[Please note: this is a text only version of the on-line magazine "OS/2 e-Zine!". OS/2 e-Zine! is a graphical, WWW OS/2 publication and, if possible, should be viewed in its HTML format available on-line or zipped for off-line reading.] OS/2 e-Zine! September 1996 Volume 1 Number 11 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1996 Haligonian Media ISSN 1203-5696 OPINIONS: Editorial Chris' Rant Trevor's Rant Notes from an Infidel the Raves... NeoN 3D Video Taskbar v2.62 RESOURCES: the Beta File Chris' ColorWorks Power Tips Answers from e-Zine! Need for Speed the REXX Files REVIEWS: C/C++ Compilers Misc Reviews Games Borland C++ v2.0 Object Desktop Pro v1.5 MineSweeper 3D v1.0 VisualAge C++ v3.0 UniMaint v5.0 Watcom C/C++ v10.6 Traveling Workplace v1.2 Photo>Graphics v1.0 PROFILE: * Gary Hammer - Interview by Doug Glenn ARTICLES: * Netscape and Wintel - Brett Cohen * IBM and Game Developers - Dave Peterson * Technical Connection CD - Stacy King END NOTES: * NetHead's Nook * The Chronicles of John Ominor * Hot Sellers 1 - the top 10 selling commercial OS/2 applications. * Hot Sellers 2 - the top 10 selling OS/2 shareware applications. ODDS & ENDS: * How to Subscribe to OS/2 e-Zine! for FREE. * How YOU can Sponsor OS/2 e-Zine! * The Sponsors that Make this Issue Possible Copyright 1996 - Haligonian Media ISSN 1203-5696 *********************************** Zealots, Apologists and Netscape ----- Put on your parkas and cover your heads, Hell has frozen over and the sky is falling. At times it seemed it would never happen, but it is now official: Netscape is coming to OS/2. But more about that in a minute. First, some other news: Steven Den Beste is back. I'm sure that makes a few people unhappy. While the overwhelming majority of readers sending us feedback were quite pleased with The View from Outside: Notes from an Infidel, a few were adamantly opposed to its inclusion in OS/2 e-Zine!. So why invite Steven to continue his column? Simple: he writes well and he makes sense. Now before you get all bent out of shape and call me a Windows lover, please remain calm and read on. I am not a Windows lover (although I'm not as devout a Windows detractor as some are, by any means), in fact I am a devout and faithful OS/2 lover. My only infidelities with that "other operating system" come when my loving OS just can't provide me with the utilities I need. Even then, I discreetly take my sordid little affairs to the Boot Manager Motel. Just like keeping a mistress in the guest house would surely insult and anger the human love of my life, I assume that keeping WIN-OS/2 support around would offend my devoted computer sweetheart. No, I'm an OS/2 man to the bone. So why, you ask again, give a forum to what some call an unashamed Windows apologist? Isn't there enough FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) in the mainstream media with the likes of William Zachmann and others shouting the bi-monthly calls of, "OS/2 is dead!"? Well, why not give a forum to an unashamed Windows apologist? OS/2 is a superior operating system. I believe that regardless of past marketing mistakes or any other problems that OS/2 has, it is here forever. It will no more go away than the Macintosh OS or Windows 95 or NT. It will survive, if not based solely on its technical merits, then on the sheer numbers using it. That's the situation as I see it. I believe that so strongly that I see no reason to fear hearing differing opinions. Steven thinks logically and makes his point interestingly so he qualifies for inclusion in these pages as far as merit goes. But having a dissenting opinion sometimes does something much more important than just fill pages. Sometimes it makes us think. My conviction that OS/2 is here to stay is based on my fundamental belief that people will continue to make intelligent decisions about their OS. Not all people will make intelligent decisions of course, but many will. If we stop discussing, arguing, thinking or considering the other guy's perspective though, then even us smart fellows (and ladies) risk becoming automatons. And we all know which OS automatons buy. Why is the Infidel here? To challenge us, because no-one is right all the time. But I guess I should stop before I risk becoming too much of an apologist for an unashamed Windows apologist. So please, keep reading. And thinking. ----- Now, back to Netscape. Shortly before August 28th rumours began flying of an "official" announcement between IBM and Netscape communications and on the 28th, they were confirmed. In a joint teleconference press announcement, Wally Casey, VP of Client Product Management for PSP at IBM, and Bob Lisbonne, VP of Client Product Marketing at Netscape, announced to the world that Netscape is close to releasing the first beta of an OS/2 version of their flagship product, Netscape Navigator. Some will rejoice, some will weep and some will disbelieve, but it is finally happening. After years of perseverance, OS/2 users will get their just reward -- whatever that may be. For all the details from the teleconference, check out our special report this month. ----- Finally this month, a change in programming. Due to circumstances beyond our control, we regret to say that our planned reviews of Avarice: The Final Saga; Hyperwise; and IPF Editor will not make it into this issue. We're sorry for the omission but rest assured that we will be running the two reviews together next month. Thanks for bearing with us. Hey, this is electronic publishing after all. *********************************** Our Sponsors (http://www.bestofos2.com/) Best of OS/2 Your complete OS/2 resource centre. News, demos, catalog of over 150 software products, daily Hobbes Report and links to numerous sites. (http://www.bmtmicro.com/) BMT Micro Your complete source for over 100 of the best OS/2 shareware applications available. Drop by today and check out our WWW catalog or download the .INF version. (http://www.ChipChat.com/home00.html) ChipChat Technology Group ChipChat produces excellent 32-bit OS/2 software for wireless text paging and state-of-the-art multimedia Sound Cards for Micro Channel PS/2 computers. (http://www.bmtmicro.com/catalog/zoc/) EmTec Innovative Software EmTec Innovative Software produces state-of-the-art OS/2 ISDN, modem and telnet communications software. 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COMING SOON: PMView 0.93 (http://www.aescon.com/innoval/) Post Road Mailer The Post Road Mailer is a high performance, 32-bit, email program with drag and drop filing, printing, shredding, word wrap and multiple MIME attachments. (http://www.prominic.com/) Prominic Technologies Software developer and IBM PC VAR preloading OS/2 Warp. Expert staff provides advice on hardware and creates custom software. (http://www.prioritymaster.com/) ScheduPerformance, Inc. Dramatically improve performance on your OS/2 system now with the patented priority scanning logic and visual priority identification of Priority Master II. (http://www.cfw.com/~shenan/) Shenandoah Equipment Co. Providers of lifetime warrantied name brand simms, laptop and printer memory at competitive prices. (http://www.spg-net.com/) SPG Inc. Creators of ColorWorks for OS/2 - The Artist's Ultimate Power Program! ColorWorks has earned both the 1995 OS/2 Magazine Editor's Choice & the 1995 OS/2 Professional Magazine Best New Product Awards. (http://www.aescon.com/innoval/) Surf'nRexx Use REXX to build powerful Internet utilities using our DLLs. Package also includes 10 utilities as samples. *********************************** Chris' Rant - by Chris Wenham ----- It's hardly a surprise that the new craze in software is to develop for the Un-platform. This is where you use some of the latest development tools and methods to write the bulk of your code in a platform-independant 'engine', then compile it effortlessly to Mac\Windows\Unix\OS/2\Set-top-boxes\Cellular phones\whatever. StarDivision's StarOffice was written like this, and as such it's not only available on half a dozen different platforms, it's also available in half a dozen different languages. Corel wants to port their entire office suite to the platform-independant Java language. And IBM has been releasing all their latest cool technologies and gadgetry on Windows and OS/2 and AIX all at the same time. So what's the benefit to all this? As I said, modern tools, techniques and programming languages are making it cheaper, easier and faster to port an application to anything the developer wants. You get the safety of spreading your eggs across more than one basket, the profit from selling to 100% of the market, and the customer loyalty that comes from giving users the freedom to move to whatever platform suits their business. As for distribution, a CD-ROM could hold all of Netscape's 16... oh no... 17 different versions of its browser. Plus, on the Internet, all you need to do is click. Everyone wins. Except, of course, Microsoft, a company that believes it has the right to control the API that developers write for. When Microsoft began to lose control of the Windows API (in the form of WIN-OS/2, SoftWindows for the Mac, and WINE for Unix) the only possible choice was to change the platform and MAKE DAMN SURE it was the new standard. Their grip, their power, and their income are due to that control of the standard. But this new cross-platform strategy puts the user's attention where it belongs -- with the application, and not the operating system. It takes the wind out of Microsoft's sails because now Windows is just another platform, mixed in with the multiples that vendors sell to. Still important, yes, but less and less so each year. The only things that really stand in the way of consumer freedom now, and maybe the last trick up Microsoft's sleeve, are the contracts that exclude a vendor from selling anything but the Windows version of a given application. Nasty pieces of work, but Microsoft still has power and the will to swing it. Never mind the DOJ. But most of all, the cross-platform strategy will be essential for the survival of the modern software company. More computers are being used in more different places than they ever were before and there is no single operating system that suits them all. The days when one platform was used by 80% of the market are over. The Windows platform has been cleaved in half, free Unixes are attracting a hoard of users looking for a bargain, and then of course there's always the 14 million strong OS/2 userbase. Whichever companies have the most portable code will be the ones who make the biggest killing in the next decade. All that remains now is to see if the idea really is a workable one. There's only one kind of person who can guarantee it. You. ----- (http://www.spectra.net/~fox/) Chris Wenham is a Team OS/2er in Binghamton, NY with a catchy-titled company -- (http://www.spectra.net/~pendulum/webworks/) Wenham's Web Works. He has written comedy, sci-fi, HTML, Pascal, C++ and now writes software reviews. *********************************** Trevor's Rant- by Trevor Smith ----- You know those politicians who get up in front of people and declare that they had a speech prepared but they aren't going to give it? Instead they dramatically rip up their cue cards (which are actually blank) and proceed to ad-lib a (carefully prepared) speech. Well, that's what I'm going to do this month. The (blank) cue cards in question were my well thought out and incredibly amusing denouncement of William Zachmann's now infamous posting to CompuServe's Canopus forum. If you're not familiar with the doom and gloom content of Zachmann's posting and the ensuing chaos and flames on the Internet, basically he said top IBM management doesn't care about OS/2 and that they (internally) think it is dead. His was not the first such message to make its way into c.o.os2 newsgroups, into the mainstream press or into my e-mail inbox. But of course, many people (including Mr. Zachmann) feel that he is a highly reliable source due to his "celebrity" in the OS/2 community. (Oh, you should have seen the great satire of this, our collective obsession with "celebrities" and their predictions, that I had concocted. But alas, those cue cards are ripped up...) Frankly, I'm only human and I get discouraged by this kind of news as easily as any OS/2 user. Luckily I was able to get back on track by speaking to some well known OS/2 ISVs and some folks at IBM. After hearing much more positive "predictions" from people who have much closer relationships with "top IBM management", I didn't look back and from the amount of traffic on the newsgroups, it's probably a good thing. I could have spent the rest of the month just reading all the "is too -- is not" posts. Whatever the case, we'll find out eventually and if Mr. Zachmann is as good a diviner as some seem to think he is, I will praise him for his foresight. Here's where I ad-lib my (carefully prepared) replacement speech: But something even more unbelievable came across my desk this month. (A serious look crosses my face as I stare out at my silent audience.) Something 100% verifiable and something that will affect real people right now. And it comes directly from IBM. Many have good cause to shake their fists (or at least their heads) at IBM this month. Wise old Big Blue announced in a document dated July 15th that they had made changes to their "IBM Solution Developer Program". Basically this is an "ISV support" program for a variety of IBM's platforms (including OS/2) where if you want to write an application for one of those platforms and you have technical questions, IBM helps you out. The good news is that it seems pretty much all members of the IBM Solution Developer Program will now have access to a 24hr BBS, "covering over 100 IBM products and technologies." Sounds great right? Wrong. This access grants you the right to ask public questions and perhaps folks (IBM or otherwise) will answer them. But it doesn't guarantee you will get answers. For that you pay. There are three levels of "Guaranteed Technical Support" listed in the document I have in front of me. The first is a public question and answer service via the BBS which has a guaranteed turnaround time of two working days. The price? US$495 for three questions per year. Gasp. Obviously the big drawback to this service (even worse than price or time delay) is its public nature. I'm sure most ISVs don't enjoy the thought of asking their most difficult technical questions in an open forum where all their competitors can observe. Level two is better by nature of its privacy. It offers subscribers answers to six questions per year, via private e-mail, with only a one business day turnaround. How much? US$1,495. Cough. And for those developmentally challenged developers who really need help with their projects, IBM is offering voice q&a (7:00am - 7:00pm CST, Monday - Friday, excluding national holidays). This is a voice mail service with a call back turnaround time of only two business hours. Subscribers (North America only, sorry) get a whopping nine "incidents" per year. US$2,995. Choke. I'm not privy to what the previous details of developer support from IBM were but one ISV confided that the old system was one where, "you called IBM and they didn't get back to you." So I guess this new arrangement is an improvement. And I guess the folks in Redmond are laughing themselves right off their seats. Can you imagine if Microsoft had developer support policies like this? OK, I admit I don't know what Microsoft's support policy is for their developers, but I've been led to believe that they kiss developers', er, hands, to ensure they develop for MS platforms. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) What is IBM thinking? Have they forgotten they're supposed to be making money off us, not their developers? I'm sure Lotus thinks this is a great price. What do they care? With all their IBM infused cash they could pay IBM tech support to write their apps for them. And developers or "partners" in some of the other areas covered by this new agreement might not mind such "pocket change" prices either. But how many OS/2 ISVs are the size of Lotus? I can think of a handful that can easily afford such prices, but why would any sane developer expect to pay for such a service? If MS implemented such a policy I would call it foolish. For IBM to do so with OS/2 developers when they should be encouraging people to write apps for OS/2, I call it ridiculous. Please note, this service is not just for OS/2 developers and is not meant to target them alone as potential sources of revenues for IBM. But they are included in the list of those who will either be coughing up or else getting the cold shoulder. I'm not one who usually prefers to bash our beloved IBM but in this case I'm just stunned. A lot of people argue that IBM only has to push OS/2 properly by taking the inexpensive and obvious steps of helping out ISVs and polishing a few rough edges and it will take off. I agree with this crowd. This latest move of IBM's is a step in the wrong direction. And while members are not charged for this new arrangement if IBM can not provide answers to their questions, not surprisingly, "Except as expressly stated [in the agreement], IBM makes no warranty, express or implied, in connection with these offerings." Uh huh. ----- (editor@haligonian.com) Trevor Smith is the full time editor of OS/2 e-Zine! and part time IBM second-guesser. Now if only IBM would realize he is here... *********************************** The View from Outside: Notes from an Infidel- by Steve Den Beste ----- Last month I tried to give you something to laugh about; this month I'll try to give you something to think about. I grew up surrounded by rainforests in Oregon. My mind-bent has always been towards a system-view of the world (which is why I became a systems engineer, I suppose) and I became interested in ecology very early. A (http://photo.net/samantha/hoh-log.jpg) climax rain forest is a beautiful sight; wonderful to walk in, very peaceful, and it smells like nothing else on earth. But from an ecological point of view, the site of a recent forest fire is a lot more interesting. A fire isn't necessarily a world-ending disaster. A lot of terrain is opened up, and for anything between 100 and 500 years there is a major botanical competition going on. Other things can also open up such opportunities: on May 18, 1980 we got to witness a particularly spectacular "opportunity" when (http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/msh/msh.html) Mt. St. Helens "opened up" several hundred square miles of the (http://pie.wednet.edu/~gpnf/) Gifford Pinchot National Forest. But fires are a lot more common. After a fire, there are opportunist plant species which move fast and seize the ground; mostly grasses and similar ground-cover. For a few years they may prosper, but eventually bushes move in, then small trees, then large trees, and eventually Douglas Firs finish the competition and take over. But though grasses and