Proteus Data Systems Announces Licensing Agreement with Xara Group Ltd.

St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, December 15, 2005 - Proteus Data Systems, a developer of data transformation and visualization software today announced that it has secured a licensing agreement with Xara Group Ltd. Under the terms of the agreement, Xara will incorporate the Proteus PDF output filter into Xara Xtreme, their industry leading desktop illustration package for Windows. The software components provided by Proteus Data Systems will enable users of Xara Xtreme to generate fully-editable versions of their designs in the industry standard PDF format.

"Prior to working with Xara on a corporate level, our team had long been enthusiastic users of their graphics design applications. We were particularly pleased to be able to have our rendering system integrated as part of Xara Xtreme", comments Mark Rickan, Managing Director of Proteus Data Systems.

"Thanks to the PDF output filter from Proteus we've now got absolute top quality PDF export from Xara Xtreme - our general purpose graphics application that competes with Adobe Illustrator. Our requirements went way beyond the traditional simple PDF, but included support for vector transparency and even graduated transparency - leading edge PDF features. The result is we now believe we have the industry's best PDF export" said Charles Moir, Managing Director of Xara Group Ltd.

Xara Xtreme, equipped with new features that include support for PDF document generation is now available at www.xara.com.

Proteus Data Systems is a developer of data transformation software solutions. Technologies engineered by the company are designed to facilitate the rapid and cost-effective conversion of data into industry standard formats used in the graphics design, visualization and electronic document markets. Proteus One GFX is a retargetable graphics rendering system that can used to add image transformation and visualization capabilities to Windows applications. Designed to be high-speed and light weight, Proteus One GFX offers support for both vector and raster graphics, making it ideal for creating content that maintains its integrity and fidelity across multiple output channels.

Xara has been developing low-cost mass-market software since the early years of the Microcomputer era, in 1981. It has focussed mostly on publishing related software products, starting from Wordwise, a hugely popular Word Processor in the '80s, to desktop publishing software (Impression) and graphics products in the '90s for the Acorn RISC computer. Xara's first Windows product, Xara Studio was quickly snapped up and marketed by Corel in the late '90s. The rights were acquired back from Corel and it has since evolved into Xara X and the most recent Xara Xtreme.

Xara has particularly strong technology and innovation history. It pioneered many of the graphics technologies and techniques used by industry today. It was the first to introduce vector anti-aliasing, the first with vector transparency and graduated transparency, the first vector feathering. Many of its User Interface techniques have been adopted by the industry. The graphics engine that is at the core of the Xara Xtreme still remains the world's most powerful.

The technologies used to create Xara Xtreme have been developed by Xara over the years and incorporates many pioneering features. It has been modelled on the successful Xara X¹ as used by many professional graphics and illustration artists but has been significantly re-engineered to open it up to third-party plug-in developers.