Agfa to Partner with Spyglass to Incorporate Font Rendering Technology
in Advanced Television Implementations
Agfa's scalable font technology and Spyglass's ThinGUI Graphics Library
significantly enhances display quality on televisions.
San Jose, CA, November 3rd, 1998 - Agfa Typographic Systems announced
today that their patented font rendering technology, Universal Font
Scaling Technology� (UFST) 4.0i, will be made available in the Spyglass
ThinGUI Library.
The Spyglass ThinGUI Library is a small footprint, 2-D graphics library
created specifically for device manufacturers that require a robust user
interface in processor and memory constrained environments. The Spyglass
ThinGUI Library is bundled with Spyglass Device Mosaic Web browser
technology to assure a highly customizable, portable user interface for
television and other non-PC device implementations.
By integrating Agfa's industry-leading UFST 4.0i in the Spyglass ThinGUI
Library, manufacturers and developers will have access to a broader
range of font rendering capabilities that significantly improve the look
of Web content displayed on a television. In addition to providing
industry-standard Latin fonts and simplified, scalable, font generation,
Agfa can also provide non-Latin fonts, which includes Asian font
offerings. This is key to Spyglass' world-wide customer base. These
fonts will speed the process of developing country-specific versions of
both the Spyglass Device Mosaic browser and the Spyglass Device Mail
email product. New versions of these technologies, also announced
today, are on display here at the Embedded Systems Conference in the
Spyglass booth #1636. Agfa is also exhibiting in booth #T313.
"In developing flexible solutions for our customers, it is very
important that our partners provide us with solutions that can be easily
configured for specific customer requirements," said Paul Chapple,
Manager of Business Development for Advanced Television Technologies for
Spyglass. "With Agfa's font solutions, we can enhance our technology
offering by, not only having access to the largest digital type library
in the world, but also by assuring both a high quality television
display and an ability to rapidly develop individual country versions of
our products."
"Spyglass and Agfa share a commitment to develop superior consumer
products and a desire to remain on the forefront of emerging
technologies. We are delighted to be a part of this new initiative,"
stated Doug Shaw, Director of Agfa's OEM Business Unit.
The Spyglass ThinGUI Library allows manufacturers and developers to
employ rich GUI functionality, including graphics primitives, a standard
widget set, and an event-processing model, in the device. It is
designed for non-PC graphics devices such as televisions, set-top boxes
and smart phones. This product can either be bundled with the Spyglass
Device Mosaic Web browser or made available as a standalone product.
Agfa UFST 4.0i
UFST 4.0i is a highly efficient and portable ANSI C-based text-rendering
engine. It has been ported to most leading embedded operating systems
(including Microware OS/9, PowerTV, ISI pSOS) and has been implemented
on a broad variety of hardware platforms (such as Motorola 68xxx, Intel
X86, PowerPC, MIPs, ARM and others). Agfa UFST 4.0i enhances the
readability of text on low-resolution displays by providing an
on-the-fly, antialiased grayscale, scalable text solution for displays,
screens and monitors. UFST 4.0i special effects include back shadow,
drop shadow, emboldening, oblique, outline, rotation, stenciling,
strike-through, transparency, underline and variable aspect ratio for
height and width.
UFST 4.0i is available with Agfa's Screen Font collection. This turnkey
solution provides high-quality display text with reduced memory
requirements. The Agfa Screen Font collection is available in Serif and
San Serif designs, and includes proportional and monospaced font and
icon collections. Character designs in the Agfa Screen Font collection
have been enhanced to minimize contrast and enhance readability. The
collection of 12 specially designed fonts and UFST 4.0i require just
80KB of memory, versus the 700KB normally required for 12 TrueType
fonts.
Spyglass
Spyglass (NASDAQ: SPYG) provides Internet expertise, software and
services for making devices work with the Web. Particularly active in
the cable and satellite television, wireless telecommunications,
consumer electronics and office equipment markets, Spyglass solutions
are used by market-leading companies including GTE, Motorola, NEC,
Nokia, Thomson Consumer Electronics (RCA) and Xerox. Spyglass
headquarters are located at 1240 East Diehl Rd., Naperville, Ill.,
60563; phone: 630.245.6512; fax: 630.245.6693; press email inquiries:
[email protected]; Web site: http://www.spyglass.com.
Agfa Division
Agfa Typographic Systems is the recognized leader of embedded type and
color technologies, multi-language and double-byte font solutions,
high-quality custom type design and owner of the largest digital type
library in the world. Agfa Typographic Systems is a business unit of
the Agfa-Gevaert Group, a leading worldwide manufacturer of imaging
products and systems, with annual sales of $4.5 billion. Headquartered
in Mortsel, Belgium, Agfa-Gevaert is wholly owned by Bayer AG. In the
United States, Agfa operates as a division of Bayer Corporation, with
headquarters in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey. Bayer, headquartered in
Pittsburgh, is a research-based company with major businesses in
chemicals, health care and imaging technologies. Bayer employs 23,500
people. Additional information on Agfa Typographic Systems may be found
on the company's home page at: http://www.agfahome.com/agfatype.
All product names are property of their respective owners.
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