Group4, run length encoded and LZW techniques. Strict conformance to the standards for image file and compression formats means that the files generated by IMAGER are easily incorporated into other applications, such as CAD packages. IMAGER uses image enhancement (also known as scale to grey) in which colour and greyscale monitors are used to improve the legibility of monochrome images when displayed at reduced resolution. This allows fine detail to be discerned from an E sized engineering drawing when displayed on a workstation monitor. IMAGER is available in toolkit form so that developers and systems integrators can integrate aperture card scanning into new or existing applications. Developer's Toolkits come with the source of complete ready to use applications and, using the example code as a base, scanning can be incorporated into another application within hours. FEATURES IMAGER APERTURE CARD scan software includes features which support ALL the capabilities of the Vidar AC20-2 scanner: o Choice of US, ISO and user defined paper sizes o Scan at up to 350 cards per hour o Capture images at 200 dots per inch o Captured image can be displayed on the screen (scaled to any desired size) allowing quality control to be performed during the scanning process o Optional interactive selection of area of scanned image to be saved o Access to all image processing capabilities of the scanner such as detail detection, edge enhancement and area thresholding o Automatic file naming, plus the ability to save images in parallel with the scanning process ensuring maximum scanner throughput in a production environment o Ability to run an external process for each scanned card, allowing user defined interpretation of the Hollerith data. The external process can adjust ALL scanning parameters such as document size, reduction factor and file name allowing completely unattended batch operation. o Ability to use the external process to flag cards for rejection as further level of quality control o Accept and reject hoppers used to automatically separate rejected cards. o Hollerith data saved to image file header or external ASCII file (either one file per image or one file per batch) allowing flexibility for integration of scanned data into a database or other application o Noise filter which selectively removes clusters of individual pixels o High performance image display software providing pan, zoom and shrink capabilities under user control. The displayed image may be shown at any scale (not just integral values) and smoothly panned using mouse control. o Image enhancement (also known as scale to grey) in which colour and greyscale monitors are used to improve the legibility of monochrome images when displayed at reduced resolution. This allows fine detail to be discerned from an E sized engineering drawing when displayed on a workstation monitor. o Support for a wide range of industry standard file formats allowing images captured using Imager to be easily incorporated into a wide range of other applications. Supported file formats include: - TIFF - Sunraster - RLC - DSI - CALS Type 1 (MIL-R-28002A) o Image compression, as appropriate to the file formats, using a range of algorithms, including: - CCITT Group 3 - CCITT Group 3 2D - CCITT Group 4 - Run Length Encoded - Lempel-Ziv Welch - uncompressed o Application is completely configurable by the user allowing default scanning parameters, paper sizes etc. to be specified. o Image Edit tools for manipulating and cleaning up poor quality scans, including: - Crop - Rotate - Mirror - Scale - Invert - Despeckle - Deskew - Geometric correction (using up to 4 control points) AVAILABILITY IMAGER APERTURE CARD is available now. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Liken 1.3 from Xcelerated Systems. E-mail and Meeting Maker Support Contact: Douglas Cooper Tom Carroll, Doug Cooper Org: Cooper/Iverson Marketing Phone: (619) 292-7400 Contact: Laura Jordan, Marketing Communications Manager Org: Xcelerated Systems, Inc. Phone: (619) 974-2907 email: info@xsi.com Address: 9245 Sky Park Court, Suite 130, San Diego, CA 92123 Phone: (619) 576-3080 XCELERATED SYSTEMS INTRODUCES LIKEN 1.3 E-MAIL AND MEETING MAKER SUPPORT FOR UNIX USERS SAN FRANCISCO, March 17, 1993 -- A new version of Liken software from Xcelerated Systems, Inc. (XSI) makes its debut at Uniforum T93, March 17 - 19 at Moscone Center, San Francisco. Liken 1.3 ensures 100 percent compatibility with: o Solaris 2.1 and HP-UX 9.01 o popular e-mail packages, such as Microsoft Mail, CE Software Inc.Us Quickmail(, and cc:Mail from Lotus Development Corporation; and o On TechnologyUs Meeting Maker, the leading group scheduling package for the Macintosh. Representatives of XSI will demonstrate the e-mail interoperability of Liken 1.3 at the Qualix booth, (#3439). A single-user license of Liken is priced at $695 Introduced in January, 1992, Liken allows UNIX workstation users to run off-the-shelf Macintosh applications without modification. It allows them to share files and databases, use software residing on Macintosh servers, and take advantage of cost-effective NFS-mounted storage, including disk drives, tape drives, disk arrays, and CD-ROM, and print to Apple Laserwriter and compatible PostScript laser printers and Ethernet-based SPARCprinters. To gauge the marketUs response after the release of Liken 1.2, Ray Wagstaffe, president of XSI, and Dave