As part of its continuing devolvement from the World Wide Web it originated (CI No 2,612), the Geneva-based Centre for European Research into Nucleonics has signed a technology transfer agreement with Cambridge, UK-based Harlequin Ltd. Under the deal, Harlequin will continue development and commercialisation of CERN’s WebMaker product, a Web conversion tool for large FrameMaker documents, which is said to enable organisations to publish printed and World Wide Web versions of a document simultaneously. CERN developed WebMaker to convert its base of scientific publications written in Framemaker into Webformat, and the first version was released to the public in the middle of last year. Since then, says CERN, nearly 3,000 copies of WebMaker have been downloaded from its site, and user demand has persuaded the organisation to approach a commercial company to continue its development. Harlequin says that the first commercial version of WebMaker, Version 2.0, will feature support for Unix, Windows and Macintosh, and native graphical user interfaces for each environment, enabling users to construct the format of their Web pages. Shipping and pricing details for it have not yet been decided.
