Locus Computing Corp chief executive officer Martin Waters was on hand in the UK last week to help launch the latest version of Locus PC Interface MS-DOS-under-Unix integration tool, including national language support. Locus does 40% of its business in Europe these days, and Version 3.1 of PC Interface enables all messages to be translated easily into the user’s own language, with Unix character sets automatically translated to MS-DOS, irrespective of language. The new version also supports file names containing non-English characters such as accents. Locus bundles the PC Interface server portion – the Unix end – in with Santa Cruz Operation’s Open Desktop, IBM’s AIX and Interactive Systems’ 386/ix, and more recently struck a deal with AT&T to include the product as a standard part of Unix System V.4. The MS-DOS end of the product costs $210 per user. Waters promised that Locus would begin expanding from its traditional OEM and value-added reseller-based business towards a more visible direct sales operation later this year, with a broader product line. Future developments are likely to include a version of PC Interface front-ended by Microsoft Windows, as well as products for the OS/2 market, which, Waters said, companies should avoid only at their peril.