bushes cannot last forever, there are always new forest fires creating new open areas. So there are always grasses and bushes somewhere. There turns out to be a close relationship between ecology and economics. (This is hardly a new observation: one of the main sources of inspiration for (http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~rsauzier/Darwin.html) Charles Darwin was (gopher://gopher.vt.edu:10010/02/141/1) Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations.) So sometimes it helps to take an ecological view of a market. Generally speaking, in the software industry a product category goes through four phases: birth, adolescence, maturity and senescence. (Think of these respectively as grasses, bushes, trees and forest fires.) Birth takes place when someone has a nifty idea for an entirely new class of product. Of course, more people think they have a brilliant idea than actually do. (One of my favorite aphorisms is "Don't base vast projects on half-vast ideas.") During a short window, the company originating the idea has an effective monopoly on it. Eventually other companies notice and create competing products. Once this happens, the product category enters adolescence. The main characteristic of an adolescent market is that no-one really knows where they are going. New features are constantly tested in the market, with some succeeding and some failing. But eventually there is enough experimenting that the desirable limits of the category have been probed, and users begin to remark "If only I had this feature of this product and that feature of that product in a single package, I'd be ecstatic." The emergence of consensus signals the movement into maturity. As an adolescent market proceeds, products in it tend to diverge, but in a mature market they tend to converge. That's because an image crystallizes of what the ultimate product in the category will be, and the suppliers begin to move purposefully towards that goal, rather than trying to differentiate themselves from their competitors. This isn't plagiarism or anything sordid, it is merely the normal ecology of a maturing market. All successful competitors do it. At the end of this process competing products will be comparable in capability. It is not exactly true that stagnation sets in at this point, but the pace of change certainly slows. And eventually the product category becomes obsolete and the market size starts to shrink. That marks the transition to senescence. This often happens because a new product category has appeared (not a lot of demand for FORTRAN compilers these days), but can be caused simply by loss of interest on the part of customers (no-one markets new text-only adventure games anymore such as Zork). From an ecological standpoint, each of these stages require a different set of talents. Birth requires a stroke of genius and a lot of guts ((http://hfm.umd.umich.edu/histories/edison/tae.html) Edison's "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration"). In an adolescent market, engineering is the star. Products prosper through innovation, which comes from good engineering. In a mature market, since all the products become comparable, customers become concerned more with things like availability, price, support, documentation -- in a word, marketing. Engineering continues to be important, but innovation is no longer key; engineering's job is to develop stable and trustworthy products so that the marketers can sell them well. Once a market reaches senescence, additional massive investment in the product becomes pointless; the market cannot be expanded or even kept level, so excessive investment is simply wasted. The key to maximizing profits is to reduce investment in both engineering and marketing. This is a balancing act: too little and the product will die too soon; too much is simply wasted. It is the fact that each stage requires a different set of talents which makes this so interesting from the point of view of an economic ecologist (a term I just invented). Most people understand why a company usually doesn't survive the transition from birth to adolescence. On a feature-basis, they usually don't keep up. What is less well understood is the transition from adolescence to maturity, with the consequent de-emphasis on engineering innovation. (It's not that they stop trying to innovate; it's just that the lode is pretty much mined out.) Engineers in particular tend to think that an adolescent market can continue forever, and that great engineering will continue to be the star of the show. (Sort of like the aging actress who won't accept the change from playing (http://www.tesser.com/csf/hamlet.htm) Ophelia to playing (http://www.tesser.com/csf/hamlet.htm) Gertrude.) Usually the total number of vendors shrinks dramatically in the transition to maturity, sometimes to as little as one (if for no other reason because of the advantages of economy of scale). And because the companies who get shook out are usually the ones who continue to emphasize engineering, engineers tend to think that something sinister has happened. "It just isn't natural for engineering to cease to be the star. Innovation should continue to be central forever. There must be a (http://www.arklatex.com/sjgames/illuminati/50awful.html) plot." The spreadsheet market is now mature. There is little important difference between Lotus (http://www.lotus.com/123/) 1-2-3 and Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/msexcel/) Excel. The difference in their market success lies in how they are sold, not in how they are engineered. Understand that the statements I've made are all broad generalizations, and there will be individual exceptions. In an adolescent market there will be customers who are price-driven, and in a mature market there will be customers who are feature-driven. But the majority will go the other way. Likewise, in a mature market there will occasionally be significant innovation, but such advantages will be fleeting. The PC operating system market has made the transition from adolescence to maturity. The rules have changed and the requirements for success are now different. Bush strategies will lose to tree strategies in the long run. It is difficult to pinpoint precisely when the transition took place, but if I had to do so I would make it the release of Win 95. Don't misunderstand me: it is not that I think Win 95 is the ultimate operating system, but it represents a movement towards a unified vision of the ultimate operating system -- the first step of a long walk, if you please. It shows that a consensus has emerged, because Win 95 represents a dramatic break from Win 3.1 with its changed GUI -- which as has been pointed out is much more similar to the Mac and to OS/2 than was the case for Win 3.1. OS/2 2.1 and Win 3.1 were extremely different. Win 95 and Warp are more similar than that, and Merlin and NT 4.0 are even more similar (though not by any stretch of the imagination identical). I do not mean to imply that there is no longer any technical difference between them, but there is less difference than between previous generations of products. There is every reason to believe that in future the technical differences will cease to be important entirely, except to spec-sheet fetishists. (You know the type: the (http://www.voyagerco.com/spinaltap/) ones whose volume controls go to 11 instead of 10.) The mark of a mature market is convergence, and that is what we are seeing. And the star of the show is marketing, not engineering. The goal of successful marketing is to position your product so that customers think it is the best one to solve their problems. Unsuccessful marketing consists of emphasizing the wrong things. If a customer looks at your advertising and says "So what?", you've blown it. (Note also that advertising is only one small piece of marketing.) In the PC operating system market right now, lists of reasons why Merlin is technically superior to NT are becoming uninteresting. Technical comparison is a bush strategy in a what is rapidly becoming a tree market. Tree strategies are preload deals, investment in effective advertising, proper product targeting, aggressive enlistment of support from ISVs and retail sellers, publicity, and good relations with the independent media. Does this sound like anyone you know? More important, does it sound different from someone you know? That's why Win 95 is outselling Warp, and why I think that NT 4.0 will outsell Merlin unless IBM dramatically changes course. ((denbeste@world.std.com) Steve will be back next month if he can find his way out of the forest he's gotten himself lost in.) ----- (denbeste@world.std.com) Steve Den Beste dropped out of college in 1975 when he was offered a full time job and never looked back. Since then, he has worked on products as varied as logic analyzers, factory automation, wide area networks, medical equipment and robotics. He has been programming microprocessors since the days of the Intel 8008 (talk about stone knives and bear skins) and antagonizing folks in c.o.o.a since 1996. *********************************** The response from inside: notes to an Infidel For those who are interested here are some samples and some thoughts on the mail I received from last month's article. Trevor and I both approached the beginning of August with intense trepidation. As 08/01 got closer, we exchanged e-mail speculating on whether, and how badly, we were both going to get flamed. I am pleased (and quite relieved) to say that I didn't receive a single negative letter. (Of course, this month's installment may change all that.) Someone named "Ron" sent me mail I need to answer, but since his return address was "email_user_id@email_address" it was rather difficult. I would appreciate another letter with a valid return address. (The gist of my answer is "It wasn't you", but I'd like to substantiate that.) One woman asked me why none of my advertisements targeted women. Well! Never let it be said that I was not fair: I'll make fun of anyone. So, Rebecca, just for you: Wide shot of Jane (young, pretty, and of course (http://www.misty.com/laughweb/canonical.lists/blonde.jokes) blonde) working at a computer -- she breaks a nail and looks annoyed. Cut to her walking up to her manicurist and sitting down. (Remember the one who soaks in detergent? Think of her.) "Oh, Marge, I broke another nail on my computer keyboard today." "Well, Jane, one of my other clients tells me that OS/2 Warp has Voice Type Dictation, which permits you to speak rather than type to your computer." "That sounds great! I'll try it." Wipe to Jane walking in the front of a computer store; music in the background. The next sequence has no sound other than music, with MTV-fast-cutting of images: Jane talks to a clerk. The clerk points to a shelf. Jane looks at the shelf. Close shot of the Warp package showing its logo. Jane picks it up and looks happy. Other customers watch this, nod and approve. Jane walks out of the store looking happy. Cut to Jane sitting at her computer wearing a headset talking to her computer while filing her 10 long unbroken nails, looking even happier (it was everything she dreamed of). Zoom over-the-shoulder to her screen showing her words appearing as she speaks. Pan back to show her boss (male, of course; older, balding, but good looking in a middle-aged virile sort of way) complimenting her on the quality of her work. Fade to black. OK, is there anyone else I've left out? Chris (and a couple of other people) wrote to say he liked the link to Elle MacPherson (sigh). I guess sex really does sell. I won't always be able to fit funny links into every article (though I'll do links when they make sense) but I'll try to put a small list of favorite links at the end of the article just to make sure there's something worth reading. So here they are: Here's a (http://www.netaxs.com/~cparker/) link to make you laugh. Here's a (http://www.conspire.com/) link to make you cry. Here's a (http://www.research.ibm.com/massdist/vb95a.html) link to make you think. Here's a (http://www.milk.com/wall-o-shame/evolution-in-action.html) link to make you wonder. Here's a (http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/BL/blacklist.html) link to make you mad. Here's a (http://studentweb.tulane.edu/~envnm/kathy.html) link to pictures of a pretty girl. (Sorry, Rebecca, you'll have to find your own cheap thrills. I'm not that fair.) *********************************** the Rave: NeoN 3D Demo Tape ----- It's no secret to those that have seen it that NeoN 3D is an amazing program. It's an animator's dream and it runs native on an OS/2 machine. It's been garnering great reviews everywhere it goes. But what about those who haven't seen it? Well those without US$800 that are eager to see what NeoN can do are in luck. Team Computer, makers of NeoN, have produced a short six and a half minute video showcasing some of the software's abilities. As unorthodox as it sounds I've really got to rave about this demo tape -- it's just that cool! The tape came to OS/2 e-Zine! 's offices compliments of Indelible Blue and we eagerly popped it in the VCR and had a look. Chances are if you've ever gone to a computer show, you've seen a similar tape. It's filled with endless virtual worlds and rendered "lifeforms". It's really quite amazing. But seeing such a tape and "oohing" and "ahing" at a show is one thing; realizing that these scenes were generated on an OS/2 machine, very possibly just like the one on your desk, is quite another. Of course this demo tape isn't going to make casual users run out and drop $800 to buy NeoN 3D, but it might do a few other things. It might make casual users investigate the much lower priced (about US$80) NeoN Lite. It might make a really cool demo for your local users group or your OS/2 retail store. Or it might just make non-OS/2 graphics professionals sit up and take notice -- of OS/2 and NeoN as a serious contender. This stuff is absolute top quality animation. The tape even includes some pieces that appear to be scenes animated as advertisements for European Television stations (customers of Team Computer's?). While this video is relatively short and not an "instructional" video (it shows what NeoN does, not how it does it), it really will amaze all who see it, from the uninitiated to the high end animation professional. Starting out with a strange ghost figure on screen and some equally bizarre music effects that made us wonder if it was a demo or a B Grade horror movie, the tape quickly jumped into nonstop rendered and animated, tanks, insects, clocks, bouncing balls, gears, generally weird stuff and so on. And the sound track got much better too. Anyone wanting to purchase the video in North America can call Indelible Blue at (800) 776-8284. (At the time of this writing they were still adding it to their ordering system but by the time you read this, they should have it sorted out.) The tape sells for around US$20 but IB has told us they will provide a free copy to resellers who wish to carry NeoN GRAFIX 3D. Resellers should contact FutureSource at (888) 522-3000 or (919) 878-3951. European customers should contact COMPO Software directly, who handles distribution in Europe for Team Computer. ----- * NeoN 3D Demo Tape by Team Computer MSRP: US$20 *********************************** the Rave: Taskbar v2.62- by David Gaskill ----- Have you noticed when you go to see a senior executive in his office that, not infrequently, mostly what you see is the back of his gigantic monitor? Senior executives have big monitors. Very senior executives have very big monitors. (I sometimes wonder what they do with those acres of phosphor, sales projection bottom left, Quake top right?) I like to see my visitors; whether they like to see me or would prefer the back of a large monitor is another matter. I have a 14 inch monitor. It is the type that doesn't bother to scan the whole of the screen so the actual diagonal of the scanned area measures nearer 12 inches. "How do you manage with a postage stamp size screen?" you ask; some have even inquired unkindly where I keep the microscope. The answer to the problem is not a microscope but a magnificent little utility called Taskbar. Because of my restricted screen acreage I run nearly everything full screen. Taskbar puts a coloured line down one side of the screen. (Which of the four sides, the colour and thickness of the line can all be selected.) When the mouse pointer hits the line a margin appears in which are displayed the icons and names of all open windows and applications. I left click an icon and that window is brought to the top of the Z order, right click and a list of options is presented, maximise, minimise, etc.), click both mouse buttons and the application is closed. But wait, there is more; touch the line at the edge of the screen and in addition to the list of open applications, the launchpad is displayed so that I can start additional applications. The real beauty of Taskbar is that as soon as I move the mouse pointer away from the icon display it closes leaving me an uncluttered screen on which to work. So you don't want to display icons of applications that you always have running, (NPSWPS, VoiceType, etc.) when you touch the edge of the screen? Another setting in Taskbar allows you to determine which applications should be ignored and not have their icons and names displayed when the margin is touched. The thing is an indispensable masterpiece. Do I hear cries of, "What about Object Desktop"? I have it, and a very fine piece of software it is too. I was in the early experience programme and like to think I contributed something. The discs (for v1.5) currently live in the box with the original version of OS/2. If you have got the room for all the things it provides and like to know what is going on underneath the hood then there is nothing better; but for simple souls like me with little monitors, Taskbar is truly indispensable. ----- * Taskbar v2.62 by (ryoder@ibm.net) Rick Yoder download from (ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/os2/wpsutil/tskbr262.zip) Hobbes (ZIP, 417K) MSRP: US$15 ----- (david@cgaski.u-net.com) David Gaskill, who lives in North West England, is keyboard illiterate and uses VoiceType and other OS/2 applications in his attempts to scrape a living as a Project Consultant. *********************************** the Beta File ----- Welcome back to the Beta File, your source for the latest breaking news in OS/2 beta development. Every month we scour the OS/2 world to bring you interesting news of OS/2 software in development. If you have a product that you're sure is going to be the next killer app, or you want a little free exposure for your beta test drop us a note! *** For months now, a dedicated Stanford student named (amitp@cs.stanford.edu) Amit Patel has been tinkering with what could become a really great game in the tradition of SimCity, Warcraft and those that hope to be combinations of the two. The name of this OS/2 only