Imperial Software Technology Ltd, Reading, England, is spreading from its base in X Window to the Windows world. The company launched a cross-system graphical user interface-builder for Motif and Windows applications at Unix Expo last week. X-Designer 4 enables developers to produce applications that can be moved between Motif and any version of Windows. Company president Derek Lambert claims that his company has found the solution to the problem of tracking the different versions of Windows by targeting the Microsoft Corp Foundation Class Library. Since Microsoft has a class for each version of Windows, X-Designer can currently support and will continue to support all versions. There is also support for Macintosh within the Microsoft Foundation Class Library, so Imperial Software Technology’s software can use the same environment. While this makes the package distinctive, Lambert is realistic about the difficulties of getting any product noticed in the graphical user interface-building market. For that reason, he has made the product entirely non-proprietary. As with a compiler, the developers will own the code that they produce, and will not have to pay royalties on applications developed or ported using X-Designer 4. Lambert claims his company is now one of the top three in the world in graphical user interface design and might even be in second place. These things are so hard to put a figure on, but I believe we are the Avis of the graphical user interface-design world, he said.
