A package of high-profile software applications, including some lesser-known programming languages, may be up for sale at the end of this week when Harlequin Group Plc, an international software house currently in the hands of receivers is taken over by a French company.
Receivers Ernest & Young is in the final stages of negotiations with Global Graphics SA, a Pompey, France-based supplier of digital printing systems, to buy Cambridge, UK-based Harlequin. Harlequin is a supplier of high-end printing software. But the company, which has around 300 employees at offices in the UK, the US and Australia, has also extended its activities into unlikely fields. Its Harlequin Intelligence operation offers a family of applications for investigation management and intelligence analysis. These have been used by law enforcement agencies and Harlequin claims it can uncover likely suspects from police databases.
Harlequin also offers a range of software tools including Dylan, an object-oriented programming language developed by Apple Computer Inc which was touted as a rival to Java with the efficiency of C++ and the simplicity of Smalltalk. Harlequin continued with the project after Apple dropped out and produced a version for Windows in July 1998.
It also offers flavors of Lisp for Windows and Unix platforms and Harlequin claims to be the only global vendor to offer a fully supported development environment for Standard Meta Language (SML).
