From PC Week, November 19 1990
     
     WINDOWS Plan Includes Multimedia, Pen DLLs
     
     
     By Paul M. Sherer
     
     
     LAS VEGAS - Top Microsoft Corp. officials last week outlined the
     company's three-year plan for enhancing Windows, including the
     addition of key OS/2 Presentation Manager (PM) features and widely
     anticipated capabilities such as handwriting recognition and
     multimedia extensions.
     
          In his comdex/Fall keynote address, Microsoft Chairman and CEO
     Bill Gates set forth a conceptual framework, called "Information at
     Your Fingertips," for building easier to use and more powerful
     computer systems that incorporate a range of new technologies,
     including multimedia, handwriting recognition and object orientation.
     
          In subsequent interviews, he and other Microsoft executives
     detailed how the Redmond, Wash., company intends to implement these
     capabilities into existing and future Windows versions and
     applications.
     
          "There are four kinds of evolution going on with Windows," said
     Senior Vice President Steve Ballmer.  "We're refining Windows 3.0,
     we're building extensions for Windows, there's kernel-level [work]
     going on and major functionality enhancements to Windows."
     
          The first of the enhancements will surface later this month,
     when Microsoft releases to developers a set of device drivers,
     dynamic link libraries (DLLs) and formats for building multimedia
     applications that run under Windows3.0, officials said.  The
     multimedia extensions will allow developers to incorporate audio,
     video, animation, synthesized music, and new graphics and other
     formats into their applications.
     
          The next release of Windows, version 3.1, will include
     Microsoft's TrueType scalable font technology and several features
     designed to optimize its use on portable PCs, Gates and Ballmer said.
     
          Version 3.1, slated for release in the first half of next year,
     will be the first Windows version capable of running from ROM, they
     said.  Windows 3.0 does not sufficiently segregate its program code
     from its data, which is necessary to run from ROM, Ballmer explained.
     
          Like the ROM-based DOS used in some laptops, a ROM version of
     Windows will require significantly less RAM and will load much faster
     than from disk.
     
          Another 3.1 feature geared for laptop users will be
     power-management function designed to automatically minimize use of
     battery power when the system is idle, he added.








          Windows 3.1 will also be the first version that can use the
     handwriting-recognition extension Microsoft is developing for release
     next year, Gates said last week.
     
          Like the multimedia extensions planned for this month,
     Microsoft's pen extension to Windows will be a set of DLLs that
     developers can incorporate in their programs to enable them to accept
     handwritten input.
     
          Users of Windows 3.1 will not have to upgrade their copy of
     Windows to exploit such pen-based applications, Gates explained.
     
          "There is no such thing as a version of Windows call Pen
     Windows," he said.  Gates said he expects hardware vendors to be able
     to ship pen-based systems running windows by late 1991.
     
          Further out on the Windows horizon are enhancements borrowed from
     OS/2 and PM, planned for a Windows4.0 release sometime by the end of
     1993, Gates said.  In addition to the object-oriented file system that
     is central to Gates' Information at Your Fingertips vision, Microsoft
     plans to endow Windows 4.0 with some of the more powerful graphics
     functions of PM.  That version will also include 32-bit application
     programming interfaces that will allow it to run on top of OS/2 and
     exploit OS/2's multitasking and multithreading capabilities, Gates and
     Ballmer said.
     
          "In the next generation, Windows should have transforms, Bezier
     curves and paths," Ballmer said, referring to three key graphics
     functions that are built into PM and lacking in Windows.