game in the making is SimBlob. SimBlob is a strategy/simulation game with an emphasis on a dynamic world that can be changed by the players. Instead of generating a world at the beginning of the game and using the same map until the end of the game, SimBlob changes the map as the game progresses. Trees and grass grow, rain falls, seasons pass, rivers flood or change course, mountains erode, and volcanos erupt. The players can also change the map by building walls, cutting down trees, building irrigation canals, altering paths of rivers, and burning down forests. These features create new opportunities in warfare: burning down your opponent's forests, diverting a river away from his town, and destroying a dam to flood a valley are just some of the tactics that make this game different from other strategy/simulation games. There is no formal beta testing procedure at this time. Instead, anyone can download a current version of the game from the (http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/games.html) web site and send in comments. It's more of a "simulation" and less of a "game" at this point, since there are no opponents and there is no warfare yet. Still, it can be a lot of fun if you're the type of person who enjoys something like SimCity. The author says, "I once started playing in the morning and didn't get up for six hours!" Most of the testing so far has been done by a handful of people over the last eight months. Patel tells us that he hopes to have the game mostly complete by the middle of 1997. He is unsure if it will be a shareware, commercial or combination shareware/commercial release. It's possible he will make a "simulation" (with no opponents or warfare) completely free, and sell the full game either as shareware or a commercial product. Expect a price in the US$60-US$70 range if it is commercial, or US$20-US$30 if shareware. When asked why he is making a game that mimics characteristics of other games already years old, Patel said: There were a lot of things that I thought when playing other games of the flavor, "If they had allowed this, the game would've been much cooler." I took the things that I wanted from SimCity, Civilization, Dune II, and Warcraft, and came up with a game that combined my favorite parts of those games and the extras that I wish they had. The result is SimBlob. I'm really writing the game for my own enjoyment, and not primarily as something I can sell to others. *** Still in the games department, this time with an old classic, we have Rexx-Adventure by (desantom@io.com) Mike DeSanto. Rexx-Adventure is a text based adventure game that has been kicking around the Internet for some time but has been neglected by some. The software is actually an engine for writing and playing text adventures. Unlike existing languages (AGT, TADS, Inform, etc.) Rexx-Adventure uses a point and click interface. This stops "guess the verb" problems present in many text adventure games before they start. About 6 testers have been working on this latest incarnation of Rexx-Adventure for about 3 months and the author is still accepting Beta participants. Since Rexx-Adventure is Freeware, there is little difference between beta testing and using the finished product. Just download it from (http://www.io.com/~desantom/) the web page and send comments to (desantom@io.com) the author. The new version should be finished for October 1996 and it will be Freeware. *** And for those who still claim that OS/2 has no game developers committed to the platform, here is yet another slick new offering just entering beta testing. This month, many were thrilled to learn that Northwind soft is working on a new arcade-style game for both the DOS and OS/2 platforms. When questioned about the decision to commit to both platforms, the (Northwind@dk-online.dk) author commented: To be Honest with you, the OS/2 version came about as a coincidence. When I looked for a programmer for Drilling Billy I had only the DOS version in mind, but as it turned out that programmer was an OS/2 fan and he argued strongly for an OS/2 version. As a coincidence I'm an old Amiga fan myself and I can see the wisdom in releasing software to a devoted but neglected market like OS/2. Right on! The game is to be named, Drilling Billy, and no, it's not a chase Bill Gates around a maze game. It is a super hi-resolution graphics Lode Runner or Dig Dug type game and that has a lot of people excited. The game is not meant to be highly innovative but rather to be as playable and enjoyable as possible. The testing of the game has been done internally by the company for the last 5 months but external beta testers will be solicited soon. Stay tuned to their (http://www2.dk-online.dk/users/games/billy.htm) home page for more details. And while you're there, check out the amazing graphics that will be included! A playable demo is promised shortly after the time of this writing. Expect the final product by December '96. The price should be around US$40 or US$50 and it will be a commercial product. This should be a game to watch, because as the developers say, "This game is being made by computer enthusiasts who have worked hard with no salary but with high hopes for the future." *** As always, there is activity on the Internet software front in the OS/2 community. Jerry Levy has just released YarnDial v1.32 beta. YarnDial is, of course, a front end for Chin Huang's off-line OS/2 usenet news applications, Yarn and Souper. The program is written in REXX; is fully menu-driven; automates dialup, login, fetching and/or sending of mail, news and posts; accommodates several dialers for implementing SL/IP and PPP connections to your provider(s); and facilitates setup. Normal setup if Yarn and Souper are up and running takes under two minutes. And detailed documentation with step-by-step instructions for setting up Yarn and Souper are included in the event help there is needed This beta is open to anyone. So far, about a dozen people have worked closely with the author and the estimated completion date for this version is October 1, 1996. YarnDial, like Yarn and Souper themselves, is Freeware, and will stay as such. For more information, contact (jlevy@ibm.net) the author. *** Some of the biggest rumblings on the 'net this past month were caused by the folks in Germany at StarDivision GmbH. The news, of course, is that StarOffice 3.1 for OS/2, the international version, is now in beta testing. This version will be available in English, French, Dutch, Italian and Spanish. StarOffice 3.1 is a suite of office productivity applications containing StarWriter 3.1 (word processor), StarCalc 3.1 (spreadsheet), StarDraw 3.1 (graphics and presentation package), StarImage 3.1 (image manipulation) and StarChart 3.1 (bar-, pie- and other charts). StarOffice also contains a complete WYSIWYG HTML editor that allows drag&drop between the bookmark window and the edit window and offers upload capabilities for pages via HTTP and FTP. It supports HTML 3.0, Netscape Plug Ins and other leading-edge technologies. The Beta version of StarOffice 3.1 for OS/2 can be downloaded from any of the StarDivision mirror sites. The complete list of all mirror sites can found at (http://www.stardivision.com/download/sites/so31_os2.html) their web site. The international full version of StarOffice for OS/2 will be available in the third quarter of 1996. Pricing has still not been announced but to receive regular news concerning the international version OS/2ers can send e-mail to (info-os2.stardivision.com) info-os2.stardivision.com. For further info, call StarDivision in Germany at: 040 23 646 810. *** And what's the biggest beta news on the planet right now? The OS-formerly-known-as-Merlin of course. IBM quietly released a more or less final gamma version of Merlin to somewhere between fifty and a few hundred testers in the last few weeks of August. The chaotic reams of bug reports characteristic of the beta were replaced by mostly positive comments on the 'net and in industry publications but, as with most software tests, there were detractors too. We'll all get a chance to see what IBM can do in about a month's time. The current buzz is that late September will see an official product announcement and in fact this has been verified by sources at IBM's Media Relations. Sources tell us that September 25th is indeed the magic day and the grand event is scheduled to take place in SanFrancisco at 11:00 am local time. A one hour announcement will be followed by a two hour showcase. While IBM claims they will have OS/2 v4.0 in users' hands by September 28th, some folks tell us that the actual product will not be available in Canada until the second week of October. It is possible that releases outside of the US will lag somewhat. Strongly believed now is the fact that the CD Sampler of independent software vendors' products to be included with the release will include some form of WordPro, the StarOffice Suite and various other big name products. *** Did I say the biggest beta news on the planet? As hard as it is to believe, there is news to rival the launch of OS/2 Warp v4.0 this month. Mozilla/2 is coming. Netscape and IBM announced in a joint teleconference late in August that they would ship a beta version of Netscape Navigator v2.02i for OS/2 in the first few weeks of September. The beta will be freely available from Netscape or IBM to users of OS/2 Warp v3.0 and testers of Merlin. When OS/2 v4.0 ships, it will contain an automatically installed Netscape/2 icon on the Desktop which will link users to a site for immediate download of the beta. The beta, like the final product, will be free of charge to all OS/2 users, but users of Warp v3.0 will have to purchase a separate Java Update Kit if they want to take advantage of the Java capabilities of Netscape Navigator. Other features to be included are drag and drop support, speech navigation support (for the Warp v4.0 version), QuickList migration tools and plug-in APIs. Both companies say that the beta will be wrapped up in early October, a few weeks after Warp v4.0 ships. For complete details of the Netscape/IBM teleconference, see our coverage in this issue. *********************************** Chris' ColorWorks Powertips- by Chris Wenham ----- Advanced Selection Mr. Darwin would be proud. Tips work in both ColorWorks 1+ and 2.0 To select an area of pixels in an image, most popular programs will give you the 'marching ants' or dotted-line selection tools. The basic problem with these is that you have very little flexibility when drawing them, limited options to edit the outline and with complex selections the dotted line can dissolve into a mess of gray static with no clear and immediate indication of what is or what is not part of the selection. The approach of ColorWorks is to let you paint the selection mask with any of the regular tools, with the power to use a mix of tools to define the same mask and erase portions of it the same way too. To select a pie shaped area I can use the circle tool to define the circle of the pie and then delete a slice with the triangle tool. The other benefit is that selected pixels are painted with a marker color, so there are no dotted lines to confuse -- you can tell instantly what's selected. But the easiest way to select irregular shapes, by far, is with the floodfill tool. In other programs the same method would be called the 'magic wand.' By changing the tolerances ColorWorks uses to decide if the next pixel is in the same 'family' as the starting point, you can instantly select large areas of irregularly shaped, and irregularly colored pixels. For example, to fill the sky in an image that has many different shades of blue you'd use a fill based mostly on hue. To fill a dark background made up of different colors that are surrounding a brighter object in the foreground, you'd use a fill based on luminosity Let's work with the RACECAR.TIF image that comes with ColorWorks. There are three objects here that could be selected, the racecar, the road, and the grassy background. Using a simple fill with no tolerances manages to mask all of one pixel. Why? Well because in this photographic image there are very few areas where there are continuous spaces of same-color pixels. Because the road is mostly grey a hue based fill will work the best here. Double-click on the fill tool to bring up its settings notebook, then click on the "HLS" radio button. Enter 40 for Hue tolerance, 20 for lightness (since there are lighter and darker streaks of grey in the road) and just 10 for Saturation. Now use the fill tool and click somewhere on the road, you'll notice a dramatic difference from when you didn't use any tolerances at all. The shadow of the car was dark enough that it fell outside of the lightness tolerance and the white strip along the side of the road stopped the fill before it got to the background (which is green and brown anyway, falling outside of the hue's tolerance). Remember that the starting point you choose affects the results. If at first you're getting a lot of 'dirt' from pixels that didn't fall within the tolerance, try picking a different starting point. So if the 'dirt' pixels are dark, choose a darker starting point to embrace that lower range. For another example, the '5' on the door of the car, being in a shadow, was selected easily with a saturation based fill. The tolerances were Saturation: 40, Lightness: 20 (try it with a lower lightness, the brighter top of the '5' doesn't get selected), and Hue: 10. How to detect edges ColorWorks detects the edges in an image by comparing the difference in brightness between neighboring pixels. Usually, if the difference in brightness is 40% or more, ColorWorks will consider it an edge. This threshold is used in some of the effects such as the Smoothing lab and the Sharpening lab, where you can change the value to something other than the default 40. In most cases it won't be necessary to change it. Q & A Center I note your article drawing a neat pill shaped button ((http://www.haligonian.com/os2/v1n10/powertip.htm) Curves and Highlights, Vol 1 Nr. 10). I recently purchased Color works V2 and note that I cannot draw an item less than 100x100 pixels or with a transparent background. This has been confirmed by SPG and may be fixed in V3. Your button is smaller than 100x100 and is transparent -- How did you make it seem so simple??? - (steve71@ibm.net) Steve Edmonds The trick I use is to have a copy of Galleria running alongside ColorWorks. I then create the image in a 100x100 canvas. Once finished I flip into mask mode and use the rectangle tool to mask the part of the image I want to save. Press CTRL-F (or pick 'Save and float image mask' from the Edit menu) to float the image, then pick 'Cut' from the Edit menu. Go to Galleria, select PASTE from its menu and the image is pasted into Galleria's window. With Galleria I can then reduce the color depth to 256 or lower (since .GIF can't handle 24-bit truecolor images) and save as a transparent GIF. Galleria will give you a palette of colors to pick the transparent color from after you confirm the filename to save as. Readers Tips "I've found an easy way to make quick duplicates of the current canvas you're working on. Just go into mask mode, paint the canvas with the full-canvas tool, press CTRL-F to float the mask, and drag onto the ColorWorks desktop." - Joe Anybody, Somewhere, Idano RTFM On page 126 of the ColorWorks 2.0 manual there's an exercise in using 8-bit masks which also teaches you how to do some very cool 3D extruded text/figure effects (the technique is excellent for web page titles). For those of you with the CD-ROM only version, it's lesson #10 in the "Learning ColorWorks, On-Line Exercises" section. Download Depot (ftp://ftp.cd-rom.com/.4/os2/graphics/galler23.zip) Galleria (ZIP, 500K) -- Handy file viewing program that you can paste images smaller than 100x100 from ColorWorks into. Has .GIF transparency support. SPG News (http://www.spg-net.com) SPG's Homepage All quiet on the western front so far. SPG is deep in the process of getting version 3.0 ready for Beta soon, with a GA release sometime in Q1 of 1997. SPG is also planning to release a new technique lesson soon about Image restoration and repair. I should be smacked with a wet noodle for not mentioning this page earlier, visit (http://www.ibm.co.at/boepa/cw/) The ColorWorks PowerPage maintained by Michael Widmann for even more tips and a gallery of images, all created with ColorWorks. ----- (http://www.spectra.net/~fox/) Chris Wenham is a Team OS/2er in Binghamton, NY and president of his own company -- (http://www.spectra.net/~pendulum/webworks/) Wenham's Web Works. He has written comedy, sci-fi, HTML, Pascal, C++ and will work for tips. *********************************** Answers from e-Zine! ----- Welcome back to your source for answers to all your OS/2 questions! Each month we bring you tips, tricks, questions and answers from our readers and contributors. If you've got a question or tip you would like to share with us, (editor@haligonian.com) send it in! ----- Q -- Whenever I dial into my local ISP, I get strange errors reporting "invalid fcs" or something. I am using Warp (Red) and Merlin but it happens with both. I started getting the errors after changing ISP's. Why is this happening? A -- Do you remember watching a Zmodem file transfer? You know, using an ordinary DOS modem program like Qmodem downloading a file from an ordinary BBS? (Nostalgia sets in.) Did you ever notice how every once in a while, Zmodem would indicate that an error occurred, and would retransmit one or more data blocks? Well, this "invalid fcs" error is the PPP equivalent. It simply means that a data packet has been received that was not "up to snuff", and a retransmission is required. The cleaner the connection, the less frequently this will occur. When I call my ISP using their analog phone lines, I seldom connect faster than 24,000 bps, and get occasional "invalid fcs" messages. They also have digital lines (not ISDN, but digitized voice lines), as does the phone service within my subdivision; when I call using one of those, I always connect at 28,800 bps and never see "invalid fcs" messages. The bottom line is simply to work on improving the quality of your modem connections. An occasional "invalid fcs" message is nothing to worry about. It's not a problem you can fix with software. - (lbristol@flash.net) Larry Bristol ----- Q -- How can I generate a set of floppies so that I can then perform an OS/2 boot that will allow me to run minimum OS2 and DOS full screen sessions (not WIN-OS/2) with HPFS support? Although I can backup OS2 from HPFS to tape using the supplied DOS program under OS2 I cannot write to HPFS from DOS. A -- To do this with floppies is probably impossible, as the DOS support takes up about 1 to 1.5 megs. You might want to do what I have done, that is set up an "OS/2 maintenance" partition which boots to an OS/2 command line and allows DOS sessions. I created it using the BOOTOS2 utility (which has various options, one of them being what I just described). My maintenance partition is a 8 MB partition at the end of my drive. - (eahallbe@ibm.net) Ethan Hall-Beyer ----- Q -- I am running Ultimail Lite v2.10.010... I have been unable to use it to read mail EVER! Every time I click on either In-Basket, New Letter, or Mail Cabinet, it says "Ultimail is initializing", a percentage bar appears, goes up to around 60% and then shows me a dialog box that asks for "username", "password", "real name", and the "reply domain". I fill them in and click "OK" and it says, "New user information changed, others fields ignored" (along the lines of that), and it still waits at that dialog as if waiting for the right entries or something. The only way out is for me to "CLOSE" that dialog box. Ultimedia then starts but all the options for creating mail and reading mail are disabled (greyed out). HELP!!!!!!!! A -- I have a document that explains some problems with UltiMail, including your problem. This document recommends a full reinstall with the updated UltiMail files from the Retrieve Software Updates facility and then to do the following: 1. Open an OS/2 Window. 