contact:
Trygve Isaacson
trygve@bombaydigital.com
(http://www.bombaydigital.com)

For Immediate Release

The Gray Council 2.0 Is Available

The Gray Council -- C++ classes implementing the Apple Grayscale Appearance.

Berkeley, California -- December 17, 1996 -- Today marks the release of
version 2.0 of The Gray Council, a set of C++ classes providing the
premiere implementation of the "Apple Grayscale Appearance for System 7."
This is Apple's grayscale user interface design specification recommended
for today's applications, consistent with the future Appearance Manager
default theme. Apple has published the AGA specification, but developers
are left on their own to implement this significant piece of work.

The Gray Council implements the complete set of controls defined by the
Apple Grayscale Appearance specification, including: push buttons, check
boxes, radio buttons, icon "bevel" buttons, scroll bars, sliders, popup
menus, little arrows, disclosure triangles, progress indicators, group
boxes, tab panels (aka tabbed dialogs), separators, gray window
backgrounds, and view border frames.

For programmers using the MacApp and PowerPlant application frameworks, The
Gray Council includes framework "adapter" classes that provide easy
"drop-in" grayscale appearance support.

First released in July 1996, The Gray Council has been steadily enhanced
since then. The newly released version 2.0 adds two major new features:

- Support code for easily adding the Apple Grayscale Appearance to standard
Mac toolbox Dialog Manager alerts and dialogs, using existing dialog
resources. This makes it easy to implement the grayscale appearance with
straight toolbox code that does not use an application framework's view
system.

- Runtime detection of and adaptation to the upcoming Appearance Manager.
At the programmer's discretion, the presence of the Appearance Manager can
cause The Gray Council to "supress" its own handling of the standard system
controls, so that the Appearance Manager will handle the standard system
controls.

Trygve Isaacson, developer of The Gray Council, says the new version 2.0
features complete the picture for developers wanting the best grayscale
user interface today without reducing future Appearance Manager
compatibility. "By having the grayscale appearance code dynamically supress
itself at runtime, applications can provide the grayscale appearance under
System 7, while not getting in the way of the Appearance Manager later."

"The new Dialog Manager adapter is also an important addition, because
whether or not you are using an application framework, you probably have
some interaction with the Dialog Manager. And applications that don't use a
framework usually implement their user interface via the Dialog Manager as
a matter of course. In either case, this lets you give those alerts and
dialogs the grayscale appearance, and it's very straightforward to
implement."

Software developers using The Gray Council find it both powerful and easy
to use.

"The Gray Council is the best and most complete implementation of the Apple
Grayscale Appearance that I've ever seen," says Zig Zichterman, author of
3D Buttons CDEF and Zig's Greyscale Buttons and Windows. "It's faster and
more reliable than other libraries, including Metrowerks' LGA classes for
PowerPlant. I use it in all my grayscale interface work."

"It fills a gap Apple left open in a way that Apple could never have done:
we get modifiable source code targeted for the major development
environments and for a very modest price. Trygve's support has been
excellent and the code is well done," says Mike Fischer, General Manager at
Systematics Softworks GmbH Systemberatung.

"The Gray Council is clean, complete and cheap. It practically plugs itself
into MacApp," says John Bishop of Mulligan Software. "You need The Gray
Council in your object arsenal."

The Gray Council distribution package contains the C++ classes,
example/test applications for PowerPlant, MacApp 3.3.x and r11, and the
Dialog Manager, programming documentation, and the license fee registration
application. It is available for downloading at:

(http://www.bombaydigital.com)

The Gray Council license fee is paid through the Kagi Shareware service.
For use in publicly distributed shareware/freeware applications, The Gray
Council is free. For commercial or in-house developers, The Gray Council is
priced at $10 per developer. Site licenses are $100. There are no runtime
fees. Source and object code redistribution licensing is also available.
The details of the licensing requirements are described in the
documentation contained in the distribution package.

For more information, visit the website (http://www.bombaydigital.com)
Contact Trygve Isaacson at (trygve@bombaydigital.com)

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All Trademarks and Registered Trademarks Are Hereby Acknowledged