Harlequin (software company)
Encyclopedia
Harlequin was formerly a technology company based in Cambridge, UK and Cambridge, Massachusetts. They specialized in printing applications, graphical applications, law enforcement applications, and programming language implementations. Harlequin employees sometimes referred to themselves as "The 'Late Binding' company" and the company eventually evolved into a Think Tank
for advanced technologies.
After Global Graphics
purchased Harlequin, they spun off the Lisp, AI, and law enforcement application groups as Xanalys
, and they spun off the Harlequin Dylan team as Functional Objects. These organisational changes destroyed Harlequin's Think Tank potential. Global Graphics had acquired Harlequin primarily for the PostScript
technologies, and it still continues to develop and market them under the Harlequin name.
Other products included data analysis tools created using LispWorks
, the Lisp IDE.
The Think Tank
structure of the Harlequin can also be recognized via the development of a flexible and modular memory management system, the Memory Pool System (MPS). MPS was designed
to focus on the Lisp
business.
Several of Harlequin's other assets and technologies have also been acquired and open source
d by companies founded by former Harlequin employees.
in Cambridge
, England, and the first offices were located in the founder's home in Cambridge. The company later moved to an office on Station Road, Cambridge, then in 1989 relocated to Barrington Hall, in the village of Barrington
near Cambridge, which became the permanent company headquarters.
Expansion followed, and Harlequin Limited became The Harlequin Group Limited, with wholly owned subsidiaries in the UK
(Harlequin Limited), the USA (Harlequin, Inc. - office opened in Cambridge, Massachusetts
in 1993) and Australia
(Harlequin Australia Pty Limited).
The company acquired in February 1995 the rights to the Lisp-related technology Lucid Common Lisp of Lucid, Inc., that went out of business the summer before due to financial hardships. Many of the newly hired American Lisp staff had previously worked for Lucid Inc.
and Symbolics
, other Lisp companies which had previously failed. In 1997 the group company became Harlequin Group plc.
At its peak in 1997-1998 the company had over 300 staff. Harlequin had offices in: Cambridge
, England (including Barrington Hall and Longstanton
); Edinburgh
; Manchester
; Cambridge, Massachusetts
; Menlo Park, California
, and several other places.
Due to failed expansion plans, the company was declared bankrupt in the summer of 1999 and went into administration. It was acquired by Global Graphics
, primarily for the PostScript
technologies, which Global Graphics continues to develop and market under the Harlequin name (in 2006). Global Graphics created a subsidiary Xanalys
for the data analysis and LispWorks
businesses. In November 2006, Global moved from Barrington Hall to Cambourne Business Park.
In September 2005 CompuDyne Corporation acquired Xanalys which operated for several years as part of Tiburon, Inc. the Public Safety and Justice division of CompuDyne. In January 2009 Xanalys was acquired by the UK staff based in Manchester and Cambridge. The company continues to sell investigation and analysis tools originally developed by Harlequin (such as Link Explorer and Powercase) to a worldwide market.
Think tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...
for advanced technologies.
After Global Graphics
Global Graphics
Global Graphics SA is a group of companies known for their digital printing products, including the Harlequin and Jaws RIPs. In May 2009 the company launched gDoc Fusion, an edocument builder software application designed for ease of use to create, review, edit, share and archive PDF and XPS...
purchased Harlequin, they spun off the Lisp, AI, and law enforcement application groups as Xanalys
Xanalys
Xanalys Limited is an independent software company founded in January 2009 when the Analytics and Investigative Management division of Tiburon Inc. was acquired by a group of former Xanalys management and engineering staff based in the UK. Various intellectual property and contracts relating to...
, and they spun off the Harlequin Dylan team as Functional Objects. These organisational changes destroyed Harlequin's Think Tank potential. Global Graphics had acquired Harlequin primarily for the PostScript
PostScript
PostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...
technologies, and it still continues to develop and market them under the Harlequin name.
