Lagos — Paradigm International Limited, an indigenous information technology and engineering services company with specialty in software development has taken a giant stride in the in the information technology world as it will next week launch into the Nigerian market series of in-house developed softwares including a software that can translate Nigerian languages called Schools(r). Other softwares are Lingua(r), PrintWatch(r) and PiHyper(r).

According to the chairman of the company Mr. Olumuyiwa Asaolu, a thirty one year old lecturer in Systems Engineering at the University of Lagos, noted that "our products address specific problems in the nation, and are motivated by the desire to contribute positively to meeting societal needs."

He said Schools(r) is a package that can be used to manage the entire information system of Nursery, Primary and Secondary schools.

It is a multi-media facility that can be used to store, retrieve, query and report desired data about the staff, student, inventory and accounts of an institution. It is fully customizable.

Asaolu said that it was made a Shareware in order to encourage automation of elementary schools adding that in the Shareware concept, anyone may copy or use a package and pay for it later should the product be found useful.

Lingua(r) is a word processor and translator for English, Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba and a custom language of the user's choice.

This means that documents may be produced on the computer with native dialects.

He said the application is useful to publishing outfits, religious groups, multimedia and entertainment related organizations, local and foreign educational institutions, business centers, individuals, foreigners and Nigerians in the diaspora.

According to him, it will open up a new world of printed and electronic literature such as in the production and translation of indigenous textbooks, tracts, song books, multi-captioned movies, etc. as well as enhance the learning of other languages.

His companies third product, PrintWatch(r) is an automatic printer monitoring application which will record and can produce thirty-one day reports about the document printing activities on a particular printer or network and loaded with an in-built security that makes the product "tamper-proof."

"With PrintWatch, you can simply produce a report of the details of any print job on your computer," Asaolu said.

PiHyper(r) is a multi-purpose ActiveX control developed for visual programmers which can be used for data reporting, hyperlink navigation, file operations and timer events. Basically, it is a tool for software developers to help the produce more efficient and robust programs.