Image processing board maker Xionics (Burlington, MA 617-229-7000) has unveiled a visual development tool of their own. More importantly, they've done so as part of a sweeping strategy to make Internet imaging far simpler and more pervasive. The new approach improves both quality and performance of image processing across the Web.
While working to preserve their place in high-end imaging, Xionics is moving to tap the emerging use of images as a data type in mainstream apps like Web pages and Microsoft documents. They've partnered with Imagination (Silver Spring, MD 301-588-8411) and TMSSequoia (Stillwater, OK -- 405-377-0880) to create and sell building blocks for Internet-based imaging systems:
Xionics will OEM Imagination's IMAGinE ActiveX toolkit. Both companies will market PowerToolsX, the visual, 32-bit successor to Xionics' C-level PowerTools kit for customizing their IP boards. PowerToolsX will also support the Xionics XipPrint and Power Lightning boards, along with IMAGinE's usual functions of display, scan, print, OCR/ICR, barcode, mark sense, forms processing and image cleanup.
This is no mere OEM deal. Both companies are working to bring imaging mainstream. Imagination is aggressively adding imaging functions to their core multi-engine product. And they're working to help customers build intranets using their toolkit.
Xionics is extending their domain to include printers and multifunction peripherals as well as scanner controllers and print accelerators. They're also investing heavily in silicon development. Their new XipChip, a multiprocessor CPU, is basically a digital photocopier on a chip. XipChip will find its way into all kinds of imaging peripherals.
These moves, plus the partnership, point to a scenario where imaging devices of all sorts will hook in anywhere on the Internet or intranets. Xionics / Imagination technology will access and manage them. With the right tools and hardware connectivity, you can build, process, access, publish, disseminate, scan and print image-based documents -- from wherever, to wherever.
No-Fuss Development
A key near-term benefit of PowerToolsX is that it moves the development of imaging systems out of the realm of specialists. Today, nearly every company is building a cadre of programmers adept at using a standard and common set of tools -- Visual Basic, Visual Java and the ActiveX tools infrastructure that Microsoft has been releasing for Web site development. Everyone has standardized on those tools. PowerToolsX provides links to imaging peripherals that work with them.
Since the toolkit conforms to the ActiveX architecture, it enhances and expands on standard Internet connectivity options. Use PowerToolsX to integrate imaging peripherals with each other -- and with a Web server you're building.
No need to deal with a vendor-specific, low-level API, such as the C-level PowerTools API that used to be required to program Xionics boards.
Say you call Xionics and ask: "I'm using Microsoft's standard development tools and I just bought PowerToolsX. I want to write a browser-based Java or ActiveX application that integrates scanners. How can I do that?"
Their answer: "PowerToolsX is a standard ActiveX control. Get out your Java or ActiveX programming manual. It will tell you how to integrate these controls into your program." No specialized toolkit or programming skills required. U
Lee Mantelman (LMantelman @aol.com) is president of Knowledge Networking Associates (Jersey City, NJ 201-459-1888). Knowledge Networking specializes in Internet/intranet
document management and
network-based imaging.
