GRiD Systems has also unveiled PenRight! – a pen computer software environment with a forms paradigm recognising upper and lower case letters. The MS-DOS-based software environment, shipping now, supports data collection applications, and GRiD says it will license it to other pen computer hardware vendors. The PenRight! graphical application development environment will operate on the GRiDPad pen computer line, including future 80386-based pen systems, and systems from other vendors. PenRight! contains an Application Program Interface and a handwriting engine. Concentric Software, based in San Diego, claims to be the first to develop an off-the-shelf software package for the GRiDPad, under PenRight!. The product, dataNOW!, enables users to create electronic data-collection forms directly on the GRiDPad. The C-based software development kit for PenRight! includes development tools such as PenResource, which streamlines the management of elements in a developer’s project; GRiDForm, for creating and editing forms in a project; and CodeStart, which structures the flow of control between forms in the application by generating the C source code shell for an application. GRiD also offers tools for developers using different languages, such as GRiDPenPal, a development environment for those familiar only with programming fundamentals, and PadBase+, a development environment for Clipper programmers. PenRight! requires a pen computer with minimum VGA resolution; 80C86 processor; 128Kb of system memory; 128Kb secondary storage; an input device; and MS-DOS 3.3.
