EVEN though the concept and promise of 32-bit operating systems is now foremost in computer users' minds, few applications available or under development take full advantage of the benefits that the new operating systems do or will offer.
However, one project-in-development, Micrografx Picture Publisher provides a glimpse into the ways in which 32-bit versions of today's popular applications will change to benefit from the new operating environments.
Typically, image editing is processor-intensive, and with existing 16-bit image editing applications - including Picture Publisher - its users must wait for one operation to complete before executing another.
But Micrografx's product manager, Craig Simmons, said the Windows 32-bit version on Picture Publisher would take advantage of threading, something that provided many benefits in image editing work.
'We thread everything [starting with] opening files,' Mr Simmons said.
He said users could select multiple files from the Open dialog box, and the application would split the process into multiple threads so that the files opened at the same time, rather than sequentially.
To manage the added complexity of threaded applications, Picture Publisher includes a task manager that dynamically shows all active threads and the percentage of work on complete threads.