Moscow-based integration firm IT has stepped in to save Russia’s most widely-used word processing program from commercial extinction. Last month, Microinform and Arsenal, a subsidiary of IT, signed a partnership agreement on the future development of the Lexicon word processing program. Lexicon is believed to be installed on more computers in Russia than any other word processor, although most copies are unlicensed. It was initially created by Evgenij Veselov at JV Paragraph who moved to Microinform to turn it into a finished product. In 1995 Veselov left Microinform for IBS together with a team of the best programmers. In order to keep Lexicon alive and to continue the development of Lexicon for Windows, Microinform formed an alliance with IT. Under an agreement signed between the two companies, copyright of Lexicon is handed over to Arsenal, which has begun creating a new version of the product for Windows 3.X, Lexicon 3.0. Microinform will provide support and any further development of MS-DOS versions of Lexicon, including compatibility issues between the versions of Lexicon for MS-DOS and Windows. Microinform continues to develop the MS-DOS versions, Lexicon 4.1 for MS-DOS is about to be released. There will be future versions of Lexicon for Windows95 and Windows NT. IT also invited Moscow software development company Disco to take part in the project. Disco will be developing the product interface. Lexicon will be positioned as a low-cost full-functioning, easy-to -use word processing program, with low system requirements and with compatibility in menu commands and format of documents with Microsoft products. According to Tagir Yapparov, president of IT, there are about 50,000 officially registered users of Lexicon in Russia. According to Oleg Litvin, director of the Microinform training center, Lexicon sales peaked in 1993 at 20,000 packages. Since then they have been falling: in 1994 to between 12,000 and 15,000, and in 1995, down to about 10,000 packages.
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