OF INTEREST

LeadTools Win32 4.0 is an update to Lead Technologies' imaging-software development toolkit. LeadTools Win32 is a C/C++ toolkit that lets you add file-format support, image compression, manipulation, and processing to any Windows NT, Windows 95, or Win32s application. The toolkit provides 27 image-processing operations and supports over 42 file formats, including Kodak Photo CD, PCX, GIF, TGA, BMP, TIFF, MAC, PICT, and JPEG. LeadTools can be used as a Windows DLL, DOS library, or Visual Basic/Visual C++ custom control. The royalty-free toolkit sells for $995.00.

Lead Technologies

900 Baxter Street

Charlotte, NC 28204

Surety Technologies has announced the Digital Notary System, an Internet-accessible system that securely certifies the contents of digital documents and electronic records. The system works by affixing a secure digital time-stamp without revealing the document's contents to a third party. The Digital Notary System can be used to certify any digital document: word processing files, text documents, database records, e-mail messages, spreadsheet files, graphic images, audio or video recordings, or any other kind of electronic files. The company claims that the Digital Notary System is to electronic records what a notary public is to paper records.

The Digital Notary System, which was developed and patented by Scott Stornetta and Stuart Haber, is based on the one-way-hashing cryptographic technique. In the certification process, the Digital Notary software creates a unique "digital fingerprint" for each electronic document and sends the fingerprint to a Digital Notary coordinating server over the Internet, a leased line, or an ISDN connection. Based on information sent back by the server, the Digital Notary software then issues time-stamped certificates for electronic documents and stores the certificates in a local Digital Notary database. The entire certification process takes only seconds, and the document stays on the user's computer. No one can alter or backdate the document in the record. The Digital Notary software has an API so that developers can integrate it with other software in a network or other computing environments.

A special single-user version, called the "Personal Edition for Windows," is available over the Internet via ftp to ftp.surety.com or by downloading it from Surety's World Wide Web home page at http://www.surety.com. The Personal Edition software, account setup, and 50 certificates sells for $49.00. Users can order additional Digital Notary certificates over the Internet for $37.50/50 certificates. A Personal Edition for SunSPARC systems is forthcoming.

One Main Street

Chatham, NJ, 07928

info@surety.com

Pixar has released Classic Textures: Volume 2, a new edition of its photographic-texture library. Available on ISO-9660-format CD-ROMs, the library includes 100 new textures such as exotic marbles, milled metals, flowers, and water. All images are 512x512, 24-bit TIFF format. The Adobe Photoshop-compatible images are accessible to any Macintosh or Windows application that handles TIFF files. Volume 2 of the CD-ROM sells $169.00.

1001 West Cutting

Richmond, CA 94804

Oracle has announced Oracle Objects for OLE, its first OLE-enabled interface for database access to the Oracle7 relational database. The company claims that this middleware, bundled with Personal Oracle7 and Oracle7 Workgroup Server, simplifies database access from any OLE-enabled Windows app using OLE 2.0 Automation technology. To enhance performance, the software uses client-side data caching to provide immediate access to currently viewed data. Oracle Objects for OLE functionality can be encapsulated in Visual Basic/Visual C++ custom controls. As a stand-alone tool, Oracle Objects for OLE sells for $199.00.

Redwood Shores, CA 94065

ObjectSpace has announced STL<Toolkit>, its implementation of the C++ Standard Template Library. Available for Windows, UNIX, and OS/2, STL<Toolkit> provides multithread extensions, including read/write locking. The company claims this is the only implementation of STL that is compatible with cfront-based compilers. Providing the multithread support is the ThreadKit library, which is bundled with STL<Toolkit>. The toolkit also includes examples, test suites, and commented source code.

The STL<Toolkit> is bundled free with ObjectSpace's ObjectSystems library, or is available separately for $149.00 for use with C++ compilers from Borland, Microsoft, and Symantec. ObjectSystems is a C++ framework for cross-platform development that contains more than 120 classes. For more information on STL, see Al Stevens' "C Programming" column on page 115 of this issue.

ObjectSpace 14881 Quorum Drive, Suite 400

Dallas, TX 75240

Object International has released Together/C++ Version 1.2, a programming tool that lets you work with the object model or code and, at any time and with the touch of a button, make changes to one with the update reflected on the other. Among other features, the new version of this object-modeling tool automatically generates documentation for Windows help files, provides support for additional object models (including attribute types, service parameters, drag-and-drop, and the like), and supports language-specific features such as configurable header files, private attributes, and public services by default. Together/C++ Solo, a single-user version, sells for $997.00. Together/C++ Team, a multiuser version, is also available.

Object International

8140 N. MoPac 4-200

Austin, TX 78759

Neuron Data has released its C/S Elements++ package, which provides GUI development and heterogeneous database access for object-oriented, client/server applications. The environment includes a C++ API that uses its own C++ libraries as well as third-party libraries. Additionally, the software automatically generates C++ code and class definitions. C/S Elements++ initially supports Windows, Sun Solaris, SunOS, and HP 9000/HP-UX systems. Macintosh, OS/2, and Windows NT support is forthcoming. Licenses for the software start at $6850.00.

156 University Ave.

Palo Alto, CA 94301

Trans-Ameritech has announced that Linux Plus BSD 4.0 is available on CD-ROM. Linux Plus BSD 4.0, which is an extension of the Linux UNIX-like kernel, includes the Slackware distribution, kernel versions after the September 1994 code freeze, the X Window system, and DOOM for Linux. The OS is bootable from the CD-ROM, running UNIX files from a 15-Mbyte MS-DOS partition. The CD-ROM sells for $39.95.

Trans-Ameritech Systems

2342A Walsh Ave.