Think Tank products
Harlequin had two main lines of business- digital pre-press (primarily ScriptWorks, a PostScriptPostScriptPostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...
language compatible RIPRaster image processorA raster image processor is a component used in a printing system which produces a raster image also known as a bitmap. The bitmap is then sent to a printing device for output. The input may be a page description in a high-level page description language such as PostScript, Portable Document...
, now selling under the name Harlequin RIPHarlequin RIPThe Harlequin RIP was first released in 1990 under the name “ScriptWorks” running as a command-line application to render PostScript language files under Unix...
), - and modern language development environments (compilerCompilerA compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...
s and IDEIntegrated development environmentAn integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development...
s) for LispLisp programming languageLisp is a family of computer programming languages with a long history and a distinctive, fully parenthesized syntax. Originally specified in 1958, Lisp is the second-oldest high-level programming language in widespread use today; only Fortran is older...
, MLML programming languageML is a general-purpose functional programming language developed by Robin Milner and others in the early 1970s at the University of Edinburgh, whose syntax is inspired by ISWIM...
and DylanDylan programming languageDylan is a multi-paradigm programming language that includes support for functional and object-oriented programming, and is dynamic and reflective while providing a programming model designed to support efficient machine code generation, including fine-grained control over dynamic and static...
.
Other products included data analysis tools created using LispWorks
LispWorks
LispWorks is a commercial implementation and IDE for the Common Lisp programming language. The software runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X , Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and HP UX....
, the Lisp IDE.
The Think Tank
Think tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...
structure of the Harlequin can also be recognized via the development of a flexible and modular memory management system, the Memory Pool System (MPS). MPS was designed
- to support a wide range of requirements from high-speed manual memory management, to complex garbage collection with many different types of reference.
- to support two product ScriptWorks PostScript RIP, and their Harlequin Dylan compiler and IDE for the Dylan programming language.
Think Tank spin offs
In January 2005 employees founded the independently-owned LispWorks LimitedLispWorks
LispWorks is a commercial implementation and IDE for the Common Lisp programming language. The software runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X , Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and HP UX....
to focus on the Lisp
Lisp programming language
Lisp is a family of computer programming languages with a long history and a distinctive, fully parenthesized syntax. Originally specified in 1958, Lisp is the second-oldest high-level programming language in widespread use today; only Fortran is older...
business.
Several of Harlequin's other assets and technologies have also been acquired and open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
d by companies founded by former Harlequin employees.
- Functional Objects Inc was founded in 1999 to continue development and production of the DylanDylan programming languageDylan is a multi-paradigm programming language that includes support for functional and object-oriented programming, and is dynamic and reflective while providing a programming model designed to support efficient machine code generation, including fine-grained control over dynamic and static...
IDE. In 2004 all code was open sourceOpen sourceThe term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
d to The Gwydion Maintainers. They renamed the IDE to Open Dylan. - Ravenbrook Limited acquired the Memory Management Reference, a public resource on memory managementMemory managementMemory management is the act of managing computer memory. The essential requirement of memory management is to provide ways to dynamically allocate portions of memory to programs at their request, and freeing it for reuse when no longer needed. This is critical to the computer system.Several...
and garbage collectionGarbage collection (computer science)In computer science, garbage collection is a form of automatic memory management. The garbage collector, or just collector, attempts to reclaim garbage, or memory occupied by objects that are no longer in use by the program...
, and the Memory Pool SystemMemory Pool SystemThe Memory Pool System is a flexible and modular memory management system that was developed by Harlequin to support both their ScriptWorks PostScript RIP, and their Harlequin Dylan compiler and IDE for the Dylan programming language...
, a flexible memory managerMemory managerIn IBM PC compatible computing, DOS memory management refers to software and techniques employed to give applications access to more than 640K of "conventional memory". The 640kB limit was specific to the IBM PC and close compatibles; other machines running MS-DOS had different limits, for example...
and garbage collectorGarbage collection (computer science)In computer science, garbage collection is a form of automatic memory management. The garbage collector, or just collector, attempts to reclaim garbage, or memory occupied by objects that are no longer in use by the program...
now open sourceOpen sourceThe term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
d.
