Corel chief sees Java hurting Microsoft

"We've had 16 years of Microsoft monopoly," Cowpland said in a keynote speech for the Comdex/Canada show on Friday. "I think people are ready for Java now, because it's an open standard."

Corel plans a Java-optimised version of its WordPerfect application suite for later this year. The graphics giant also showed its Java-based Web publishing tool, codenamed Barista, that lets pages be published with formatting and fonts intact.