Santa Clara, CA 95051

The Echo is a newsletter for DOS programmers. Published on a monthly basis, the publication includes coverage of all aspects of DOS, from Command script files to Debug "peepholes." Subscriptions to the newsletter cost $12.36 per year.

8401 E. Desert Steppes Drive

Tucson, AZ 85710

Cosmic Software has announced availability of its Cosmic C-cross compilers for the 38HC11 and 68HC16 microcontrollers. In addition to being ANSI C and ISO Standard C compliant, the compilers provide compile-time type checking, C run-time support, optimization, and support for EEPROM variables, inline assembly, and C-level bank switching. Additionally, each compiler package includes a source-level debugger, macro assembler, linker, object inspector, and object-format converter. PC-hosted cross compilers sell for $1500.00, while SunSPARC and HP9000/7000 hosted systems sell for $2500.00.

Cosmic Software

100 Tower Office Park

Woburn, MA 01801

CPI has announced a set of wavelet-compression routines for graphics developers, as well as a 3-D game and virtual-reality engine for DOS/Windows developers. The wavelet-compression routines are available as Photoshop modules ($149.00) or C-library DLLs (for licensing).

The real-time interactive 3-D game engine is a multithreaded, 32-bit engine that includes texture mapping, six-degree freedom of movement, 2-D and 3-D sprites, movie-format support (AVI), multiple light sources and types, collision detection, MIDI and real-time audio effects and mixing, network support, multiplayer support, and more.

1117 Cypress Street

Cincinnati, OH 45206

Cornerstone for Windows, from BBN Software, is a data-analysis tool which lets you visualize data relationships, then perform numerical analysis. The software employs graphs, including xy line, scatter plots, box plots, histograms, bar graphs, interval plots, and 3-D graphs, in the visualization process. The software is built upon the ODBC standard so that it can be used with a variety of relational databases. Cornerstone for Windows sells for $995.00 per seat.

BBN Software Products

150 Cambridge Park Drive

Cambridge, MA 02140

North Coast Software has released its Common Image Format Libraries, a set of DLLs that read and write image files in a variety of formats. A 16-bit library supports Windows 3.1, while 32-bit libraries are provided for Windows NT 3.5 and Windows 95. Additional libraries support Windows NT running on PowerPC, Digital Alpha, and MIPS workstations. File formats supported include JPEG, AVI, BMP, GIF, PCX, TIFF, DIB, RGB, IFF, RAS and TARGA. According to North Coast, the Common Image Format Libraries provide a common API to all libraries and make full use of the 32-bit platforms. The image libraries are based on the same code used in Conversion Artist, North Coast Software's image-conversion tool. The Common Image Format Libraries are priced at $500.00 for Windows 3.1 and $700.00 for Windows NT and Windows 95.

North Coast Software

265 Scruton Pond Rd.

Barrington, NH 03825

Wolfram has introduced an add-on package to its Mathematica programming environment, which aids engineers working on laser designs and other optical systems. The package, called "Optica,'' features 3-D ray tracing, symbolic parameter manipulation, publication-quality graphics, and a set of standard optical components which can be customized. These components include lenses, mirrors, prisms, optical fibers, screens, pinholes, and gratings. Predefined surfaces include spherical, cylindrical, parabolic, and elliptical. Source code is also included for both built-in components and functions, allowing developers to design, model, and analyze virtually any optical system.

Optica draws on Mathematica's capabilities for equation solving, visualization, and animation. Mathematica is a high-level programming environment that provides hundreds of built-in functions to perform a broad range of mathematical operations and is capable of numeric, symbolic, and graphical computation. Mathematica also allows users to create documents that combine text, 2- and 3-D graphics, and animation to create technical reports, blueprints, and the like.

Optica is available for Windows, Windows NT, Macintosh, Power Macintosh, Silicon Graphics, SunSPARC, Solaris, NextStep, HP 700 Series, IBM RISC System/ 6000, DEC MIPS, and OSF/1AXP. The software sells for $695.00.

Wolfram Research

100 Trade Center

Champaign, IL 61820-7237

With products such as Visual C++ completely abandoning their MS-DOS constituencies, it is rare to find new development products for the DOS programmers--particularly high-end products. Nevertheless, Borland has quietly begun shipping its Power Pack for DOS, a collection of development tools aimed at high-end developers still working in MS-DOS. The product comprises 16- and 32-bit DOS extenders, and two older libraries updated for 16- and 32-bit protected mode. It also includes the Turbo Vision C++ class library and the Borland Graphics Interface (BGI) library.

The DOS extenders are based on the same technology that Borland has long used in its protected-mode compilers and database tools. The extenders rely on DPMI 0.9, which, if absent, is simulated by a Borland utility. Borland has made some unique extensions to the DOS extenders. The 16-bit extender uses the same executable file format as Windows 3.x and OS/2 1.x. Because of this compatibility, DOS programs can make calls to Windows DLLs or generate and use Windows-compatible DLLs of their own. To make use of Windows DLLs, the Borland run-time manager (shipped with the Power Pack) implements a subset of the Windows API. This subset consists primarily of the memory-management routines and some ancillary functions.

The 32-bit extender uses the Portable Executable (PE) format. It, too, supports DLLs and implements a sizable portion of Win32--eliminating Windows-specific functions, multithreading, and multitasking capabilities. Under Windows NT, the 32-bit applications can only run in console mode. Both extenders offer virtual memory with swapping to disk.

The BGI libraries are protected-mode versions of Borland's graphical libraries; while Turbo Vision 2.0 is an update to Borland's C++ class library for character-mode interfaces. The Power Pack can be seamlessly integrated into Borland's C++ IDE, provided that the environment is version 4.02 or later. The software sells for $99.95.

Borland International

100 Borland Way

Scotts Valley, CA 95066

Copyright © 1995, Dr. Dobb's Journal