SAN MATEO (11-30-95) - General Magic Inc. is attempting to reposition two technologies -- Magic Cap and Telescript -- as a set of development tools that complement the Java programming language from Sun Microsystems Inc.
The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company will release in the first quarter a World Wide Web version of its Telescript programming language for creating intelligent agents for automating information-gathering tasks.
Putting Telescript on the Internet signals an effort to move away from a proprietary communications environment, such as AT&T's PersonaLink, according to Tony Rutkowski, executive director at the Internet Society, a technical organization in Reston, Va.
"They're moving aggressively into the Internet environment from these closed systems," Rutkowski said. "General Magic is going to be scattering Telescript seeds in a fertile ground [with the Internet]."
The Telescript Web toolkit will be available free to developers through General Magic's Home page.
By attempting this, Telescript will be entering space occupied by Java, another object-oriented, interpreted programming language.
However, the similarities between Java and Telescript end there, according to George Fan, director of Telescript product marketing at General Magic. Telescript will be better suited for creating agents that perform tasks throughout the Internet, while Java will handle user interface tasks better, Fan said.
Others also said Java and Telescript will complement each other.
"It's possible to take the Java platform and reinvent Telescript on top of it," the Internet Society's Rutkowski said. "But you'd be reinventing technology that's been through several years of development and debugging. What will probably ensue is a kind of union between Java and Telescript."
General Magic is at (408) 774-4000; http://www.genmagic.com.
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