newsbytes@clarinet.com (02/04/90)
WATERLOO, ONTARIO, CANADA, 1990 JAN 29 (NB) -- Open Text Systems has been formed to market software developed by researchers at the University of Waterloo here while working on the Oxford English Dictionary. David Terry, marketing director for the new company, told Newsbytes the University of Waterloo is unusual in that it lets faculty retain rights to research they do at the university. Two Waterloo faculty members are principals in Open Text, in which the university does not hold a share, he said. The company's principal product will be PAT, a text search and retrieval system developed by the university's Centre for the New Oxford English Dictionary. Related products are Lector, which displays text marked up for typesetting; Godel, software for implementing a text database management system; and Transformation Tool Set, used to create facilities for converting between text formats. All were developed as part of Waterloo's work on the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, published by Oxford University in England in April of last year. Open Text's software will run on any 32-bit computer system, Terry said, with Unix being the principal platform initially. The company sees reference publishers as its principal market, and will concentrate at first on directory and legal publishers. About 80 percent of first-year sales are likely to be in the United States, Terry said, with some 10 percent in Canada and 10 percent elsewhere. The company is already negotiating with agencies in Europe, he added. (Grant Buckler/19900202/Press Contact: David Terry, Open Text Systems, 519-746-8288)