Camberley, Surrey-based Lloyd Savage Graphical Interfaces Ltd has brought in Easel, developed by Interactive Images Inc of Boston, Massachusetts, as an MS-DOS and OS/2 graphical user interface development tool-kit enabling the simple creation of front-ends conforming to IBM’s Common User Access, to existing database, remote mainframe and minicomputer applications. The fourth generation language tool enables programmers without knowledge of C or Cobol to remove the the problem of learning computer syntax when accessing a mainframe application from a personal computer by presenting data or instructions using icons, pictures and words driven using touch screen, mouse or keyboard. This is claimed to enable non-technical users to operate the system with little training. A support facility indicates non-compliance with the Common User Access guidelines during application design. Applications can be created independant of the user-chosen pointing device that interacts with Easel and any Easel interface built under MS-DOS will run under OS/2 with Presentation Manager after recompiling. Easel for OS/2 can create applications that use Presentation Manager, supplementing its graphics with easy-to-use interfaces for a variety of applications. Emulation of Presentation Manager under MS-DOS will be released in the future. Moving many applications to personal computers saves mainframe resources as well as enabling both remote and local multitasking. IBM bought a 10% stake in Interactive Images in April 1989 and signed product development and marketing agreements. The worldwide marketing rights for the OS/2 Extended version of Easel are held by IBM and it is sold through its Co-operative Software Programme. Easel was announced in the US as part of IBM’s OfficeVision announcements last May. Interactive Images was founded in 1981 aiming to make computing accessible to the ordinary person. Its 1988 turnover was up 90% on 1987 figures and a growth of 75% is forecast for 1989. Easel-developed front-ends are used by over 200 US companies for executive information, manufacturing, finance, office automation and sales systems. UK prices work out at an average UKP300 per personal computer-user. An initial outlay of UKP10,000 will provide a development licence, a one week training course on the development language, three days of consultancy, and a finite amount of run-time.