McMillen, the companyUs chief technology officer, asked Liken users to rank the features they most wanted to see. "The message was clear," Wagstaffe says, "E-mail and interconnectivity topped the list. And you can see those market priorities reflected in Liken 1.3." Bruce Webb, design manager with the Northern Telecom Semiconductor Component Group in San Diego, is very pleased with the Liken 1.3, and especially with its e-mail capabilities. He says, "Our design engineers use Unix workstations, but we needed to provide them with access to Quickmail so they could send and receive e-mail from the rest of the company. Liken does that, and it also enables them to use the same spreadsheet and word processing software as everyone else." Wagstaffe says, "We are developing a solution that has widespread acceptance in the market; one that has a depth of interoperability and connectivity never before seen." He notes, the list of more than 100 industry-standard software packages supported by Liken is proof positive. "With Liken 1.3, UNIX users will have access to Meeting Maker, the leading group scheduling package for the Macintosh," he says. Meeting Maker allows Mac users to manage daily, weekly and monthly appointments, meetings and activities. It liberates them from scheduling problems by handling all the routine work of setting up a meeting - finding the common free time, distributing agendas, collecting responses, and following through as the particulars of a meeting change. More than 100,000 Macintosh users currently depend on Meeting Maker to manage their schedules. Xcelerated Systems, Inc. provides enabling technology so that diverse computer platforms can be used for mission critical and commodity applications in a seamless networking environment. XSI's products add a new dimension of compatibility and interoperability to open systems architecture. A Liken single-user license costs $695. Liken is a registered trademark of Xcelerated Systems, Inc. Xcelerated Systems, Inc. is not affiliated with Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, International Business Machines, or Apple Computer, Inc. Macintosh is a registered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. All other products are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective companies. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: ACCENT ToolKit -- Motif and OPEN LOOK Graphical Interface ToolKit Contact: Dave Wagner Org: National Information Systems, Inc. Address: 4040 Moorpark Avenue, Suite 200, San Jose, CA 95117-1852 U.S.A. Phone: 408/985-7100 Voice 800/441-5758 Toll-free Fax: 408/246-3127 email: nis@netcom.com OPEN LOOK(r) Compliance for GUI Applications written in OSF/Motif(tm) on Sun Workstations Motif-based Applications to support OPEN LOOK without re-coding on Solaris 1.0 and 2.0 through ACCENT ToolKit San Jose, California -- National Information Systems, Inc. (NIS), of San Jose, California, announced ACCENT ToolKit, a Motif to OPEN LOOK graphical user interface toolkit. ACCENT ToolKit is the first Application Programming Interface (API) supporting both the OPEN LOOK and Motif Graphical User Interface (GUI) standards without rewriting an application. ACCENT ToolKit is now shipping to Independent Software Vendors (ISV's) and software developers seeking to support both environments on Sun Microsystems workstations running Solaris 1.0 and 2.0. NIS is a provider of leading-edge software technologies for open systems. Arden P. Scott, President of NIS, commented on the announcement, "ACCENT ToolKit will make the support of OPEN LOOK a painless proposition for software developers. Any Motif application can become OPEN LOOK without rewriting. Many developers have avoided OPEN LOOK compliance in the past because it meant embarking on a second development effort and significant maintenance headaches for future product versions. Motif-based applications that are currently running on Solaris can be converted to full OPEN LOOK compliance in a matter of hours. It is our strategy to encourage OPEN LOOK compliance by making it easily accessible to all developers. ACCENT ToolKit is the only product on the market today that can give ISV products GUI independence." ACCENT ToolKit version 1.0 features both Motif 1.1 and OpenWindows 3.0 support in the same tool kit. Applications currently supporting Motif under Solaris 1.0 and 2.0 can support OPEN LOOK by simply compiling and linking the application with ACCENT ToolKit. A single set of source code for the Motif-based application running on Solaris with ACCENT ToolKit is all that need be enhanced and maintained to produce future versions of the application. With one set of source code, testing and documentation are substantially reduced. Support can be switched between either GUI standard at run time with an argument passed on the shell command line which launches the application -- only one executable version need be distributed. ACCENT ToolKit can be used instead of purchasing a Motif license. Executable programs linked with ACCENT ToolKit do not require an on-going royalty commitment to NIS. Organizations which develop applications for internal use may purchase ACCENT ToolKit at $12,500 per development server per site. No per run time seat royalty for deploying the application is charged. Software maintenance and support are available at 20% of the purchase price. Application porting and consulting are also