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From PC Week, November 19 1990
WINDOWS Plan Includes Multimedia, Pen DLLs
By Paul M. Sherer
LAS VEGAS - Top Microsoft Corp. officials last week outlined the
company's three-year plan for enhancing Windows, including the
addition of key OS/2 Presentation Manager (PM) features and widely
anticipated capabilities such as handwriting recognition and
multimedia extensions.
In his comdex/Fall keynote address, Microsoft Chairman and CEO
Bill Gates set forth a conceptual framework, called "Information at
Your Fingertips," for building easier to use and more powerful
computer systems that incorporate a range of new technologies,
including multimedia, handwriting recognition and object orientation.
In subsequent interviews, he and other Microsoft executives
detailed how the Redmond, Wash., company intends to implement these
capabilities into existing and future Windows versions and
applications.
"There are four kinds of evolution going on with Windows," said
Senior Vice President Steve Ballmer. "We're refining Windows 3.0,
we're building extensions for Windows, there's kernel-level [work]
going on and major functionality enhancements to Windows."
The first of the enhancements will surface later this month,
when Microsoft releases to developers a set of device drivers,
dynamic link libraries (DLLs) and formats for building multimedia
applications that run under Windows3.0, officials said. The
multimedia extensions will allow developers to incorporate audio,
video, animation, synthesized music, and new graphics and other
formats into their applications.
The next release of Windows, version 3.1, will include
Microsoft's TrueType scalable font technology and several features
designed to optimize its use on portable PCs, Gates and Ballmer said.
Version 3.1, slated for release in the first half of next year,
will be the first Windows version capable of running from ROM, they
said. Windows 3.0 does not sufficiently segregate its program code
from its data, which is necessary to run from ROM, Ballmer explained.
Like the ROM-based DOS used in some laptops, a ROM version of
Windows will require significantly less RAM and will load much faster
than from disk.
Another 3.1 feature geared for laptop users will be
power-management function designed to automatically minimize use of
battery power when the system is idle, he added.
Windows 3.1 will also be the first version that can use the
handwriting-recognition extension Microsoft is developing for release
next year, Gates said last week.
Like the multimedia extensions planned for this month,
Microsoft's pen extension to Windows will be a set of DLLs that
developers can incorporate in their programs to enable them to accept
handwritten input.
Users of Windows 3.1 will not have to upgrade their copy of
Windows to exploit such pen-based applications, Gates explained.
"There is no such thing as a version of Windows call Pen
Windows," he said. Gates said he expects hardware vendors to be able
to ship pen-based systems running windows by late 1991.
Further out on the Windows horizon are enhancements borrowed from
OS/2 and PM, planned for a Windows4.0 release sometime by the end of
1993, Gates said. In addition to the object-oriented file system that
is central to Gates' Information at Your Fingertips vision, Microsoft
plans to endow Windows 4.0 with some of the more powerful graphics
functions of PM. That version will also include 32-bit application
programming interfaces that will allow it to run on top of OS/2 and
exploit OS/2's multitasking and multithreading capabilities, Gates and
Ballmer said.
"In the next generation, Windows should have transforms, Bezier
curves and paths," Ballmer said, referring to three key graphics
functions that are built into PM and lacking in Windows.