History
Harlequin Limited was founded in 1987 by Jo MarksJo Marks
Jo Marks, Jonathan Oliver Marks, founded the software company Harlequin. He had worked at the University of Southampton in the Mathematics Department.-External references:***...
in Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
, England, and the first offices were located in the founder's home in Cambridge. The company later moved to an office on Station Road, Cambridge, then in 1989 relocated to Barrington Hall, in the village of Barrington
Barrington, Cambridgeshire
Barrington is a village and civil parish in the South Cambridgeshire district of Cambridgeshire, England. The village is about ten miles south-west of Cambridge, between Haslingfield and Shepreth....
near Cambridge, which became the permanent company headquarters.
Expansion followed, and Harlequin Limited became The Harlequin Group Limited, with wholly owned subsidiaries in the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
(Harlequin Limited), the USA (Harlequin, Inc. - office opened in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
in 1993) and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
(Harlequin Australia Pty Limited).
The company acquired in February 1995 the rights to the Lisp-related technology Lucid Common Lisp of Lucid, Inc., that went out of business the summer before due to financial hardships. Many of the newly hired American Lisp staff had previously worked for Lucid Inc.
Lucid Inc.
Lucid Incorporated was a software development company founded by Richard P. Gabriel in 1984 which went bankrupt in 1994.-Beginnings:Gabriel had been working for Lawrence Livermore National Labs on a computer hardware project called "S1", the first incarnation of which used a CISC processor...
and Symbolics
Symbolics
Symbolics refers to two companies: now-defunct computer manufacturer Symbolics, Inc., and a privately held company that acquired the assets of the former company and continues to sell and maintain the Open Genera Lisp system and the Macsyma computer algebra system.The symbolics.com domain was...
, other Lisp companies which had previously failed. In 1997 the group company became Harlequin Group plc.
At its peak in 1997-1998 the company had over 300 staff. Harlequin had offices in: Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
, England (including Barrington Hall and Longstanton
Longstanton
Longstanton is a village in South Cambridgeshire, England, 6 miles northwest of Cambridge city centre.-History:For most of its history Longstanton was split into two parishes: the larger Long Stanton All Saints to the north and the smaller Long Stanton St. Michael to the south...
); Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
; Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
; Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
; Menlo Park, California
Menlo Park, California
Menlo Park, California is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south; Atherton, North Fair Oaks, and Redwood City...
, and several other places.
Due to failed expansion plans, the company was declared bankrupt in the summer of 1999 and went into administration. It was acquired by Global Graphics
Global Graphics
Global Graphics SA is a group of companies known for their digital printing products, including the Harlequin and Jaws RIPs. In May 2009 the company launched gDoc Fusion, an edocument builder software application designed for ease of use to create, review, edit, share and archive PDF and XPS...
, primarily for the PostScript
PostScript
PostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...
technologies, which Global Graphics continues to develop and market under the Harlequin name (in 2006). Global Graphics created a subsidiary Xanalys
Xanalys
Xanalys Limited is an independent software company founded in January 2009 when the Analytics and Investigative Management division of Tiburon Inc. was acquired by a group of former Xanalys management and engineering staff based in the UK. Various intellectual property and contracts relating to...
for the data analysis and LispWorks
LispWorks
LispWorks is a commercial implementation and IDE for the Common Lisp programming language. The software runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X , Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and HP UX....
businesses. In November 2006, Global moved from Barrington Hall to Cambourne Business Park.
In September 2005 CompuDyne Corporation acquired Xanalys which operated for several years as part of Tiburon, Inc. the Public Safety and Justice division of CompuDyne. In January 2009 Xanalys was acquired by the UK staff based in Manchester and Cambridge. The company continues to sell investigation and analysis tools originally developed by Harlequin (such as Link Explorer and Powercase) to a worldwide market.