available. Contact NIS for more information about pricing for ISV's. The Need for Both Motif and OPEN LOOK Support --------------------------------------------- There are two major Graphical User Interface (GUI) tool kits for the X Window System from MIT: OSF/Motif from the Open Software Foundation and OPEN LOOK from UNIX System Laboratories. The Sun marketplace represents approximately one half of the worldwide installed base of UNIX workstations. If an ISV is to be successful in the Sun Workstation marketplace, they must support OPEN LOOK. OPEN LOOK is the user interface standard used for Open Windows, the Sun desk top software, and is shipped with every Sun workstation. In addition, if an ISV wishes to sell the same application on workstations from computer hardware vendors such as Hewlett Packard, Digital Equipment Corporation, IBM and Silicon Graphics, etc., they must produce an OSF/Motif compliant version of the same application. Most ISV's currently support or are planning to support both standards. They simply can't afford to have their applications rejected by either user community. Although Motif and OPEN LOOK are both based on X11 (i.e. X Window System), they are very different. Applications designed for one will not behave adequately when running under the window manager of the other. Some Motif-based applications will partially function when running under the OPEN LOOK Window Manager, but these applications are very awkward to use and "core dump" frequently because of the vast design differences between the two interface standards. A good example of an ISV who expanded into new markets by supporting both Motif and OPEN LOOK is a highly-successful desk top publishing software vendor. This ISV accomplished this feat by developing two sets of source code. They developed the Motif version of their publishing system first because Motif has been adopted as the GUI tool kit of choice on all workstations except for Sun. The OPEN LOOK version of the same product was released about two years later. This profile is very common among ISV's with some limiting their marketing appeal by ignoring OPEN LOOK versions altogether. This phenomenon is due to the fact most ISV's simply do not have the resources to completely rewrite their applications in one of the GUI builder tools or completely re-implement the user interface of the product in OPEN LOOK. Perhaps the primary reason that ISV's are compelled by the market to produce software for both Motif and OPEN LOOK is that the ISV cannot guess whether Motif or OPEN LOOK is the environment of choice for the user -- attempting to dictate the environment for the end-user can lead to the application being rejected as a company standard. It is this overwhelming need for ISV's to support this dual interface standard that gave rise to the ACCENT ToolKit. National Information Systems ---------------------------- Established in 1972, NIS is a leading provider of project management, report writing, application development, and data management tools for the open systems environment. NIS supports industry standards and the many clients who daily rely upon its software products to gain and maintain competitive advantage. With over 4,500 product installations, NIS has continually proven its ability to grow through engineering new technologies. NIS's corporate mission is to provide leading-edge software technologies for UNIX and open systems. The ACCENT ToolKit was developed by Kovi Design Automation as the EXOP(tm) toolkit. The EXOP toolkit is licensed for distribution exclusively to NIS under the name of ACCENT ToolKit. More information about the ACCENT ToolKit Motif and OPEN LOOK Application Programming Interface (API) can be obtained from NIS corporate headquarters at 4040 Moorpark Avenue, San Jose, California, 95117-1852, USA, 800/441-5758, 408/985-7100, FAX 408/246-3127. # # # ACCENT ToolKit is a trademark and the NIS logo is a registered trademark of National Information Systems, Inc. The EXOP toolkit is licensed for distribution exclusively to National Information Systems, Inc. under the name of ACCENT ToolKit. OSF and Motif are trademarks of the Open Software Foundation. UNIX and OPEN LOOK are registered trademarks of UNIX System Laboratories. Sun is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems Computer Corporation. SPARC is a registered trademark of SPARC International, Inc. Solaris is a trademark of Sunsoft, Inc. Personal IRIS, IRIS Indigo, and IRIX are trademarks of Silicon Graphics, Inc. HP, Hewlett-Packard, and HP-UX are registered trademarks of Hewlett-Packard Corporation. Any other company or product names mentioned may be trademarks or registered trademarks of other companies. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ For information send mail to info-sunflash@Sun.COM. Subscription requests should be sent to sunflash-request@Sun.COM. Archives are on solar.nova.edu, ftp.uu.net, sunsite.unc.edu, src.doc.ic.ac.uk and ftp.adelaide.edu.au All prices, availability, and other statements relating to Sun or third party products are valid in the U.S. only. Please contact your local Sales Representative for details of pricing and product availability in your region. Descriptions of, or references to products or publications within SunFlash does not imply an endorsement of that product or publication by Sun Microsystems. John McLaughlin, SunFlash editor, flash@Sun.COM. +1 305 351 4909.