Wilmington, Mass. and Calgary / Alberta, May 12, 2003 – Agfa Monotype Corp., a major provider of fonts and font technologies worldwide, and Zi Corporation, a leading provider of intelligent interface solutions, have formed a technology partnership. The alliance was formed to provide manufacturers of wireless and consumer devices with fully interoperable platforms for localized text input and display capabilities. “With Zi’s intelligent, predictive text input software eZiTap and eZiText, coupled with Agfa Monotype’s WorldType fonts and high-performance iType font engine, manufacturers and developers will be able to speed development of new products to reduce time-to-market,” said Steve Kuhlman, vice president and general manager of Display Imaging at Agfa Monotype. “Now manufacturers and developers will be able to implement all necessary text input and display technologies with most of the integration work already completed.” “A significant roadblock to the mass adoption of wireless technologies and services for emerging markets such as India, the Middle East, Africa, and even parts of Asia include the technical challenges manufacturers and developers experience in providing localized and natural language interfaces,” said Jacques LaPointe, director of product management at Zi Corporation. “An example of the collaboration between Agfa Monotype and Zi is found with the Hindi language, where together we deliver the most natural predictive Hindi text input interface for the end user. Jointly, we can satisfy all layout requirements for Hindi text, including the formation and display of ligatures,” he added. “Another example is with Zi’s eZiText Chinese solution, where Agfa Monotype is providing Zi’s customers with an enhanced font set of unique Zi components which further reduce text input keystrokes for the Chinese end user,” said Kuhlman. Zi Corporation’s eZiTap and eZiText were designed to make text entry intuitive and easy to use in almost any written language. Incorporating the technologies into mobile devices enables manufacturers and telecom carriers to provide consumers with richer, more personalized text input experiences. eZiTap is a unique combination of multi-tap, prediction and learning functions that allow for the dynamic creation of vocabulary. eZiText is designed to provide faster and more efficient text messaging through predictive one-touch entry and word completion, based on the ability to ‘learn’ from a person’s usage patterns and behavior. Agfa Monotype’s WorldType font library supports non-Latin and extended-Latin scripts. WorldType font modules are customizable to meet unique requirements, such as supporting multiple languages within specific geographic regions where a product will be used. WorldType fonts can be fully compliant with Unicode 3.0, the worldwide character-encoding standard used in standard operating systems for the global interchange of multilingual digital information. Agfa Monotype offers over 1,300 TrueType fonts and a comprehensive selection of Enhanced Screen Quality typefaces, delta-hinted for optimal screen display, as well as certified fonts that comply with the GB 18030 Chinese character set standard. iType, Agfa Monotype’s TrueType-based font engine, allows for the rapid display of characters at virtually any size. Manufacturers and developers worldwide have licensed iType for memory-constrained consumer devices, collectively representing millions of digital communication devices operating with the technology.