[Last modified: May 97]

Answer: The latest version of CDE is 2.1 as announced by OSF in February 1997.
The following is the Open Group's press release:


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT
Jane Smeloff
The Open Group
(617) 621-8997
j.smeloff@opengroup.org

Marilyn Kilcrease
Fleishman Hillard, Inc.
(415) 356-1031
kilcream@fleishman.com

The Open Group Announces Common Desktop Environment 2.1

New features enhance the functionality and ease of use of the widely used
graphical user interface for open desktop computing


CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (February 5, 1997) - The Open Group, the leading
organization for the advancement of open systems, today announced the release
of CDE 2.1, the latest version of The Open Group's Common Desktop Environment.
The current release integrates the Motif 2.0 graphical user interface, X
Window System, and CDE to standardize application presentations in distributed
multi-platform environments.

"As a result of solid cooperation among project participants, we are
delivering significant new features which makes CDE and Motif a unified face
for UNIX environments," said Dave Lounsbury, vice president of collaborative
development. "The CDE 2.1 project was the most extensive collaborative
development effort in the history of The Open Group."

The latest release of CDE features enhanced tools for creating integrated
graphical desktop applications. New features include thread-safe libraries,
64-bit system support, an X-based printing solution that implements a standard
way of printing from any application, an enhanced, SGML-based on-line help
system with a complete documentation set, "on the spot" input, and user-
defined characters for Asian languages. Many capabilities have been added to
ease programming, including traits, which enable user interface objects to
automatically inherit multiple API specifications, and a uniform transfer
model, which offer developers a consistent means of coding the different
data-transfer mechanisms (such as cut-and-paste and drag-and-drop). The new
release also provides a simple means of coding pop-up windows.

CDE 2.1 also incorporates Motif 2.0 user interface objects (widgets) spin box,
combo box, container, and notebook. With this release, the style guides for
CDE and Motif converge.

The fee for a CDE 2.1 full-distribution source code license is $40,000.  An
evaluation copy of source code costs $5,000. To order CDE 2.1, contact Open
Group Direct, at 1-800-268-5245, or send e-mail to direct@opengroup.org.

Introduced in 1995, CDE was jointly developed and licensed by Hewlett-Packard,
IBM, Novell, and SunSoft. Since that time, the technology has evolved within
The Open Group's Pre-Structured Technology (PST) process, a multi-vendor
technology development program. Currently, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Digital Equipment
Corporation and SCO work with the original CDE sponsors, IBM, HP and SunSoft
within the Open Group's PST framework, to provide for the maintenance of CDE
and the development of new releases.

The Common Desktop Environment is a graphical user interface that delivers
consistency and ease of use to system administrators as well as end users.
With CDE, system administrators gain a degree of control over the desktop
computing environment that has often been lost in the move from centralized to
client-server or distributed computing. CDE gives end users access to the
power and flexibility of today's networked desktop systems.

The Open Group

Dedicated to the advancement of multi-vendor information systems, The Open
Group is an international consortium of systems and software vendors and
customers from the industry, government and academia. The Open Group and its
members work together to strengthen and streamline the development process and
availability of open systems. The organization provides a focal point for the
development of international specifications and test suites, standards based
technologies, advanced open systems research, professional services and the
management of the internationally recognized brand for open systems. The Open
Group's brand mark is recognized worldwide and is a guarantee of compliance to
open systems specifications. The Open Group is Headquartered in Cambridge, MA,
with European headquarters in Reading, England and offices in Menlo Park, CA;
Brussels, Belgium; Grenoble, France; and Tokyo, Japan.

The Open Group is a trademark of the Open Software Foundation, Inc. and X/Open
Company Ltd. OSF/Motif and Motif are registered trademarks of The Open Group.
X Window System is a trademark of The Open Group and the X Consortium is a
trademark of The Open Group.  UNIX is a registered trademark in the US and
other countries, licensed exclusively through X/Open Company Ltd. All other
products or company names mentioned are used for identification purposes only,
and may be trademarks of their respective owners.