A coalition of imaging hardware and software vendors, led by Aldus Corp, Caere Corp, Eastman Kodak Co, Hewlett-Packard Co and Logitech Inc has joined forces to create an application program interface and protocol that enables easier integration of a range of input peripherals with any software application needing the information captured by these devices: known as CLASP, Connecting Link for Applications and Source Peripherals, the interface is designed to be portable across several environments; version 1.0 will operate under the Macintosh operating system versions 6.05 up, and Microsoft Windows version 3.0 and higher; CLASP describes how to interconnect image capture devices, such as desktop scanners, hand-held scanners, slide scanners, frame grabbers, digital cameras, and image databases, with any software application able to handle the image data that these sources produce; by writing to CLASP, software developers can support a variety of image acquisition peripherals within a single application without the need to do multiple drivers; and as hardware vendors change or upgrade their products, software developers won’t need to to rewrite drivers.
