FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Alembic Systems International Ltd. 14 Inverness Dr. East G-228 Englewood CO 80112 (303).799.6223 (303).799.1709 fax 800 452.7608 e-mail:info@alembic.com 34 Alexandra House 333 Kings Road London SW3 5ET +44(0)71.351.9980 +44(0)71.351.3117 fax e-mail:info-europe@alembic.com ESSENTIAL OFFICE PAK - Bundled NEXTSTEP Applications to Enhance the Office Objective. Denver Colorado, April 27, 1994 - Office applications for users of NEXTSTEP are now bundled to offer the customer a comprehensive set of tools at a special price. Alembic Systems International has bundled Write-Up, VarioData, Questor and Graphity to produce "The Essential OfficePak." Until June 1st, 1994, the Essential OfficePak is available $995.00-normal list price of $1,838 "With service and support behind our products, many customers have wanted a bulk deal instead of having to go through the buying process four times." Said Dale Pratt, Vice President of Alembic "This bundle eliminates such hassles, and saves the customer money." Further money saving opportunities are available to NEXTSTEP users via a quarterly CD that reviews the latest notable events, provides a wealth of new demonstration applications, special pricing opportunities, as well as industry trends happening in the NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP Market. "Its all intended to give the NEXTSTEP user what they have been asking for all along," Pratt said "a true resource to compliment NEXTSTEP." *** Write-Up Native NEXTSTEP Word Processing. Write-Up is the new word processor designed from the ground up on NEXTSTEP objects. Fast and Flexible, Write-Up provides the processing power NEXTSTEP users have asked for. Features: # # # Text Processing -- Fonts: multiple faces and sizes. Attributes: bold, italic, underline, superscript, subscript, small caps. Justification: left, center, right, full. Line spacing: preset or variable. Hyphenation: automatic. Color: drag-and-drop from standard color panel. Style sheets: global and document-specific. Case change operations: lower, upper, capitalize. Date/time codes. Inline graphics, with baseline support. Emacs keybindings, including forward delete and transpose operations. Graphics Processing -- Drag-and-drop scalable graphics. Automatic text overlay or runaround # # # Document Processing. Full WYSIWYG display, including headers, footers, and graphics. Page navigator: thumbnail view for easy maneuvering through documents. Multiple document views: different pages and/or zoom factors. Margins: document and paragraph-specific. Floating Rulers: tab, margin, and indentation settings. Headers/Footers: single or odd/even pages, option to exclude first page. Zoom in/out: 10% to 1600%, WYSIWYG placement, sizing, and editing of all document elements. Automatic page numbering, Roman or Arabic style, Manual page breaks. # # #Document Management/Other -- Standard file handling: new, open, save, save as, revert to saved, etc. Template documents: load/save. Import formats: ASCII, RTF, WordPerfect, WriteNow, TIFF, EPS. Spell checking. On-line help. Internationalization: Dictionaries and hyphenation for numerous languages (call for details) All program messages in easily modified string tables. User interface (nib) files available for editing. User-selectable decimal align character *** VarioData The multi-user database application for NEXTSTEP VarioData contains two applications: VarioBuilder and VarioData. VarioBuilder is used to create a new database and modify an existing one, while VarioData is primarily used for the actual database front-end itself. VarioBuilder: # # # Create and modify any user-definable database layout. Multimedia database elements: texts(ASCII, RTF), numbers, date, time, switch, pop-up list, images, sounds, key words, files, formula, text drag-and-drop, e-mail connection buttons. Multiple database windows. Create any database by drag-and-dropping elements. Easy-to-use inspectors for each element. User-definable formulas for every element. Default values, serial numbers, automatic input like user name, time of modification, date of creation etc. Unique fields, fields that have to be filled. Date, time, number input, text length, upper case formats. Drag-and-drop of background images, colors, text colors. Input order definition. Extended on-line help VarioData: # # # Report design elements--squares, circles, lines, freehand lines, polygons, texts, and more. Drag-and-drop text, images, colors, text colors. Formulas: text, number, date, time, logical, mathematical functions, merge with database contents. Formula inspector: define formula, choose function from list. Report layout inspector: define lines, arrows, etc. Barcode generation. Multi-page report. User-definable labels. Help lines for texts, ruler, alignment, definable grid, fonts, etc. Database: new, change, delete, find, find all, find plus, find minus, extended find conditions: <=, >=, between, one or more conditions simultaneously. Drag-and-drop images (tiff, eps, ps, ai), sounds, texts (ASCII, RTF<) into the database and out to other apps or file viewer. All records are shown in the user-definable listbox. Define the order of the listbox columns, which are displayed or hidden, ascending or descending order for each column. Extended print panel: merge of fax, print, e-mail according to the database contents. Print all, the selection of records or only the current one. Extended import/export facilities: user-definable filters, pre-defined filters: e.g. WordPerfect, Improv, Excel, FrameMaker MIF, automatic character conversion. Update of existing records with user-definable formulas. Multi-user support with safe record locking. Work with more than one database at the same time. Album and album inspector. Extended on-line help for everything. Action shortcuts: new, change, find, next record, etc. *** Questor Matrix-based spreadsheet application for NEXTSTEP Questor is a spreadsheet application for NEXTSTEP that combines the intuitive metaphor of matrix-based spreadsheet with a number of very powerful features and a true NEXTSTEP interface. Questor includes a powerful scripting language, a seamless SQL database interface and a flexible API that makes Questor the perfect tool for any type of problem solving. The backbone of Questor is a conventional matrix-based spreadsheet application that can easily be used by anybody that have once used spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel, Lotus 1-2-3, or Wingz. Features: # # # QScript--a structured scripting language with an "intelligent" editor including automatic pretty-printing and programming support. Input controllers--buttons, text fields and sliders-- can be drag-and-dropped anywhere on worksheet and connected to QScript code or to cells directly. Output objects such as graphs and gauges can be placed anywhere. Graph types: bar, stacked bar, line, combination, stock, area, stacked area, scatter (xy-plot) and pie. Hot links to Xanthus Graphity-- a business graphic application that supports 3D graphs. Seamless connections to SQL databases using NEXTSTEP Database Kit. Timers to trigger complex calculations, database queries and other event at regular intervals. Double-direction API to control and send/feed data to/from other apps. User-definable object palettes. Drawing tools. TIFF/EPS image and sound support. Imports from Lotus 1-2-3 WKS/WK1, and Microsoft Excel SYLK, and BIFF2-4 files. Exports to WK1 format. Full support for Lotus 1-2-3 bracket macros. User-defined number of undos. Report layout functions with direct manipulation and drawing tools. Object linking support. QScript Debugger allow QScript functions to be debugged seamlessly. Basic support for multi-user access. *** Graphity Business graphics application for NEXTSTEP Graphity is a powerful yet easy-to-use business graphics application for NEXTSTEP that can be used as a stand-alone application or together with Questor spreadsheet application. Graphity supports many popular graph types, including stunning 3D graphs with light sources, shaders and textures. Features: # # # 3D graphs based on RenderMan. A powerful API that allows other apps to easily control and send data to Graphity. Hot links to Questor spreadsheet application. User palettes support--Users can easily create new palettes with customized graphs and graphics. Drawing tools that allow to draw directly on a graph sheet. Images and sound can be drag-and-dropped anywhere on a graph sheet. Unlimited undo with user-definable number of undos. 2D graph types: bar, stacked bar, line, combination, stock, area, stacked area, scatter (xy-plot) and pie. 3D graph types: bar, area, scatter (xyz-plot) and pie. Multiple light-sources for 3D graphs that can be positioned individually. User-defined shaders and textures for 3D graphs. True NEXTSTEP user interface. Smooth scrolling of documents. Direct manipulation of all objects on a graph sheet. Use of the NEXTSTEP Color Panel and Font Panel for editing graphs. Inspectors for all graph types. Drag-and-drop from Workspace and from the ToolBox in Graphity. Object linking support # # # 1993 Alembic Systems International. All rights reserved. NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP are registered trademarks of NeXT Inc. All other product names mentioned herein are registered trademarks of their respective owners.