2. Type CD TCPIP\UMAIL, and press Enter. 3. At the X:\TCPIP\UMAIL prompt, type E UMAIL.PRO and press Enter. 4. Go to the end of the file and add the following lines: :USER name = 'bbbbbb bbbbbb' reply_domain = 'mail.server.provider' reply_id = 'bbbbbb' other_id = 'Internet' id = 'bbbbbb' . <------NOTE: Please include the period. bbbbbb = Your Internet Information [Example] :USER name = 'Firstname Lastname' reply_domain = 'mail.server.provider' reply_id = 'userid' other_id = 'Internet' id = 'userid' . <------NOTE: Please include the period. After you add the lines, save the file as a Plain Text File. When you start UltiMail for the first time, a prompt asks you to enter additional information that you received from your provider and requests you to set up a password. In your case a full reinstall may not be necessary. Try just following the numbered steps above and see if that helps. - (eahallbe@ibm.net) Ethan Hall-Beyer ----- Q -- What is the best way to delete the Ultimail files? A -- The first thing you should do is open your config.sys file in a text editor. E.EXE will do fine. Search through the file for any occurrences of the ...\umail directory (most likely this will be \tcpip\umail) and delete them all. Typically they appear in path type statements like this: SET PATH=F:\SVCA\BIN\AGENT;F:\MPTN\BIN; .... F:\TCPIP\UMAIL; In the above line you would delete "F:\TCPIP\UMAIL;". Then reboot. When your system is finished rebooting all references to the UltiMail directories will be removed from memory so you will be able to delete the directories, including all files in them. Make sure you don't have any mail in those directories that you want to keep! To delete these directories, open the drive object corresponding to the drive you have your Internet Access Kit (including UltiMail) installed on. Open the TCPIP folder (or the corresponding folder if you have named it something else). Left click the UltiMail folder to select it. Click the right mouse button to display the pop-up menu for this folder and select "delete"; or just drag the folder to the shredder. The Umail folder and all its contents will be gone. - (editor@haligonian.com) Trevor Smith ----- Q -- I want to get rid of all the associations for the Windows Notebook (notebook.exe). I thought it would be simple... delete the associated files from notebook.exe and make sure that all those associations were included for my chosen editor (EPM). Well, I can get the notebook icons to disappear... for one session. But as soon as I reboot (Merlin) they're back. I've tried everything except deleting the Notebook program. Suggestions? A -- Well, I thought this was supposed to be a simple matter too, but frankly have never been able to get it to work well either. I found a solution called Association Editor v1.3. Association Editor can be found at hobbes in the (ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/os2/editors/) /os2/editors/ directory. Strangely this program dates back to 1993 but it still is the simplest way to view and edit associations under OS/2. You can delete, modify and create associations by file type or file extension. Give it a try. - (editor@haligonian.com) Trevor Smith ----- That's it for this month. If you have a tip or question that you don't see covered here, don't forget to (editor@haligonian.com) send it in! *********************************** The Need For Speed- by Jon Cochran ----- Hello, and I hope everybody had a great August. School is just around the corner and it seems as if some of us are entering the last year on that five-year plan. Is it possible to stretch it to six years? Turning away from scholarly thoughts, it's time to think fun and games. More specifically it's multimedia time, and with Merlin coming out it's a good time to reexamine that sound card to be sure it will work with Voice Navigation and Dictation (which are, after all, two of the neatest new features in Merlin). And is that old 2X CD-ROM going to be up to the task of installing 100+MB of operating system files to your hard drive? (Well, yes, it will be but that's besides the point, everybody wants a shiny new one.) And, as a bonus, some Pro Audio Spectrum tips (I had no idea how many people actually owned this thing and needed help with it). To start, the sound card is the linchpin in any multimedia setup. Without it, there's no sound, and therefore, no multimedia. If you've got an older 8-bit sound card, including the venerable Sound Blaster series (regular and pro) it's definitely time to upgrade. Those 8-bit sound cards won't work with the dictation and navigation in Merlin. In choosing a new sound card, there are a few things to keep in mind when shopping around. I'll run off a small checklist of things you should look for, and I will give some recommendations based on what I know about certain cards. Keep in mind, this isn't the (http://wvnvaxa.wvnet.edu/~hrieke/us.html) Sound Card FAQ, which I definitely recommend you read if you have any questions about an odd brand sound card. CD-ROM Interface This isn't as important these days, since most people hook up a CD-ROM directly to their motherboard, but it's still worth looking at. Most sound cards have an IDE hookup, and a few have a SCSI hookup. I'd avoid the older cards with proprietary CD-ROM connections, but there are bargains to be found here (such as the original SB AWE32). Wavetable Sound Simply put, a wavetable card sounds leagues better than a normal FM Synthesis card. The first time I heard one, I was blown away. Even a regular game like SimCity 2000 sounds 10 times better on a wavetable card than on a regular card. If your card isn't a wavetable card, you can perhaps upgrade it (the SB16 series comes to mind here) but be sure that any wavetable upgrades are supported under OS/2 (the SB series is). DSP functions I have reservations about cards like this. The most common DSP cards I can think of are the IBM Aptiva sound cards (some type of MWave card). Yes, they do sound fantastic, and the modem is upgradable via software, but there are problems if you're on-line at 28.8 and try to play MIDI files, or so I've been told. You also have to start a server program every time you want to use the modem, which can be annoying. Those are, in my mind, three of the most important things to look for when buying a sound card. Based on those three categories, I've compiled a short list of sound cards that sound good, are OS/2 compatible, and are available just about anywhere. Here goes... o Sound Blaster 16 and 32 series -- These are the best supported sound cards under OS/2. The 16 is upgradable to wavetable sound, and both of these cards sound great. They both have IDE interfaces for a CD-ROM, and these cards are the standard for gaming. A few months ago, I would have told you to avoid the P'n'P series of these cards, but new drivers from (http://www.creaf.com/) Creative Labs have made the P'n'P versions of these cards quite usable under OS/2. And with Merlin supporting P'n'P these aren't such a bad choice. o IBM MWave series -- Even though I have reservations about the cards, nothing stops them from sounding great. Add that to the fact that they've got great OS/2 support, and they're definitely worth your consideration. Other than these two series of cards, I'd be extremely careful. Be sure drivers are available and the company supports the drivers. I know there are lots of other great sound cards out there (TurtleBeach, Ultrasound, etc.) but they just aren't that well supported under OS/2. Buyer beware! CD-ROM Now is also a great time to upgrade your CD-ROM to a 6x or 8x drive. I've never seen prices so low, and the proliferation of IDE CD-ROMs means you can use just about any of them under OS/2 without worries about drivers (worries about setting up your config.sys have become the new problem). You can pick up an 8x CD-ROM with an adapter card for around US$150 at Best Buy. If you're thinking about upgrading, now is a good time. And, as promised, I'd like to include a little section here of Pro Audio Spectrum tips, for all the PAS users that can't get sound working right in WIN-OS/2. And I've also thrown in some MWave tips, for MWave users who are getting horrible performance out of their preloaded Aptivas. Pro Audio Spectrum o The key to getting sound in a WIN-OS/2 session is to load the drivers for the Sound Blaster side of the card. However, most people try to load the drivers that exist in the \os2\drivers\mvprodd directory. Ignore those. Instead, use the drivers that came with the card, and they will work. IBM's drivers don't seem to work for some reason (see disclaimer). o There are 2 different mvsound.sys's floating around. One is from IBM and the Sound Blaster initialization is broken on this one. The MediaVision driver does set up the Sound Blaster side of the card fine, but is an older version of the driver. None of this matters for WIN-OS/2 however. o Games are a problem. The only way I've gotten sound out of games is to load mvsound.sys (the one for DOS sessions) into a DOS box. This does have some nasty side effects if you try to play a sound through OS/2 or WIN-OS/2 after the game. o Disclaimer. These tips work for my card, and have worked for some other people. Others, however, haven't had the same luck with them. It seems that some revisions of the chip on the card are more amicable to some setups than others. The best thing to do is experiment and see what works for your card. o And finally, you should know that the PAS just won't support Voice Dictation or Navigation under Merlin. Don't ask me why, ask IBM. MWave Tips (Aptiva Preloads) If you have an Aptiva Magic series computer, and it seems like OS/2 just drags on your system, check to see if any WIN-OS/2 sessions are in your startup folder. On one Aptiva I looked at 2 WIN-OS/2 sessions were being loaded at startup (the sound and modem server). Taking these out of the startup folder dramatically improved performance (IBM what are you thinking here!) and upgrading to the latest OS/2 MWave drivers took care of the functions of the WIN-OS/2 session. That's it for this month. See you in 30. ----- (cochran@genius.rider.edu) Jon Cochran is a full time student at Rider University majoring in History/Secondary Education. He hopes (or at least his parents do) to graduate soon. *********************************** the REXX Files- by Dirk Terrell ----- I've seen several people in the newsgroups lately asking about ways to do automated downloading or uploading by FTP. It is certainly possible to do simple tasks by feeding a response file into the standard input of the command line FTP program (FTPPM) that comes with Warp, but you can quickly run into limitations with that method. REXX, not surprisingly, offers a more flexible solution using the RXFTP library from IBM RXFTP is an extension to REXX that enables it to perform FTP functions. If you have Warp Connect's TCP/IP installed, you will find RXFTP.DLL in the \tcpip\dll directory. If you don't have Warp Connect, you can find the necessary files at the (ftp://software.watson.ibm.com//pub/os2/ews/rxftp.zip) Watson ftp site (ZIP, 84K). As with any REXX library you have to load the library in your program. This is done with the following two lines of code: rc = RxFuncAdd("FtpLoadFuncs","RxFtp","FtpLoadFuncs") rc = FtpLoadFuncs() (I typically use the variable rc to hold the _r_eturn _c_ode from function calls.) Once you have the library loaded, you can then use the library functions to perform various tasks. If you have some familiarity with command line FTP, then the function names will be quite familiar. The first step is to log into an FTP server, and this is done with theFTPSetUser function. The syntax is: FTPSetUser(host,userid,password) as in: rc = FTPSetUser("hobbes.nmsu.edu","anonymous","terrell@gnv.fdt.net") Next, you may want to change to a particular directory on the remote site. TheFtpChDir function is used to change directories with the following syntax: FtpChDir(directory) Once you're in the right place, you will probably want to look at what's available in the directory. You can use eitherFtpLs orFtpDir to get a directory listing. FtpLs returns the compact directory listing with just the file and directory names.FtpDir returns the detailed listing with dates, file sizes,etc. The calling syntax is the same in either case: FtpLs(pattern,stem) FtpDir(pattern,stem) wherepattern is a search pattern for files (as in *.txt or *.zip) andstem is a REXX stem variable (similar in some ways to arrays in other languages) to hold the results. A stem variable is one that ends with a "." such as "FileList.", so a call to these functions would look like: FtpLs("*.txt","FileList.") FtpLs("*.zip","List_of_Files.") Upon return, the stem variable will hold the files that match the search pattern. The ".0" stem value will hold the number of items in the rest of the stem. So, to do something with the file list that has been placed in the stem variableFile., you would loop from 1 to File.0 like this: Do i=1 to File.0 Say "File number" i "is" File.i /* Do other processing on each file here */ End Of course the whole purpose of FTP is to transfer files either to the remote machine ("put" a file) or from the remote machine ("get" a file). These functions are done withFtpPut andFtpGet. The syntax for these functions is FtpGet(LocalFile,RemoteFile[,"Binary" | "Ascii"]) FtpPut(LocalFile,RemoteFile[,"Binary" | "Ascii"]) whereLocalFile is the name of a file on the local machine andRemoteFile is the name of a file on the remote machine. The third parameter in the function call tells whether the transfer should be done in binary mode or ascii mode (text files only). There are some other functions in the RXFTP library (such as creating/deleting directories), but this is enough to get you started. As an example of what you can do with this library, I wrote a little program (see below) that logs in Hobbes and gets the files with .txt or .TXT extensions in the /incoming directory and puts them into one file for perusal with a text editor. This is something that went together quickly, so a lot of error checking is skipped and you will probably want to modify it to work better. (One enhancement would be to eliminate the case sensitivity of the file searching.) But, it should serve the purpose of getting you started with the RXFTP library. ----- (http://www.gnv.com/HTMLWizard/) Dr. Dirk Terrell is an astronomer at the University of Florida specializing in interacting binary stars. His hobbies include cave diving, martial arts, painting and writing OS/2 software such as HTML Wizard. *********************************** /* NEWHOBBE.CMD Get description files from /incoming on hobbes.nmsu.edu By Dirk Terrell This code is hereby entered into the public domain. */ rc = RxFuncAdd("FtpLoadFuncs","RxFtp","FtpLoadFuncs") /* Load the FTP library */ rc = FtpLoadFuncs() /* ftp://software.watson.ibm.com/pub/os2/ews/rxftp.zip */ rc = rxfuncadd('SysLoadFuncs','RexxUtil','SysLoadFuncs') /* Load the system utilities */ rc = sysloadfuncs() Site="hobbes.nmsu.edu" /* FTP site */ RemoteDir="incoming" /* Directory on FTP site */ LocalDir="d:\network\rxftp" /* Directory to place files in on local machine */ TempFile="newhobbe.txt" /* The temporary file for the results */ User="anonymous" /* Login user ID */ Pass="terrell@gnv.fdt.net" /* Password, make it your email address */ FileType="Ascii" /* We'll be transferring text files */ OldDir=Directory(LocalDir) /* Change to specified directory */ Say OldDir if FTPSetUser(Site,User,Pass) then do /* Successful login to site */ rc=FTPChDir(RemoteDir) /* Set the remote directory */ rc=FTPLs("*.txt",DirList.) /* Get a listing of files matching *.txt */ Do i=1 to DirList.0 /* Store the retrieved file names */ FileList.i=DirList.i End FileList.0=DirList.0 /* FileList.0 holds the number of files */ rc=FTPLs("*.TXT",DirList.) /* Get a listing of files matching *.TXT */ Do i=1 to DirList.0 /* Store those file names */ k=i+FileList.0 FileList.k=DirList.i End FileList.0=k rc=SysFileDelete(TempFile) /* Delete the temporary file if it exists */ Do i=1 to FileList.0 /* Loop over all files */ Test=Translate(FileList.i) /* Convert filename to uppercase */ If Test="00INDEX.TXT" | Test="00INDEXD.TXT" then /* If the file is an index ... */ Say "Skipping" FileList.i "file" i "of" FileList.0 /* then skip it */ else /* Otherwise do the following */ Do Say "Getting" FileList.i "file" i "of" FileList.0 /* Keep user informed */ rc=FtpGet(FileList.i,FileList.i,FileType) /* Get the file */ rc=Lineout(TempFile," ") /* Separator */ rc=Lineout(TempFile,"*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_") rc=Lineout(TempFile,FileList.i) /* Write file name */ rc=Lineout(TempFile) /* Close the temp. file */ "@copy" TempFile||"+"||FileList.i "1>nul 2>nul" /* Append file to temp. file */ rc=SysFileDelete(FileList.i) /* Delete the file */ End end /* do */ rc=FtpLogOff() /* Log off the FTP site */ End Else /* Couldn't get logged in */ Do Say "Could not log on to" Site Exit End rc=Directory(OldDir) /* Change back to original directory */ Exit *********************************** Netscape Comes to Our Corner of the Web ----- Hold on to your desk and take a good long look at dear old WebExplorer. It may not be too long before you are forced to switch to Netscape by the sheer momentum of the masses. In a joint press release on August 28, 1996, Wally Casey, VP of Client Product Management for PSP at IBM, and Bob Lisbonne, VP of Client Product Marketing at Netscape, announced that IBM and Netscape had finally reached an agreement. Netscape Navigator for OS/2 will join the other 16 platforms supported by Netscape as a beta release some time in September with the "final" version due shortly after that. Why is that going to drive you away from WebExplorer? This port of Netscape will be equivalent to the current Netscape Navigator v2.02i on