Harris Computer Systems buys California software firms

Harris Computer Systems has acquired California's Schoolhouse Software Inc. and its subsidiary KnowledgeCore Software Inc.

Ottawa-based Harris, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Toronto's Constellation Software Inc., announced Wednesday that it has completed the purchase of the school food service software maker and sister company KnowledgeCore, which supplies student relationship management solutions for the adult and vocational education market. Both Schoolhouse and KnowledgeCore are based in Sacramento, Calif.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

"This acquisition represents a continuation of our strategy to expand our product offering of software solutions for school districts," stated Jerry Canada, Harris School Solutions executive vice-president.

Computer software to safeguard French

Software to translate foreign words into English as and when Britons or Americans are spoken to abroad has been envisioned by Bill Gates as a sharing tool for the future. Officials in France have brought his dream one step closer to reality, by creating a computer program that automatically replaces Anglo-Saxon terms into their native tongue. But unlike the philanthropic Mr Gates, the French government hopes its software will serve not as an enabler - but as a barrier, to stop English spreading further into its prized parlance. Details of the program, obtained by a national newspaper, reveal it will be installed on all French ministry word processors for civil servants to use by the end of the year. The Terminology Corrector � Le Correctuer Terminologique - will activate when, for example, the word �e-mail� is typed by popping-up the official French alternative �courriel.