London company Imperial Software Technology Ltd has won a fillip for its X Designer Motif and Windows graphical user interface builder in the form of a deal with SunSoft Inc, which is bundling the Londoner’s product with a new release of its C++ development environment called Visual WorkShop for C++. It replaces the existing WorkShop C++ and customers will get the $3,500 X Designer bundled with Visual WorkShop C++, which starts at $3,000 for a single user licence. On its own, it is $2,000 when sold as Sparcworks/Visual. SunSoft management, which had originally plumped for a builder from one of Imperial Software Technology’s rivals, signed up with the UK company after it found that the majority of its engineers doing Motif work were already using X Designer. Imperial Software Technology’s product competes with Integrated Computer Solutions Inc’s Builder Xcessory and TeleUse from Thomson Software Products (Alsys), in a market led by Visual Edge Software Ltd’s UIM/X. Initially, SunSoft will offer version 3.2 of X Designer for developing Motif 1.2 applications in C and C++, rather the latest X Designer 4.0, which also generates Windows-compliant interfaces. There will be an additional Sparcworks/Visual release for 4.0, which will provide an upgrade path for applications built under existing Motif graphical user interface builders or its Devguide Open Look builder. As well as the graphical interface builder and Sparcworks compile/edit/debug tools, Visual WorkShop for C++ comes with Sparccompiler C++, Sparccompiler C, Sparcworks/Impact multithreaded development tools and Sparcworks/TeamWare code management tools. WorkShop now includes an incremental linker, claimed to cut link time by up to 90%, and support for multi-threaded runtime error detection. Like previous releases, Visual WorkShop C++ will also go up on HP-UX and UnixWare. SunSoft plans further WorkShop releases to support the Common Desktop Environment and NeXTsStep/OpenStep application development, it already offers tools for the early adopter Distributed Objects Everywhere implementation. Meantime Imperial Software Technology is working on technology for object-oriented, front-end development but isn’t ready to show its hand yet. SunSoft has also enhanced its Fortran development system with Performance Workshop for Fortran 90, based on Cray Research Inc’s CF90 Fortran compiler, Performance Library, a library of algorithms and the same linker as in Visual WorkShop. The suite includes the existing Sparccompiler Fortran 77 compiler SunSoft also gets from Cray, Sparcworks development tools, Sparcompiler C, Sparcworks/Impact code paralleliser and Sparcworks/Teamware code management tools. Performance WorkShop for Fortran 90 is from $4,500, Sparcompiler Fortran 90 starts at $1,300 and the performance library is $1,000. Upgrades start at $300; all require Solaris 2.X; fully functional evaluation systems will be up on Sun’s World Wide Web page.