other platforms, including its support for frames and other Netscape-isms. If you've spent any time browsing the non-OS/2 oriented Web lately, you have noticed that the proliferation of web sites using these features prevents IBM's WebExplorer for OS/2 from displaying many sites as they were intended to be viewed. The only thing that has kept the OS/2 oriented sites on the WWW relatively free from this problem has been that most OS/2 users don't use Netscape. No doubt as soon as Netscape releases the first beta of Navigator for OS/2, the OS/2 masses will forget their years of rejection and jump into bed with the well endowed Navigator. It looks like it's, "Netscape Now." For those of you thinking that IBM might still continue to develop WebExplorer, think again. When asked during the teleconference, "if this agreement effectively kills IBM's browser," Wally Casey replied, "Netscape Navigator is the strategic browser for OS/2." And if you're thinking that some well meaning ISV in the OS/2 community should step in and offer to take up the task of maintaining the WebExplorer code for IBM, don't hold your breath. At least one major OS/2 ISV has officially made this offer to IBM but bluntly said they did not even expect a reply, let alone a positive one. The Teleconference But what about the good news? What exactly was said in the teleconference? A lot of things. First and foremost, of course, is the fact that Navigator is coming and coming soon. In fact, the initial beta will be out, "sometime in the next few weeks," (as of Aug. 28th). The final version of the product is not expected to be finished by the time that IBM will announce and release OS/2 v4.0 (formerly known as Merlin) but is expected shortly after (late October). The beta (and the final version) will be freely downloadable by anyone with OS/2 Warp v3.0 or higher and a connection to the Internet. The new browser will be backward compatible with OS/2 Warp v3.0 and will be free to either users of OS/2 v3.0 or v4.0. While the code for Navigator will not be on the OS/2 v4.0 CD, after installation, a Netscape icon will be present on the Desktop. This icon will link users to the Netscape site for immediate download of the Navigator (either the beta or, when finished, the final version). While Warp v3.0 users won't be able to use the Java capabilities "out of the box", on September 25th IBM will officially announce a Java update kit (and a price for it -- while the browser will be free to Warp v3.0 users, the Java kit won't). OS/2 v4.0 users will, of course, have Java capabilities built into their operating system. This version of Navigator will be feature and performance equivalent with v2.02i (the international version) of Navigator for other platforms. The "international" designation means it will have the ability to handle languages that use double byte character systems (DBCS) such as Japanese. Because of the timing of the initial project's start and the difficulty inherent in developing the first version of a product for a platform, IBM and Netscape decided to opt for the stable v2.02 product as opposed to the then somewhat rough Navigator v3.0. Of course, Navigator v3.0 has recently been announced/released by Netscape so some may feel that the OS/2 version is starting its life already behind the pack. While there are no plans to port Navigator v3.0, Casey and Lisbonne stated that the version of Netscape coming after that, code named Galileo, will be released for OS/2 more or less simultaneously with the other platforms. The initial beta version of Galileo is expected by year end with the finished version in first quarter '97. Both VPs claim that all future versions of Navigator for OS/2 will be feature and performance equivalent to other platforms and released more or less in line with those other platforms. This version of Navigator is not a port of existing Windows code using the Open32 APIs. Casey claimed it was a fully native version developed from scratch. During the question and answer period one listener asked whether we would see an OS/2 version of Navigator based on OpenDoc any time soon. Casey was noncommittal. There will be tools available for porting of WebExplorer quicklists to Navigator and Workplace Shell integration of Navigator has been promised. Casey assured us that users would be able to drag and drop Java apps from the Internet onto their Warp v4.0 Desktop. The Netscape plug-in developer APIs will also be released at the same time as the beta and they will be consistent with those on other platforms. Good News, Bad News Other than the importance of the announcement itself, probably the most significant issue raised at the press teleconference was IBM's commitment to OS/2. In keeping with PSP's statements of late that IBM is only concerned with the business market, Casey said, "OS/2 remains an important cog in the overall goal of the IBM Corporation as it moves into a more dramatic and more demonstrative role in the area of network computing." Still, many will argue, "who cares? If IBM is going to buy Netscape Navigator to appease its Fortune 500 clients, we'll gladly tag along for the ride. It's free after all!" One listener at the teleconference was not satisfied though and asked, "Why doesn't IBM make a statement one way or the other and resolve this ongoing uncertainty about the long term future of OS/2?" Casey answered simply, "It is our sincere hope that this announcement today will go a long way toward doing that. This company remains firmly behind OS/2." That's the statement we've been wanting to hear! But perhaps most importantly, Casey also said, "People will continue to write and speculate about what IBM will do. I would just suggest to you to watch what we do. We continue to remain committed and are investing in this platform." *********************************** Profile: Gary Hammer- by Doug Glenn ----- What does one do after years of running a BBS? Does one hang up the towel one day when reaching burnout? Usually there are many reasons for shutting down. Many do so because the fun has gone out of it. Others get burned out by the relentless demand to constantly improve, buying newer hardware and software in the endless upgrade cycles that seem to voraciously curse the BBS world. BBS sysops (system operators), the ones who have done it for years, are not known for their ability to chat on-line, or to write lengthy posts. By their second year, even new sysops begin to develop the habits of short concise answers to the sometimes lengthy diatribes they occasionally come across. And on-line chat? Ho boy, that gets rather old after the first year or so. I've been fortunate enough over the years to develop the acquaintance of one such individualist: Gary Hammer. Over several years I watched him take his system down twice to move and rebuild his following at each new place. Around the time of his second move, he began to go on about the Internet. Since I was still in a rural setting myself, I mostly wished he'd find something else to chat about. In '95, this individual moved again and I never heard anything else from him. Or so I thought. I moved as well, this time to a more metropolitan area and found an ISP and began to discover the Internet myself. Being the OS/2 lover that I am, I began to search out OS/2 sites looking for that perfect utility or file that would do what I needed done. I hit the jackpot. Hmmmm, "(http://www.os2.musthave.com/OS2/) OS/2 Must Have Utilities", just what I was looking for. When I clicked the link I thought I had reached a section of heaven. Then down there, at the bottom of the page was a name. Not just any name, but the name. Doggone, so this is where he ended up! Gary had graduated from his BBS to the big time of the Internet. I managed to interview Gary recently over several days, via e-mail and telephone. Like most old time sysops, Gary is not very verbose via e-mail, but like most, will wax eloquent over the phone. I listened to him talk about how he got started, the trials and tribulations of running a popular web site, and found he is still very much the sysop at heart. *** OS/2 e-Zine! : What motivated you to create your "Must Have Utilities" site? Gary: I saw a niche and I filled it. That is the short and sweet answer. Really, over the years in the newsgroups there were constant, "Where do I go to get this?" or, "What is the best to do that?" questions. So I started creating a list of files, and where people could get them. After a while, I created an FTP site where people could come and get them because often Hobbes and CDROM were down or the files had moved. Then I found HTML... OS/2 e-Zine! : Why not use a BBS? Gary: I was tired of moderating user fights on the system, or the requests to place adult material on it. The Internet is international. I get to do what I like most, provide files that are useful to people, and to help people out. I've run a BBS overseas, in Fairbanks, Alaska and in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And none of these places allows me to reach the audience, or provide a needed service like the Internet does. And I don't have to listen to someone complain that their modem will not connect to mine while it works for everyone else on the system. There are no fights and not near as many glitches in the system to worry about. OS/2 e-Zine! : I'm told that you donated a system to your ISP for the site. Gary: Yeah, they called me one day and told me I was sucking up too many resources, that my site was generating too much traffic. So I had to come to a decision then, whether to pull the plug or fix it. I had a Pentium 90 system sitting here, so I plugged 32meg of memory in it and a one gig SCSI drive, and drove it over to my ISP. They plugged another SCSI drive in it along with a network card. We loaded the software and files, then plugged it in, and that's what is running the site today. This was several months ago. I wish that memory was this cheap then! OS/2 e-Zine! : I see that you've gotten a corporate sponsor now. How did that come about? Gary: Well, my ISP called me again, and said, "Gary, you're moving 1.5 gigs of files through your site per day, and you're going to have to buy another account". Well, my wife didn't buy that. I'd already given them a computer and was spending over 20 hours a week maintaining the site. Needless to say it was crunch time again. It was fine when I was using my own account. I was going to spend that money anyway. But the line had to be drawn somewhere. So I sat down and e-mailed all the authors on the site. Almost every one of them offered me support. But I decided that choosing a few of them wasn't fair to the authors. So I sat down again and wrote IBM and SofTouch, two companies I had a lot of respect for. IBM called back and said they liked the idea, but it had to go through a committee. Rick Jones, President of SofTouch called. We spoke for 45 minutes, and the next day I had what I needed to keep the site on-line for a year. OS/2 e-Zine! : What effect does this have on what you put on your site? Gary: None. Luckily, I use the SofTouch apps that are available on my site. And those apps were there long before they became my sponsor. It's not going to influence what goes on there. I've not "sold out" if that is what you're asking. OS/2 e-Zine! : What do you think is better then, Shareware or Commercial applications? Gary: That is actually a pretty easy call. Shareware. Don't get me wrong, I've got plenty of commercial OS/2 programs. But let me put it to you like this: I have AmiPro for OS/2, I have this nice idea for a feature, or I have a bug with it. I write Lotus and let them know. Am I going to get an answer back? Am I going to see this neat feature added in my lifetime? Then you have the shareware author. You have the same neat idea, or a problem. More often than not, you will have an answer back the next day, and the feature in the next release. No, in some cases there is better shareware than commercial stuff, and the support is far better. Nowhere else can you get that personal touch that comes from shareware authors. OS/2 e-Zine! : What criteria to you use to determine what goes on your site? Gary: There are several. "What are the things I have to have?" is one. However it mostly comes from suggestions sent to me, or what people are looking for. 1. If I have to figure out how to install it, or configure it, it's not going on. It has to be easy to install and well thought out. 2. It has to be what I consider "Best of its Class". I've been using OS/2 since version 1.3 and I've seen a lot of software, and some software stands out above the rest with ease of use, power, or simplicity. 3. They have to have a downloadable version. This is a must. I don't care if its functional or nonfunctional, but they must allow a person to download it and be able to evaluate it. 4. It has to be suggested by the users. If the author has to write and ask that I post it, then chances are, it's not really something that someone needs or will need. 5. And there is the subjective "I know it when I see it" feeling about some programs, that this is something that I, or someone, will need. You know what I mean? Some programs just have a, well, "Must-Have" feeling. Sorry, but could you please describe the color blue? I run all the programs myself to review them and get a feel for them. I get roughly 50 suggestions a week and try as many of them as I can. You will notice that some programs on the list undergo a revision or two, then they just don't meet the needs anymore. Sometimes you can fiddle out with what made it unique in the first place. There are some that are unique and fill a niche no other program does. I have one program there that is ancient by Internet standards. It's not supported or updated anymore. However it still does exactly what it was originally designed to do. OS/2 e-Zine! : What do you say to those who want more from your site? Gary: Hey, if they feel they can do it better, go for it. It's much like all those that used to say things about the BBS. They can go out and buy the software, take the time and money to do it, what's stopping them? It's easy to talk. I mean, I'm not stopping them from doing it. Who am I to disillusion them? Just use your own ideas when you do. Don't rip off my ideas, layouts, and stuff. OS/2 e-Zine! : What did you use to create the site? Gary: It's all done by hand, using Boxer/2 text editor. OS/2 e-Zine! : What type of traffic do you see? Gary: I subscribe to an audit service to determine how many hits I get. It averages about 150,000 or so per month. I run a statistics program on the server just to see what files are the most popular so I can make sure to pay closer attention to the needs of the visitors to the site. OS/2 e-Zine! : What is it you like most about running your site? Gary: I get to do a lot of the same things I did when I was a sysop, without the hassles. No message bases. No user fights. I still supply files, still provide a service, and I still get to help people. Now don't get me wrong, if it has to do with OS/2 itself, I am generally pretty good about figuring it out, or finding out the small details. But if you're wanting to know about printing problems with a Xerox, forget it, you're going to have to ask Xerox. OS/2 e-Zine! : OK, to change the topic, what's this I hear about you and Stardock? Gary: Well, you know, I just got irritated with seeing what I considered misleading posts about OD (Object Desktop) and Merlin. It may be the neatest thing since sliced bread, but you DON'T have to have it. There are other utils that can be used to get most of the same functionality for lesser cost or free. Anyway, we went a few rounds over it. OS/2 e-Zine! : I understand that's settled out now. Gary: Well, we took it to e-mail. I mean, it's kinda stupid for two high profile OS/2 advocates to be battling it out in public. I like OS/2. I've been an advocate for a long time, and the whole thread was getting nasty. So, I asked people to drop it. It served no purpose for anyone. OS/2 e-Zine! : I take it you got a lot of e-mail over it. Gary: Yeah, a few hundred. Some supported my side, and some supported Brad's. I will say that after mailing back and forth, neither of us is gonna invite the other over for a beer. But Brad has some legitimate points, and may not be the Devil incarnate (grin). Actually a pretty good guy. OS/2 e-Zine! : What would you say to those that think you're somewhat, err, bellicose, or short tempered? Gary: You know the deal. Just how much time can you spend answering tons of e-mail? Just because someone else has the time to wax eloquent over something does not mean I have the same luxury. I've got a dozen more to answer as well. I simply don't have the time to write a long answer if a simple yes or no will do. It's short and to the point. What's more, they do get an answer. I can't help it if they might get irritated because my prose did not meet their eloquence standard. Let them try to do this and see how well they fare after several years. This is my hobby, not my job. My family has demands on my time as well, and you have to prioritize. OS/2 e-Zine! : I understand that you found a way to get off of mailing lists. Gary: (Laughs.) Yeah. Microsoft has me targeted as a big OS/2 supporter. Not too long ago they put me on their mailing list. Well, I followed the directions for unsubscribing without any success. So I wrote to the postmaster at Microsoft, and they basically told me that I could just delete them when I got them. Well, I wanted off. Deleting messages is NOT an option. So I sent them 5 messages in one day containing a core dump from a Unix workstation. That's 80 megs worth. Per message (sounds of a chuckle emanate from the phone). The next day my ISP called me and asked me what I had done to piss off Microsoft. It appears that got their attention and they were demanding that my ISP remove my account, kill my access, etc. Well my ISP doesn't like Microsoft either, he's a Unix type of guy. So he told them, "I guess Mr. Hammer wants off of your mailing list. He has been a good customer and I am not removing his access, so I guess you better take him off your mailing list." I don't get any more mail from Microsoft. OS/2 e-Zine! : Hrrrm, I don't think I would recommend that for everyone. Gary: Better have a good relationship with your ISP if you do. OS/2 e-Zine! : So do you use OS/2 at work? Gary: Not at all. We use Unix and some very proprietary software. I work in the communications industry. I use it at home, and that's were I get all my OS/2 experience. OS/2 e-Zine! : I understand that you have ISDN at your house. Gary: Yeah. I put in my order, and they said it would take a month. A month went by and no line. So I called them up and was told it would be another couple of days. So I took off that day, and about 2pm called the office and asked them what the deal was. I was told that they had trouble with the cable, that it would be another 3 weeks, and gave me the engineer's number. So I called up the