IXI Ltd is preparing to launch version 2.0 of its Panorama virtual workspace product, first launched two years ago (CI No 2,124). The Motif 1.2 compliant product has since blossomed into what IXI now calls a lightweight graphical environment for demanding users. It is also, apparently, the only IXI product that the IXI technical developers use themselves for day to day work at their Cambridge, UK-based development labs. The original Workspace manager now includes an inter-client communication interface, available as a library for application developers and as a binary. It is based on the University of California at Berkeley’s Tool Command Language, TCL. Also added is a client manager that provides a scrolled list of all the active windows in the virtual workspace, and the ability to set preferences using hypertext. IXI now bundles in the NCSA Mosaic World Wide Web browser. The Open Software Foundation’s latest version of Motif, Version 2.0, described by IXI as feature-rich but unsupported and incompatible, contains its own hooks for workspace management, but as IXI points out, programmers must write their own applications that make calls to the Motif libraries containing these functions. Panorama 2.0 ships this quarter for SunOS and Solaris with HP-UX, AIX, Alpha OSF/1, Silicon Graphics Inc and Santa Cruz Open Desktop on the way.
