Agfa to Partner with Spyglass to Incorporate Font Rendering Technology in Advanced Television Implementations.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 3, 1998--

Agfa's scalable font technology and Spyglass's ThinGUI Graphics

Library significantly enhances display quality on televisions.

Agfa Typographic Systems announced today that their patented font rendering technology, Universal Font Scaling Technology(R) (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: [phone]; fax: [phone]; press email inquiries: [e-mail]; 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.

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