engineer and he told me they had problems with it. "Well," I said, "I'm a communications engineer myself, so how about telling me what the problem is." It turns out that the aerial line they had to install for the ISDN was getting too much inductance (inductance being resistance in an AC circuit, and ground lines had too much inductance to be used for ISDN). Our area is growing so fast that the power company had installed new lines in the area that were under the buffer zone and creating interference with the phone lines. So they had to have the power company come out, put in 6 new poles, raise the power lines above the buffer zone and restring their own cable before I got it. And because they did not meet their deadline, the install was free. OS/2 e-Zine! : I understand that you've been invited to a on-line discussion by ZD Net on shareware and the Internet. Gary: Yes, I got e-mail from Ed Passarella of Yahoo Computing, the Ziff Davis guide to the best Web sites, inviting me to a one hour live IRC chat with several others. They have rated my site four stars, their highest rating. (editor's note: Gary Hammer was featured on Yahoo Computing on Wednesday, Aug. 28) OS/2 e-Zine! : What IRC client will you use? Gary: GTIRC from SofTouch. A real nice client with a lot of handy features. And, no, not because they are my sponsor. Because it works. *** ----- (dglenn@cris.com) Doug Glenn is a Notes/LAN administrator by day, and an avid OS/2 supporter by night. He has written one shareware app for OS/2 and has been a sysop since 1989. He may be found on the #os/2 IRC channel as Kyfho. *********************************** Borland C++ v2.0 for OS/2- by Eric Slaats ----- If you've ever written a program for a personal computer in C, C++, Pascal or OO-Pascal it is very likely you have used a Borland Turbo compiler. The Turbo C and Turbo Pascal compilers for DOS are famous for their speed, performance and ease of use. The Windows version of Borland's C++ compiler as well as their (great) Delphi package (where is the OS/2 version, Borland?) are even better known and attract a lot of raves from the press. But what about the OS/2 version of the Borland C++ compiler? Initial Impressions The BCC set comes in slick blue and white Borland style box and contains a stack of manuals and a CD. This set only supports OS/2; it doesn't contain Windows (95/NT) or DOS support. For that you have to purchase a separate product. So if you want to do cross-platform development, you'll have to rely on OWL, Borland's Object Window Library (more on that subject later). Even worse, the Borland Windows compiler is better equipped than the OS/2 version and has a larger set of features. Installation The complete install of the BCC package requires about 60 Mb. However, it is very likely that you won't need to install all the features. If you've got the space, it pays to install all that's offered and take some time to play, though. Installing BCC is a breeze. There is an easy interface which allows you to select the target drive and directory and the parts you would like to install. It will also make some changes to your config.sys (nothing major though -- the PATH, LIBPATH, BOOKSHELF and HELP settings are changed so that they contain the BCC install directory and the IPF compiler and the PMREF (on-line help) environment variables are added). After the installation is completed, you'll find a Borland C++ folder on your desktop with all the installed items in it. The Tools The BCC package includes a wealth of tools. The most important (and probably most used) of them will be discussed in this article. The IDE Borland was one of the first companies to introduce what is now commonly referred to as an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) or IDDE (Integrated Development & Debugging Environment). An IDE contains everything in one interface that is needed to build an application. It has a built in compiler-debugger, an editor and an interface to maintain your projects. All this is wrapped in a good-looking multi-document interface. To work with the Borland IDE, you've got to think in terms of projects. The IDE places all information that is needed to build an application in a binary project file (.PRJ). As an extra convenience, you don't have to write a make file. A project file contains a lot of information, all of which is used to build an application: o Compiler settings o Linker and Make commands o Librarian settings o Paths for include files o List of all files (.CPP, .LIB, .RC, .H, etc.) that make up the project o Compilation statistics o The window size/position info for all the windows in the IDE o The cursor position of all the files open in the IDE o Editor color/font settings Using the IDE is easy enough, just select open project from the project menu and give your project a name. The project settings are also very easy to change although the notebook contains about 40 pages and these look very intimidating at first. The settings pages include: The linker page: The default setting is for the linker to always include debugging information. This will enlarge your .EXE file and slow down compilation time. In my experience it is easier to set this debugging flag when you need to debug the code (despite the great speed of the compiler). Another setting on this page that I strongly recommend changing is the "Image is based" flag. OS/2 guarantees that an .EXE can be loaded at 1000H. If the "Image is based" flag is set, the linker will use this as a base address. The resulting .EXE of this setting will have no internal fix ups, it will be smaller, load faster and use less memory. There is no downside, so I strongly suggest doing so. The target page: In this page you can tell the compiler what kind of .EXE you're making. Most likely this is a PM executable. The default setting on my system was OS/2 .EXE. This means if you want to build a PM program, it won't run (I searched myself silly the first time). The editor The major part of the IDE is the editor. The Borland IDE contains a great editor; it has extensive syntax highlighting and a great way to handle indents. It can also be used when debugging and is tightly integrated with the compiler and the IDE toolbar. There is a very capable search function that can be used for regular searches, but it can also handle globals (all the variables in your program) and classes (very convenient). The disadvantage is that debugging information has to be linked with the .EXE to use these last two features (see the debugger). The editor utilizes a popup with a number of items all targeted (except "save") at compiling and debugging. Personally I would have preferred a popup targeted at editing functions or a configurable popup. The undo is also great, in fact, it's fairly limitless. Unfortunately the undo buffer is cleared when a file is saved. (Saving a file is needed in some cases to make sure you have up to date debugger information.) The editor performs most functions quickly and without flaws. However, it's really a pity that it doesn't support drag and drop. D&D is really addictive once you get used to it (from packages such as Smalled and DragText). The editor could also do with a bookmark function for quickly jumping to various parts of your code (especially in larger files with a vast number of functions!). And there is one other bug that is really annoying: the editor tends to drop newlines, especially after a paste function. The problem is that this doesn't show up on the screen (it does after saving and reloading though). Most times this won't be a problem, but if a statement line is appended after a comment-line (\\) that statement is lost! This leads to the most hard to find errors because the code looks OK. Compiling The IDE has a built in compiler that is very fast and very configurable. Besides that it produces relatively small .EXE files. If a project is compiled, the errors and warnings are placed in the Transcript window. This is where the IDE really shows its tight integration. If an error or warning is clicked, the window containing the source for this error becomes active and the line containing the error is highlighted. If the error isn't clear at once, you can get a hint by using the right mouse button on the error line in the transcript window and a popup menu allows you to call up help on the error. If you're doing a large project it pays to split the project into a number of CPP files. This will speed up your work, since only the changed files will be recompiled. The existing .obj files from the other files in the project will be used by the linker. Resource workshop The BCC compiler can handle (as can any OS/2 compiler) so called "resource" files. These files contain info about dialogs, menus, strings, helptables, etc. and they are compiled and added to your .EXE with the RC compiler (which is a standard OS/2 component). Resource files can be created with the Borland Resource Workshop. The Borland Resource Workshop is a real gem and is very easy to use. Some of my programs, like SMEHTM (Smalled HTML Extensions), are almost completely created by using this collection of dedicated (sometimes graphical) editors. There are editors to create bitmaps and icons, text editors to create menus, helptables, stringtables, etc., and a dialog editor where you can just click on a control in the floating toolbar and place it in the dialog where it can be shaped and configured. The Resource Workshop also has the possibility to add (non-OS/2) Borland custom controls. These controls feature a set of push-buttons, checkboxes, groupboxes and lines. To use these controls, a separate header file, as well as a library has to be included in your programs (which of course will make them more bulky). Unfortunately, the Resource Workshop doesn't support the newer OS/2 controls (yet) like the circular slider. The debugger The Borland debugger can be used from within the IDE or in a separate Debugger session. The functions for stepping through code, one line at the time, for setting breakpoints and for looking at variables (watches) are very slick. However I noticed that the debugger has a tendency to hang when multithreaded programs are being debugged (as do all the debuggers I have tried so far). The debugger has to be used with a little care, but overall it works great. OWL In version 2.0 of BCC for OS/2, Borland has included its Object Window Library. OWL is a package of routines (objects) that is very widely used by windows developers. It contains about 200 classes that should simplify the coding of OS/2 PM applications. This means that Windows programs written using OWL can very easily be ported to OS/2. In fact all that has to be done is recompile them (in most cases). OWL is great for programming on a more abstract plane, so you can think of simple (interface) structures. However, I found the learning curve for OWL to be rather steep. Besides that, with OWL, programs tend to grow large and slow and it's difficult to tell if you're effectively reusing code (which is what OO is all about). If you're not into object oriented programming it can be hard to master. Documentation Borland is very well known for its documentation. I find the DOS C++ manuals very good and the same is true of the manuals that come with the OS/2 package. More importantly, the Borland package also contains the IBM on-line documentation for all the API's, messages, etc. This is a must read if you're serious about development. I find that I don't use the books at all, but do all my searching in the on-line documentation. The files that Borland supplies on top of the IBM material are well written (although sometimes somewhat cryptic) and complete. However, if you're thinking about developing programs on a regular basis, I recommend the IBM Developers Connection CD. This will enable you to update your documentation in a regular fashion and it will give a lot of extra material. The Borland package also contains a large set of example code. But don't get excited, it just won't do if you're a beginner; it's simply to complex. For beginners I'd strongly recommend (http://www.iqpac.com/) EDM/2 as well as looking at some books. For the intermediate programmer though, it is a nice addition. Concluding notes I love the Borland compiler despite some of its flaws. It really is a shame that the Windows version is a lot better. Starting with Borland is easy and painless. It's simple to set up a project and have your first examples running in no time. The IDE, as well as the Resource Workshop, are great. And compile times are really short. If you're working like me, building a little code at a time or making code changes and trying them, this is definitely the compiler for you. ----- * Borland C++ v2.0 for OS/2 by Borland MSRP: US$499 ----- (eric.slaats@pi.net) Eric Slaats holds a degree in Computer Science and teaches computer technology in Eindhoven. He is the creator of the (http://www.bmtmicro.com/catalog/smalled/) Smalled utilities. *********************************** VisualAge C++ v3.0- by Dr. Dirk Terrell ----- Introduction IBM's award-winning VisualAge C++ is a powerful set of well-integrated tools for C++ development. This product pushes C++ into the age of Rapid Application Development. Although it does require some understanding of object oriented programming, VisualAge C++ will enable even newcomers to C++ to create sophisticated Presentation Manager applications with very little coding. The beauty of VisualAge C++, however, is that it is just as attractive to advanced programmers because of its extensibility. The central theme of VisualAge C++ is "construction from parts" and it provides the IBM Open Class library, a collection of hundreds of classes that provide most of the basic entities you need (such as user interface objects, collections, etc.), meaning that most of the time you don't have to write any code at all. However, implementing your own classes in VisualAge C++ is quite simple, and "reusability" moves from the realm of hype to that of reality. The Good Undoubtedly, the most exciting tool in VisualAge C++ is the Visual Builder, a tool for creating applications using drag and drop. The Visual Builder consists of three editors: the Composition Editor, the Class Editor, and the Part Interface Editor. The Composition Editor is used to graphically design an application and the interface is well-designed and intuitive. Parts are placed on a canvas and connections are then made between them (e.g., a button's "Click" event is connected to a text field's "Paste" function). Connections are shown as arrows connecting the parts, with color and line type indicating the type and status of the connection. The Class Editor is used to deal with details like modifying a part's constructor and destructor code, specifying library and resource files, and code files to be included when the application is built. The Part Interface Editor allows you to define how a part will interact with others using attributes, events, and actions. Switching between the different editors is a matter of clicking a button in the bottom right corner of the window. The heart of VisualAge C++ is the IBM Open Class library, a set of C++ classes for building applications that is cross-platform, enabling you to develop applications that can be recompiled for different target environments such as OS/2, 32-bit Windows, AIX, Solaris, OS/400, and MVS/ESA, with HP-UX and Macintosh on the way. Try that with MFC or OWL. The library contains classes for user interfaces, collections, data access (only DB2/2 at the moment), complex mathematics, exceptions, and data types. I find the String classes quite useful because they have functions that mimic many of the functions available in REXX. The User Interface classes make it possible to design a GUI application for multiple platforms without having to learn the low-level API for each operating system. Some people may prefer to skip the resource-hungry Visual Builder and code an application manually. In that case it is usually best to start with a skeleton application and then add to it. VisualAge C++ provides a nice tool for doing exactly this called Project Smarts. It can generate skeleton applications for: o User Interface Class Library Applications o Presentation Manager Applications o Workplace Shell Applications o Direct-to-SOM Applications o Data Access Applications o Visual Builder Applications o Resource Dynamic Link Libraries o C++ Dynamic Link Libraries o C Dynamic Link Libraries o IPF Context-Sensitive Help o IPF Document There are also plenty of sample applications to get you started. You can even add your own skeletons to Project Smarts. VisualAge C++ comes with the venerable WorkFrame, an environment for organizing projects and performing various actions on them. WorkFrame is a very flexible environment for handling projects other than just your VisualAge C++ projects. I use it to work on Fortran projects with the Watcom compiler, for example. As you would expect, things like building, editing, debugging and execution tracing are available from within WorkFrame. You can even add DOS and Windows tools to the environment. The editor that comes with VisualAge C++, the Live Parsing Editor or LPEX, is pretty good, and you can set it up to emulate the keystrokes of other editors, such as EPM. If you don't like the editor, you can, of course, make WorkFrame use the one of your choice. LPEX performs syntax highlighting (although it doesn't do so until you move to the next line unlike the Borland editor, for example) and automatic indenting. It also does some error checking as you type, detecting a lot of coding errors without requiring a compile. One useful feature is the ability to list the functions in a source file. The VisualAge C++ debugger provides the usual tools: breakpoints, variable monitoring, and displays of the call stack and registers. It also includes tools like the Message Queue Monitor for monitoring PM messages, and the Window Analysis Tool for viewing a program's windows and their relationships to one another. VisualAge C++ also includes a Performance Analyzer for tuning your program and finding problems. VisualAge C++ supports Direct-To-SOM, the ability to create SOM objects directly in C++ and have the compiler handle the creation of the SOM interface files. The documentation is extensive. The hardcopy documentation is thorough, and well-organized, and the online documentation is even better. The Bad VisualAge C++ requires serious horsepower if you want to use the Visual Builder. IBM claims the minimum RAM requirement is 16 megabytes, but I have run it in 20 megabytes with lots of swapping on a very small project. Unless you have great patience, I recommend 32 megabytes as the realistic minimum. For C development IBM's minimum/recommended RAM amounts are 8/12, and C++ requirements are 12/16. Installation is straightforward, but, again, the system requirements are steep. A full installation on my machine swallowed nearly 200 megabytes of disk space, with the