Scotts Valley, California-based personal computer software house Borland International Inc has announced an agreement with Hunter Systems Inc of Mountain View, California that will enable Borland to bring its Quattro spreadsheet and Sprint word processor over to the Unix market (CI No 1,298). Hunter Systems said it would use its XDOS CAPS computer-aided-porting system to develop XDOS versions of the Borland products, enabling them to run on any machine supporting the Hunter XDOS Transformer utility. These currently include most Motorola 68000 and Intel 80386-based systems, with RISC versions currently under development. Quattro Version 1.0 and Sprint for Unix will be sold with the original user documentation and XDOS application programs on Unix media, such as cartridge tape and 3.5 Unix-formatted floppies. Hunter will supply the Unix and XDOS related support. Sprint will cost $240, and Quattro $300, when the products become available by the end of the year. In addition, Hunter Systems has signed distribution agreements with two major systems integrators, Nova Technology of Rockville, Maryland and Apex Technology Group Inc, Lanham, Maryland, in a bid to win sales from the US Federal Systems marketplace. XDOS is already in use within the US Navy. XDOS uses binary compilation techniques that enable executable binaries to be generated from the original binaries, for use on previously incompatible computer architectures. Hunter is one of the respondents to the Open Software Foundation’s Architecture Neutral Distribution Format Request for Technology.
