kg@elan.elan.com (Ken Greer) (08/29/90)
Elan Announces Object Oriented Publishing System
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Easy-To-Use Product Breaks New Ground in
Commercial UNIX Applications
Mountain View, CA, August 1, 1990. -- Elan Computer Group, Inc. today
announced its new electronic publishing system Avalon Publisher (TM).
Avalon Publisher features a complete WYSIWYG interface under X-11 using
the Open Look GUI, and has been designed to provide more power and ease
of use than any other UNIX electronic publishing system available today.
Avalon Publisher offers the sophisticated tools necessary for writing
technical documentation, books, or manuals. It also provides the
flexibility and ease of use needed for other office materials such as
newsletters, memos, reports, or sales and marketing literature.
Two main features distinguish Avalon Publisher from other UNIX
electronic publishing applications making it the easiest to learn and
easiest to use UNIX publishing system available. First, Avalon's
object-oriented user interface gives the user a simple and consistent
way of performing operations on any object of a document. For
instance, a word, a graphic element, or a paragraph are considered
objects, and can be cut, copied, or pasted using the same set of simple
operations. Secondly, using Avalon is further simplified by context
sensitive menus. Only the operations that are appropriate for the
objects selected appear on screen and menus are never more than two
levels deep. Avalon is so easy to use that even a beginner can create
impressive looking documents right away using sophisticated tables,
forms, and graphics, all integrated with text in professional looking
layouts.
A number of Avalon's features will be appreciated by both the experienced
user and novice alike. Avalon comes with sample layouts for several
common office documents. There are ready-made templates for letters,
inter-office memos, outlines, facsimile cover sheets, and overhead
projector slides. Paragraph aligning allows side by side headers and
text, or for parallel presentation of multilingual text.
Avalon handily creates full box and multi-page tables, charts, and
forms. Text can flow to non-adjacent columns or pages for magazine and
newspaper style layout. In addition to its 80,000 word spelling
checker with customizable dictionaries, Avalon includes a 40,000 word
thesaurus which provides alternative words for the word selected. The
illustration palette allows the user to easily create graphics, or
import them in a variety of formats. These and Avalon's many other
powerful features are implemented in a manner that makes them easily
accessible to everyone in the office and makes Avalon a publishing
solution for engineers, management and support staff alike.
Another of Avalon Publisher's firsts is its support for the
Hewlett-Packard line of LaserJet printers. Avalon is the only UNIX
publishing system to fully support the HP LaserJet printer family,
setting a new price point for an economical high quality UNIX
publishing solutions. Of course, Avalon also fully supports PostScript
printers and typesetters including all 35 standard LaserWriter Plus
fonts.
Avalon not only offers technical solutions for electronic publishing,
the floating license built into Avalon provides an economical solution
in two ways. First, users can share Avalon among all workstations and X
terminals on a network. The customer pays only for concurrent use on
the network, providing a great savings over per-CPU or node locked
licensing. Secondly, this shared licensing is implemented with Elan
License Manager and allows Avalon to be offered at a low per user (per
floating license) price.
Avalon Publisher will be licensed for $1295.00 for a single floating license
and server kit, and $995 for each additional floating license on the network.
Avalon is initially available on Sun 4s and SPARCstations under SunOS 4.x
directly from Elan. Versions for the Hewlett Packard 9000 series
under HP-UX, and Digital Equipment Corporation DECstations under
ULTRIX are planned for the last quarter 1990.
Interested VARS, distributers, and re-sellers are invited to contact
Elan for further information on our resale program.
Since its founding in 1985, Elan Computer Group has gained vast
experience in the publishing industry, building on a base of solid
products with worldwide distribution. The company's goal is to become
a major software force helping office workers at all levels to become
more productive and accomplished in their work. Avalon continues the
evolution of the company's product line in electronic publishing.
Sales Information Contact: Bob Taylor
sales@elan.com
Marketing Information Contact: Liz Elms
Elan Computer Group, Inc.
888 Villa Street, 3rd Floor
Mountain View, CA 94041
Phone: 415-964-2200
FAX: 415-964-8588
Avalon, Avalon Publisher, and Elan License Manager are trademarks
of Elan Computer Group, Inc.