samples and documentation consuming about 100 megabytes of that. You can, of course, install only those tools and samples that you need. Unfortunately, you cannot install VisualAge C++ to run from the CD. There are many things that would be nice to leave on the CD, such as sample projects and documentation, but the installation program has no option for doing this. That's not to say it is impossible, but it requires some extra work that could very easily be avoided with a better installation program. The Ugly As you might expect in a piece of software this large, there are plenty of bugs in VisualAge C++, but IBM has been good about releasing fixes. You do have to be very careful to apply the various fixes in the correct order, though. IBM appears to have made a glaring blunder with Visual Builder. When you wish to compile your application, you save the file and generate the source code. But, there is no menu item for actually compiling the code! You have to open an OS/2 window and issue the make command manually. It's really not that big of a deal, but detracts from an otherwise polished piece of software. The Verdict Several years ago when I was still doing Windows programming, I fell for the hype of Microsoft's Visual C++ and was very disappointed with it. The hype surrounding VisualAge C++ is well-founded. It does not disappoint. Whether you are a C++ newbie or someone with years of C/C++ experience, VisualAge C++ will provide you with a development environment that is a joy to use. ----- * VisualAge C++ v3.0 by (http://www.ibm.com/) IBM MSRP: US$489 MSRP: US$449 (CD only) ----- (http://www.gnv.com/HTMLWizard/) Dr. Dirk Terrell is an astronomer at the University of Florida specializing in interacting binary stars. His hobbies include cave diving, martial arts, painting and writing OS/2 software such as HTML Wizard. *********************************** Watcom C/C++ v10.6- by Brian L. Juergensmeyer ----- Watcom C/C++ v10.6 is Powersoft's latest entry into the compiler wars, and, while it is obviously a competent compiler, the OS/2 functionality of the compiler seems to be just tacked on as an afterthought. When I purchased Watcom C/C++10.5, I was informed by Powersoft that, upon registration of my version 10.5 product, I would receive the free upgrade to10.6 when it became available. While it was made plain that the 10.5 to 10.6 upgrade was primarily Windows 95-oriented, I was hoping against hope that they would throw the OS/2 crowd a bone with an updated SOM kit, or maybe even Direct-To-SOM capability, or Open32 (DAX or DAPIE) capability, or... The list of what they could have put in goes on and on. In fact they did not update any piece of the OS/2 portion of the compiler from version 10.5 to 10.6 that I was able to find. The Nitty Gritty What is in Watcom C/C++ v10.6? The compiler features an IDE capable of compiling 16 bit and/or 32 bit OS/2 command line or Presentation Manager programs. You can also compile OS/2 .DLL's, OS/2 virtual device drivers, .HLP and .INF files. Watcom C/C++ v10.6 also includes an ability unique among C/C++ compilers currently available: The ability to compile just about any type of binary file for just about any operating system available for the Intel x86 chip today. The following operating systems are supported: o Standard 16-bit DOS o 32-bit Extended DOS (using DOS4GW, Phar-Lap, or proprietary Watcom extenders) o 16-bit standard Windows 3.1 o 32-bit Windows for Windows 95 or Windows NT o 32-bit Windows using Win32s or proprietary Watcom extenders o 16-bit OS/2 1.x o 32-bit OS/2 2.x, 3.x o Novell NLM's o Autocad executables If you need, or even think that you need, the ability to compile for different operating systems, and are willing to put up with some minor inconveniences, you should probably consider this compiler. The compiler produces good, tight code and has been used as the benchmark compiler for a major industry magazine for some time. What is not in Watcom C/C++ v10.6? Lots of things. Adequate SOM support comes immediately to mind. The SOM compiler with Watcom C/C++ v10.6 is dated December 1992, which, I think, speaks for itself. Running SYSLEVEL after installation of Watcom C/C++ v10.6 and after the optional installation of the Programmers' Toolkit shows the syslevel of the Toolkit is 2.0. As I noted above, Direct-To-SOM is also missing, along with Open32 support and OpenDoc support. While I have not checked their (http://www.watcom.on.ca) web site recently, I have not, as a registered licensee, received any notification of any upcoming inclusion of any of these items in a future version of Watcom's compiler. But, given the age of their currently included Programmer's toolkit, I'm not holding my breath for an upgrade of the OS/2 components any time in the near future. On a far less serious note, there are some minor quirks and flaws in the development environment in OS/2 that really give one the feeling that OS/2 support was tacked on at the last minute. For instance, programmers editors are included for the DOS, Win3.x, Win95, and WinNT environments. In OS/2 there is a character mode editor that was meant to be a VI emulator and actually falls halfway between DOS's EDIT and VI, with the annoyances of both, but the good points of neither. If you want to use a PM editor, Watcom does not include one. They only have a .DLL that calls EPM. They also did not reprogram all of the accelerator tables from the Windows source code for the Windowed Debugger. You are supposed to be able to use F10 to step through lines in the debugger, but since OS/2 uses F10 to activate the pull-down menus, you have to use the mouse to hit the step through button on the tool bar. The bottom line If you are going to do cross-platform development, save yourself a LOT of cash and get Watcom C/C++ v10.6, as the inconveniences are minor when faced with the cost of buying extra compilers for different operating systems. However, if you are only going to be programming for OS/2, you should probably look elsewhere. ----- * Watcom C/C++ v10.6 by (http://www.watcom.on.ca) Watcom (now owned by Powersoft) MSRP: US$350 ----- (http://www.ksu.edu/~bgreen/) Brian L. Juergensmeyer is a college senior majoring in microbiology, who does OS/2 consulting work in the Manhattan, KS area. He is annoying the VA hospital in Topeka, Kansas (where he actually works) by trying to get their IS manager to convert from NT/WfW 3.11 to Warp Connect/Warp Server. *********************************** Object Desktop Professional- by Alex Bradley ----- Editor's note: this review originally appeared in slightly different form, in OS/2 Review Magazine. OS/2 Review Magazine is a service for OS/2 user groups world wide. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... A year ago, Stardock Systems, best known for creating Galactic Civilizations, released Object Desktop 1.0. It won great praise in the industry and brought cutting edge features to the OS/2 world. Its features included the unique ability to make .ZIP files behave as regular OS/2 folders, a reliable and integrated way of launching programs with the keyboard, virtual Desktops, enhancements to the look and feel of OS/2, and a plethora of other features. On the downside, Object Desktop 1.0 suffered from numerous performance and compatibility issues due in main to its seamless integration with OS/2. In response, Stardock hired IBM developers who did not want to transfer from Boca Raton, Florida to Austin, Texas. The result was Object Desktop 1.5 (released in May). It not only addressed the performance and stability issues but added many asked-for features. According to Stardock, Object Desktop 1.5 is still their recommended environment for most OS/2 users and Object Desktop Professional is only for power users and corporate Desktops. I do not know if I agree with Stardock on this point. Stardock believes the US$179 price tag for Object Desktop Professional will put it out of the reach of most OS/2 users. On the subject of cost, this author and Stardock part ways. Maybe $179 is too high for someone using OS/2 as a hobby but most people use OS/2 to increase their productivity and are professionals. A quick tour of the feature set of Object Desktop Professional makes it pretty compelling to those who are not using OS/2 as a hobby or to defy Microsoft. And in fact, it makes it unnecessary to buy so many other products that OS/2 users save a lot of time and money trying to get some of these feature piecemeal. Let's look at what Object Desktop Professional (ODPro) does. First Impressions I installed ODPro with all the features selected. I quickly learned that I should have paid more attention since it installed the ATAPI/IDE tape driver. (Since I have no tape drive at all this is a feature I did not need.) After I rebooted, I came up with the usual Object Desktop look. My system (a 486dx2-66 with 16mb) seemed to perform just as well as before. Object Security I first tried to see how good the security was. I password protected my word processor folder with Object Security. Sure enough, a little key appeared by the folder and when I double clicked on it, it asked me for my password, so far so good. But when I went to a command prompt, I was able to get at the folder from there. The security seems to be mainly to protect power users and IT managers from end users. Object Viewing The next thing I tried was the much talked about feature known as Object Viewing. Luckily for me, I have a directory just full of all types of files. To add sauce to my experiment, I took off all the .3 extensions. Instead of my files being called "Budget.xls", "Letter3.doc", "Babe.gif", etc., they just had names like "Budget" or "Letter home from school" or "Cool targa file". I then double clicked on my files and ODPro viewed them all -- every file came up perfectly. My Word7 document not only had the right formatting and fonts, but the embedded graphics worked inside. Not even Star Office's MSWord import filter handles embedded graphics. I went to my "Cool Targa file" and selected the eyeball of the female model. Then I copied it to the clipboard, pasted it into StarWriter and it came up perfectly. I also played with Object Viewing in conjunction with the Object Navigator in ODPro. The Object Navigator can open up a connected window at the bottom of the screen; double click on a file and the contents are displayed in the "view pane". Most remarkably, the viewing performance is very fast. In less than a second on most documents, correct display of formatting and contents appear in the view pane. If you choose an .EXE or .DLL, ODPro displays their information as well right down to segment offsets, making this program attractive to developers. On the other hand, Object Viewing did not recognize my Star Writer files. Overall, I salute Stardock for delivering on their promise on the viewing capabilities. It should be noted that there is no product on the market for any OS that I know of that combines such file support with this kind of performance. Quick View on Windows95 tries and fails at what ODPro does (it is very slow compared to ODPro and does not support nearly as many files). When it comes to being able to work with others, ODPro gives OS/2 a real advantage. This makes OS/2 a very attractive client for corporations. Object Advisor The next feature I played with was the Object Advisor. I am not quite certain how to describe this feature. Opening the Object Advisor Trainer and clicking on any icon, opens up a window on the Desktop that describes the function of the object (if an advisor is available). According to the documentation of ODPro, this is in HTML and others can readily create their own advisors. This brings up the biggest problem I encountered with ODPro. It has a UI deficiency in terms of creating Object Advisors. A user has to right click on the Object Advisor and choose the "Definitions" view that then lets them create an advisor. The Advisor creation mechanism is very well done, however, and I quickly wrote up an Object Advisor for my current applications. If I used the Worldwide Web, I could have made Advisors that connected to Web sites. Object Advisor is a very exciting and powerful feature. I expect most of the more aggressive OS/2 shareware and freeware authors to begin including an advisor for their apps so that their customers can easily download updates. Stardock has done a real service for OS/2 developers with this feature because it will likely decrease technical support problems for both users and developers. IT managers will also like the Object Advisors because they can create a company wide help system that works with their intranet. This means that IT managers can dynamically change their system help on custom software, create technical support forms, etc. Every large OS/2 site should look carefully at ODPro just because of this feature. Desktop Backup Advisor The Desktop Backup Advisor was the next feature to get my attention. Stardock claims it provides two important functions: it can manage multiple Desktops and it can completely repair OS/2 .INI files in the process of doing the aforementioned function. Being the skeptic I am, I decided to put this to the test. I created three very different Desktops. My original Desktop I backed up and I must comment on how intuitive and pleasant the UI for the Desktop Backup Advisor is. Then I made a Macintosh-like Desktop and backed it up. Finally, I made a Windows95 looking Desktop and backed it up. Next, I restored my original Desktop (this took about 3 minutes to do so I would not recommend doing this every day). My original Desktop came back and sure enough, my system did seem a bit faster. Those uncluttered .INI files are supposed to bring better speed and stability to OS/2. I do not know about the stability because OS/2 is already very reliable for me but as I type this I am quite sure it is faster. On the downside, some of the objects in my Tab LaunchPad were not restored, however, I was able to add them back quickly enough. I wonder what Stardock's response to this is since it restored everything else on my system perfectly (it seems funny that ODPro can restore a Desktop perfectly except for some icons on Stardock's own object). Object Inspector I also tried out the Object Inspector feature, quickly. I am not into WPS management so this feature did not interest me until I saw that I could look at and edit the class table. Now this feature is very interesting and I find it peculiar that Stardock is not bragging about this. Object Inspectors, for all intents and purposes, are an OS/2 registry editor. I was able to edit my class table and remove a bunch of old classes that programs had installed. For example, I long ago stopped using IBM Works but was never able to delete it because it said some of its DLLs were in use. With the Object Inspector, I was able to remove those classes and on reboot, deleted the remaining parts of IBM works and my system got a gigantic speed boost (as I type this, I am a very happy man). Your mileage may vary, depending on how much junk you have loaded on your system but I suspect most OS/2 users have a great deal of skeletons in their class table closet. Object Backup The last feature I tried out (and there are plenty of other features left) was the Object Backup feature. I do not own a tape drive but thankfully Object Backup supports backing up to floppy which most backup programs nowadays do not. I backed up Quake to floppy without a problem and restored it, also without a problem. The compression of Object Backup is not terrifically impressive but it works well. Other Things There are lots of features I did not try: from the Object Scheduler (which allows people to have programs run at a given time) to the advanced features of the Object Package. To put this product into perspective, you get everything in Object Desktop and in addition, reliable and extensive file viewing/file exporting features, backup, security, Desktop management, performance tuning, .INI repairing, Desktop standardization, and goodness knows what else. I do not think any company has ever packed so many useful features in a single product and then turned around and priced it this low. Any user can price out how much it would cost to buy a security package, Desktop management software, .INI maintenance package, system backup, possibly the world's best file manager, and a lot more. I do wish Stardock would put in an Associations Editor. There are numerous freeware and shareware ones available but it would be nice if they came with this product. Maybe ODPro 2.0 will have one! Conclusions The feeling one gets when installing Object Desktop Professional is one of completeness. After I installed Object Desktop (or ODPro) I felt like saying, "Now I'm ready to really go to Warp speed!" Stardock says users can upgrade to ODPro from Object Desktop 1.5 for $69.95 until the end of September when the upgrade price will increase to $99. People with Object Desktop 1.0 can upgrade to ODPro for $119 from either Stardock or their favorite reseller. ODPro new is $179. I think Stardock is going to be in for a surprise when they discover that most OS/2 users are power users and not using OS/2 as a casual hobby. Even if you only plan to use a couple of the features of ODPro, it is well worth the price. ----- * Object Desktop Professional by (http://www.stardock.com/) Stardock Systems MSRP: US$199 MSRP Upgrade: US$69.95 - US$119 ----- (Alex_Bradley@f347.n109.z1.fidonet.org) Alex Bradley is the editor of OS/2 Review, one of the longest running electronic OS/2 periodicals. *********************************** UniMaint v5.0- by Jim Little ----- OS/2's user interface is a powerful tool. However, it's also a complex tool, and needs to be manually "tuned up" every now and then to maintain performance and stability. Unfortunately, the tools IBM supplies with the system are woefully inadequate for the task. And because of OS/2's poorly-designed Desktop backup utility, total disaster may mean rebuilding your Desktop from scratch. SofTouch System's UniMaint 5.0 attempts to rectify this situation. It provides a number of utilities that are designed to ease the pain of maintaining your Desktop. The tools range from those for the beginning user, such as the uninstaller, to the power user, such as the INI and extended attribute (EA) editor. Together, the tools form an impressive suite of utilities that would ideally give you absolute control over your Desktop. Unfortunately... UniMaint is marred by a poor user interface and a large number of bugs. The worst of the bugs causes several of the utilities to crash when used on complex Desktops. (Typically, if your OS2.INI and OS2SYS.INI files total more than one megabyte in size, you will encounter this bug.) Other bugs include random crashing and input queue hangs. I'll describe the worst of the bugs below. In addition to the bugs, UniMaint suffers from an extremely poor user interface. None of the utilities provide a "cancel" button, which can be a real irritant with those