OSF Announces Formal Launch of CDE/Motif Project

Multi-vendor project to enhance and converge OSF/Motif and the Common Desktop Environment

CAMBRIDGE, MA September 7, 1995 -- The Open Software Foundation today announced the formal signing of the Joint Development Agreement for the further enhancement and evolution of the Common Desktop Environment (CDE) and OSF/Motif under the Open Software Foundation's Pre-Structured Technology (PST) development process. The seven sponsors of the CDE/Motif PST are Digital Equipment Corp., Fujitsu Limited, Hewlett-Packard Company, Hitachi, Ltd, IBM Corp., Novell, Inc., and SunSoft, Inc.

The CDE/Motif PST is a cooperative, multi-vendor, development project. The Open Software Foundation's PST process allows for existing technologies from multiple vendors to be further developed and integrated into a complete open system technology. The X Consortium has been designated as the project's prime contractor.

CDE/Motif will continue the evolution of the desktop technologies necessary to meet the expanding user requirements in such areas as On-line Information Access, Printing, and Internationalization. A key objective of the PST is to fully converge OSF/Motif and the CDE version of Motif into a single development stream. The resulting PST technology will be binary compatible with CDE 1.0.

Mr. Don Harbert, Vice President of UNIX Business Segment for Digital Equipment Corporation said, "Digital is an enthusiastic participant in the development of the next version of CDE. As a founding member of the Open Software Foundation and the first vendor to ship a commercial version of the X Window System, Digital recognizes the importance of standard user interfaces and the importance of the PST process in developing code."

"Fujitsu is pleased to support the evolution of CDE and Motif technology, both by contributing the Fujitsu OLIAS technology for a robust CDE Online Information Access feature, and by improving CDE/Motif Internationalization. Providing a common user interface over many different hardware systems is critical to the future of Open Systems", said Mitsuru Sanagi, General Manager of the Client Server System Strategy and Alliance Division, Fujitsu Limited.

"As one of the original development partners for CDE and as a current supplier of CDE technology in AIX, IBM is committed to enhanced usability for our AIX customers," said Donna Van Fleet, Vice President for AIX Systems Development, IBM RISC System/6000 Division. "Now, as one of the  sponsors of this new PST, we continue the enhancements to CDE that will provide even more ease-of-use value for our customers, while maintaining all the benefits of an open technology."

"CDE is important, industry-unifying technology and Novell is looking forward to working with the other CDE/Motif sponsors to continue its development," noted Don McGovern, Vice President, Operating System Division, Novell, Inc.

"As chair of the CDE/Motif PST Steering Committee, SunSoft is pleased by the active participation and strong commitment for this project.  This clearly underscores the strong industry support for open systems," said Paula Sager, Vice President of Desktop Technologies, SunSoft, Inc.  "We are looking forward to working with our partners to deliver the best open user environment available."

"We're excited that we are able to contribute to this important industry initiative ", said Robert W. Scheifler, President of X Consortium. "CDE/Motif combines premier desktop technologies and builds on what is now a long line of products founded upon X. There is a lot of synergy between the X Consortium's objectives and the goals of the CDE/Motif PST. Our involvement as the prime contractor for this project is a logical extension of that fact."

The base technologies for the CDE/Motif PST are CDE 1.0 and OSF/Motif 2.0. On-line Information Access will include an SGML-based browser, the ability to display and print SGML documents, full text search and retrieval, and integration with the on line help facility. Enhanced internationalization capabilities will include the ability to display vertical text, support for user defined characters, input method selection at run time, and an on-the-spot input method capability. Print capabilities include a graphical interface for print job submission, a single API for both display and printing, printing support for Motif text and label widgets, help, calendar, mail and the text editor. In the process, CDE/Motif will be made thread safe and will include support for 64-bit architectures.

The output of this PST joint development will be a merged CDE/Motif source package, a standalone version of Motif, and conformance tests for both CDE and Motif. Upon completion, the conformance test suites will be offered to X/Open for their branding purposes. Also offered to X/Open will be a merged style guide for CDE and Motif, the Motif Drag and Drop protocol, and API extensions to CDE and Motif.

The first deliverable of the CDE/Motif PST will be a maintenance release for CDE 1.0 planned for the end of 1995. The schedule further calls for a CDE/Motif snapshot to be made available to licensees in mid-1996, with general availability of CDE/Motif scheduled for the end of 1996.

For more information on CDE/Motif, you are invited to contact David Knorr, OSF CDE/Motif Business Area Manager, at +617-621-7227.

The Open Software Foundation delivers technology innovations in all areas of open systems, including interoperability, scalability, portability, and usability. OSF has created a coalition of worldwide vendors and users in industry, government and academia that leverage their economic investments by working together to provide the best open systems technology solutions for distributed computing environments. Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, with offices in Brussels, Grenoble and Tokyo, OSF has more then 380 members worldwide.

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OSF, OSF/Motif, and Open Software Foundation are trademarks of the Open Software Foundation, Inc.

CONTACT:

Jack Dwyer
Open Software Foundation
(617) 621-7246