Claris Says XTND Will Ease Pain of Mac File Transfers
 
Microbytes Daily News Service
Copyright (c) 1989, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
Macintosh software maker Claris Corp. is planning a common
architecture for all its applications that will enable software
developers to create file translators that work with Claris
products, the company announced this week. The new XTND
(pronounced "extend") will allow users to directly import and
export word processing, graphics, database, and spreadsheet files
across multiple platforms, Claris said. And because XTND will be
common to all Claris applications, file translators will work
with all Claris software; all the Mac user will have to do is
copy the appropriate translator file into the System folder,
according to Claris officials.
 
Claris announced its first product to utilize the XTND
architecture, an upgrade of its MacWrite II word processor.
MacWrite II 1.1 supports 30 file translation formats and allows
you to transfer data files directly with many Mac, IBM,
mainframe, and minicomputer applications, the company said.
 
XTND on MacWrite II 1.1 simplifies the process of importing and
exporting documents on the Mac, Claris claims. Instead of using a
file translation utility to convert your, say, WordPerfect PC 5.0
file to the MacWrite II format, you select the "Open" command af
from the MacWrite menu and XTND automatically translates the
WordPerfect PC document to MacWrite format. Conversely, you can
save a MacWrite II 1.1 file in up to 30 different formats, and
can use MacWrite II's "insert file" command to put PC (and other)
word processing, database, and graphics files directly into
MacWrite II documents, according to Claris.
 
Claris plans to license the XTND developers kit at no charge. The
idea is that developers can create a translator file specific to
their application's file format; this assures that Claris XTND
applications can read and write data files of that format. The
XTND developers kit will be available later this month, the
company said.
 
Claris says it's already talked to Mac software developers,
including Microsoft, but mentioned only On Technology (Cambridge,
MA) as having plans to incorporate XTND translators into future
products.
 
Contact: Claris Corp, 5201 Patrick Henry Dr, Santa Clara, CA
95052; (408) 987-7000.
 
                              --- Jeffrey Bertolucci
 
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