Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Cathleen Beall Garfield (415) 336-6536
OPEN LOOK APPLICATIONS TO BE AVAILABLE
FOR IBM, DEC AND H-P PLATFORMS
XView Toolkit To Be Offered For other Platforms;
Now Customers Can Standardize On a Single GUI
WASHINGTON, D.C. January 23, 1990. In response to customer
demand for the OPEN LOOKTM graphical user interface on other UNIX
platforms, Sun Microsystems and UniPress Software today announced
their intention to offer Sun's XViewTM toolkit -- used to design OPEN
LOOK applications -- for UNIX workstations from Digital Equipment
Corp., Hewlett-Packard and IBM. As a result, application developers
can now standardize on a single graphical user interface (GUI) for
UNIX workstations. The announcement was made at the UniForum trade
show being held here.
XView -- already available for Sun platforms -- is also provided
to the industry on the Xll tape from MIT and is shipped as a standard
part of AT&T's UNIX System V Release 4.
"With this agreement, software developers get a mature, stable,
portable toolkit for multiple platforms that implements OPEN LOOK on
the X Window System, which is becoming the industry standard window
system," said Carl Wolf, vice president of software products at Sun.
"This continues OPEN LOOK's momentum toward becoming an industry
standard graphical user interface."
OPEN LOOK is an intuitive graphical user interface designed by
Sun, AT&T and the industry, with technology licensed from Xerox PARC.
It features icons, pull-down menus, point-and-click mouse controls and
other aspects found in "user-friendly" systems. The interface is easy
to learn and master without any prior experience while also requiring
less effort -- fewer keystrokes, short cursor movements. Developers
can create software that includes the OPEN LOOK GUI by using XView.
The XView toolkit for IBM, DEC and HP broadens the market for
independent software developers (ISV), allowing them to easily and
quickly design products with a common GUI for several workstation
platforms. Users in companies with diverse equipment will benefit by
using the same interface.
XView is part of Sun's OpenWindowsTM application development
environment, which also includes OPEN LOOK, Xl l/NeWSTM window system,
OpenFontsTM font technology and DeskSetTM "everyday" productivity
tools. Pricing and availability of the XView toolkit for DEC, HP and
IBM will be announced in the near future.
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.
XView, Xll/NeWS, OpenFonts, DeskSet and OpenWindows are trademarks
of Sun Microsystems, Inc. OPEN LOOK is a trademark of AT&T. UNIX is a
registered trademark of AT&T. All other products or services mentioned
in this document are identified by the trademarks or service marks of
their respective companies or organizations.