utilities that perform long operations. UniMaint's options dialogs are also poorly designed. Each of the six option dialogs presents a confusing array of choices with little apparent structure. Worse, UniMaint uses the checkbox control as both a pushbutton and as a checkbox, which makes the dialogs even more confusing for the first-time user. Version 5.0 alleviates this situation with "wizards", which help by walking you through the options in each dialog. One nice touch is the ability to launch the utilities from the UniMaint folder as well as from the main program. Help is on the Way SofTouch partially makes up for UniMaint's interface by including an excellent manual and on-line help. The manual is especially useful, and contains a section devoted to introducing the concepts behind OS/2's user interface. The rest of the manual is organized into procedures (for example, "Desktop Backups") and provides comprehensive coverage of each option. The Utilities Despite its problems, UniMaint does feature a number of useful tools. Perhaps the most valuable is the "simple backup" utility. This utility simply compresses your Desktop and INI files into a zip file. You can also specify additional files to be archived. To restore your files, you boot to a command line and run a previously created batch file. There is a bug here, however: if your Desktop is located on a different drive than your boot drive, your INI files will be restored to the wrong drive. New in version 5.0 of UniMaint is the ability to perform automatic backups of the Desktop. A special utility, "UniWatch," runs in the background and starts the backup utility when certain criteria are met. The program is impressively flexible. It compares the Desktop with the last backup made and triggers a backup based on how much the Desktop has changed. In addition to backing up at certain times or after a certain number of days, you can also trigger a backup based on the number of times objects have been moved or otherwise modified. Unfortunately, for those with complex Desktops (as described above), this program crashes every time it tries to compare the Desktop with the last backup. UniMaint also has a "portable backup" utility. Unlike normal backups, portable backups can be restored on machines or versions of OS/2 other than that used to create the backup. Unfortunately, due to a severe bug, we were unable to test the efficacy of this utility. Some third-party objects don't conform to a standard UniMaint expects, which causes the Desktop to crash. The Desktop will restart automatically, but the backup fails. This utility is also susceptible to the complex Desktop problem described above. UniMaint has a utility which automatically repairs some problems with Desktop INI files. Over time, these INI files become filled with unneeded information. Repairing them results in improved performance and stability. Although the repair utility usually worked properly, it would crash when used with certain INI files. The determining factor appears to be the amount of excess data in the files; if you've used the Desktop heavily for several months without repairing the INI files, this utility may crash. In our tests, the freeware utility (http://www.haligonian.com/os2/v1n7/rescue.html) CheckINI was a better tool for repairing INI files; it found and corrected more problems and didn't crash. However, CheckINI only works with certain versions of OS/2. UniMaint, as a commercial product, is more likely to be updated to accommodate OS changes. The final utility most users will be interested in is the uninstall utility. This utility allows you to uninstall a program simply by dropping the program object in the uninstall window. Uninstallation is a "semiautomatic" process; UniMaint makes some assumptions about CONFIG.SYS, the INI files, and the program directory and asks you to confirm or augment its assumptions. This utility performs well for most programs. More complex programs, such as those that register a Workplace Shell extension, typically won't be completely uninstalled. UniMaint doesn't always deregister the shell extension. The uninstallation utility also allows you to archive a program, rather than uninstalling it. Unfortunately, this option suffers the same bug as the portable backup utility. In our tests, we were unable to start any archive process without crashing the Desktop. In addition to the "basic" utilities, UniMaint also includes several utilities for the power user. The best of these is the INI and EA editor. The editor is extremely complete, allowing you to search, compare, copy, and move elements as large as entire files or as small as individual keys. One nice feature for new users is the "Explain" option. This feature explains the use of some of the more common INI and EA entries. Another nice utility allows you to change objects' settings. Although this utility allows you to change the settings for individual objects, its real value lies in its ability to change multiple objects at once. For example, if you want to set some folders to always maintain sort order, you could select the folders, click the 'maintain sort order' button, then check the 'do all remaining' box. UniMaint would set all the folders to be sorted in one step. Unfortunately, this utility also crashes when used with complex Desktops. However, this problem can be worked around by not loading the entire Desktop at once. The remaining two utilities are fairly straight forward. The first allows you to deregister Workplace Shell classes. The second is an interesting tool that cross references all the EXE and DLL files on your system. The results are shown in an easy-to-read tree view that lists all the cross-referenced drives and some supplementary information, such as the DLL's used by Workplace Shell classes. Conclusion Overall, UniMaint is a very buggy product. It also has a lot of rough edges, in terms of user interface, for a product in its fifth major revision. The inability to cancel operations once they've been started is inexcusable. Despite its problems though, UniMaint does have some valuable features. Of the entire package, the INI and EA editor is the most solid; for most people, however, it's simply not a tool that is typically needed. UniMaint is available for about US$80. If all its features worked perfectly, I would recommend this product without hesitation, despite its clunky user interface. As it is, the program is simply too buggy. Unless it has a feature you need and can't find elsewhere, give UniMaint 5.0 a miss. ----- * Unimaint v5.0 by (http://www.softouch.com/) SofTouch Systems MSRP: US$99 ----- (jiml@teleport.com) Jim Little is a long time Desktop fixer and destroyer. *********************************** SofTouch's Reply to UniMaint v5.0 Review ----- I would like to thank Jim Little for his professional and objective review of our UniMaint 5.0 product in OS/2 e-Zine! ; although the review was less than favorable, it was fair, and we at SofTouch feel that such reporting of problems is beneficial, even essential, to the continued success and prosperity of OS/2. Indeed, this sort of open dialog is what distinguishes the OS/2 community from the endless FUD of the Microsoft world, and we welcome it. Constructive criticism, like that offered by Jim, is positive for an ISV; understand that our objective is, and always has been, to provide you with the functionality, features and quality that you want and need. This simple philosophy explains why SofTouch continues to thrive in the OS/2 environment which has swallowed so many ISVs. With one exception, the bugs reported by Jim have been resolved with the latest Corrective Service available on our Web site, and the fixes are included with the current code being shipped. Unfortunately, Jim was not basing his review on the latest code. The one major problem remaining, regarding large INI files, is actually a problem in the OS/2 code, one we have been working with IBM since November to resolve (Defect 155755). To summarize what is a rather long story, in June the problem was reported to have been resolved by the development team working on the problem, but the fix quite simply did not work, even on the sample code we provided to replicate the problem. When we reported that fact, we were told to file a new problem report (PMR) and restart the entire process, a process which had taken seven months already! IBM now reports that the problem will be resolved in the next fix pack. For those affected by the problem, you can get on the interested parties list by referencing PMR 1318x,L11. Your support on this matter would be greatly appreciated and WILL make a difference. We can all make OS/2 better by pulling together. In regards to the UniMaint user interface, we are continually working to make UniMaint as user friendly as possible without denuding the product of its powerful capabilities. We made enormous strides with the 5.0 version of the product, but we recognize we can always improve. As anyone who has developed software can attest, the vision moves faster than the code. It's a private joke in the office that we take the time estimates provided by our development team and multiply it by four to arrive at a realistic release date -- and even then we'll probably be behind schedule! With UniMaint we recognized the fundamental usefulness of the functionality it provides and wanted to get that power into the hands of our customers ASAP to make their life in an OS/2 environment a little easier. Consequently, the user interface has taken a back seat to functionality; but we haven't forgotten the importance of user friendliness, as evidenced by the new Wizards enhancement and Technical Reference improvements of the 5.0 version. We can promise you UniMaint will continue to make significant leaps forward in the area of user friendliness, especially now that we have the essential functionality in place. We would like to thank our thousands of loyal customers who have supported us and trusted us, and ask you to bear with us as we constantly strive to improve the quality of our service and products. Because the problems reported with UniMaint were not uncovered during beta testing, we are rushing forward with plans to implement new beta procedures which will open the process to a wider variety of machines and environments. This will enable us to deliver even higher quality products that will work flawlessly in virtually all cases. Because, as Jim so astutely noted, no one needs buggy software. Michael Norton Technical Director Workstation Division SofTouch Systems *********************************** The Traveling Workplace release 1.20- by Jon F. Kaminsky ----- This review is part two of (http://www.primenet.com/~syntegrn/) Syntegration Inc.'s Workplace Security and Desktop Management package. The Secure Workplace was reviewed by this author (http://www.haligonian.com/os2/v1n9/swp.htm) in the July issue of OS/2 e-Zine!. Please note that the Traveling Workplace can be purchased and deployed as a standalone product or may be purchased at a discounted price as part of the Professional edition of the Secure Workplace v4.0. What is The Traveling Workplace? The Traveling Workplace (TWP) is a tool that can backup, restore, create, and otherwise manage OS/2 Workplace Shell environments. One might be interested in this product if several users accessed the same workstation but each user preferred a certain look to their own Desktop. It can also provide a level of protection against permanently losing a carefully configured Desktop. If you ever suffer bouts with corrupted system .ini files, this product could offer a quick path to restoration after such a loss. Of course, the system archiving utility built into OS/2 offers some protection against this, but it only can save the last three Desktops and if you are archiving Desktops that contain some unknown damage you may be out of luck when trying to restore from an earlier archive. In this case, many users resort to the original archive which was saved upon installation of OS/2. But what about the beautiful Desktop that evolved over (perhaps) a long period of time? It's history, usually. The Traveling Workplace includes: o Traveling Workplace application o Object Editor o Object Manager o Traveling Workplace Manual (hardcopy) o Traveling Workplace on-line manual o Customizing the OS/2 Workplace on-line manual o Traveling Workplace FAQ What's new in v1.2 TWP v1.2 adds several improvements over earlier versions. In particular, a new restore procedure is implemented to attempt to reuse the archived Desktop slot if it is available (e.g., a name like "UserDesktop" will always occupy the "UserDesktop" slot in the list no matter how many times it is restored). This version of TWP now checks to see if the Workplace Shell is active before performing the restore operation. If the Workplace shell is inactive then the Desktop is put back in the same place using the same Desktop name. The included Object Editor is updated to import and export Desktop resource files (this is the same version as the Object Editor installed by the Secure Workplace v.4.0). Finally, new on-line references are included. Installation Installation help is available through the hardcopy manual and a readme file located on the installation floppy diskette. The user manual guides the user through the installation process adequately and there is also documentation provided for unattended installations. If you indicated you wanted objects built, the Traveling Workplace folder is created on the Desktop. A system reset must be performed to initialize the program files. The install program can also be used to deinstall the product simply by running it from a command prompt with the /REMOVE parameter. How it works The TWP works with the three elements of the OS/2 Desktop: the user profile, the system Profile, and the Desktop directory, including its subdirectories. In a newly installed OS/2 system installed on the X: hard drive partition, the user profile is contained in the OS2.INI file located in the X:\OS2 directory, the system profile is contained in the X:\OS2\OS2SYS.INI file, and the Desktop directory is named X:\Desktop. These names are not required, however, and the particular user and system profiles that are actually used by OS/2 are set in config.sys using the USER_INI and SYSTEM_INI environmental variables. The Desktop directory name is defined in the system profile. You can have as many Desktops resident on an OS/2 system as you have hard drive space to contain them. Two are originally set when you install OS/2: the main Desktop directory X:\Desktop, and the maintenance Desktop X:\Maintenance!!Desktop. What the TWP does is allow the user to define additional Desktops and easily switch from one to the other -- either from a limitless supply of archived Desktops or from one of 36 resident Desktops managed by the TWP by choosing new user and system profiles or by selecting from a list of on-line Workplaces. Configuring the TWP When you first start the TWP, the program opens to the main window. The main window shows what archived Desktops are available, what on-line Workplaces are available, and the various functions you can perform in those Workplaces. With these built-in functions, a user can: o start a Workplace image backup o restore a archived Workplace image o restart the Workplace Shell and optionally select another Desktop o Create a new Desktop from scratch o delete an archived Workplace or on-line Desktop o select a log file for auditing activities o select a directory to place archived directories o add additional files to backup and restore along with a Desktop o customize preferences for the TWP Note that any directory can be used for holding archives, including floppy disks, and if the machine in question is used by several individuals, each person can have their own separate archive directory. Any archive can contain additional files such as config.sys, startup.cmd, autoexec.bat, and you can also add files that you especially want to protect such as the .ini file for a heavily configured application. Customizing the TWP using preferences requires additional explanation. The preferences window allows you to select options for backing up and restoring archived Desktops. In preferences, you can set: o The maximum number of on-line Workplaces and archive generations allowed on a particular workstation. The maximum number of Workplaces is 36 (not including the current resident Workplace). TWP will remove the oldest archive when the maximum number is exceeded. This number of archive generations is not limited, but if set low, the TWP will remove the oldest archived files when the maximum allowable generations are exceeded. o Whether the current OS/2 config.sys file is updated after restoring an archived Workplace. If this option is set, then the archive chosen will become the default Desktop upon restart and thereafter until another change is made. If this option is not set, (i.e., don't update config.sys), the Workplace restore will not remain active after the machine is shut down and restarted. This would come in handy if you change your mind after a restore. o Whether a cleanup operation is implemented to remove the old user and system profiles and the Desktop directory after restoring an archived Workplace. o Whether the TWP is allowed to use the default names when a restore is performed. If the default files do exist for the selected default names, TWP will not overwrite them. If you have ever found multiple Desktop directories on your hard drive (e.g., Desktop1, Desktop2, etc.), this may come in handy in eradicating the spurious Desktops. o Copy user and system application data which may be more current than the archived Desktop you wish to switch. For example, you might want to restore a certain Desktop but that Desktop does not reflect changes made to the .ini files as a result of some new software settings you might have changed in the interim, or perhaps some changes in Desktop colors that you especially want to preserve across the restore. Note that both these functions can be used to maintain portability when restoring Workplaces that were backed up on a different workstation. Taking a Trip with the Traveling Workplace I was curious to see the results of capturing my pet Desktop on my main work machine and transporting it to another machine in the office. But then I read the manual a little more closely (a rare occurrence for me), and it became apparent that that would not have been a very good idea. The TWP is not intended to be portable over two machines that have different versions of the OS/2 operating system (perhaps even FixPak levels), different display adapters, different installed fonts, different sound card drivers, different printer drivers, and different application software. None of the machines in this office were able to meet all these criteria! The closest I could come was a Pentium 133 and dual-boot Pentium 90 (both Warp blue spine, no FixPaks) with the same video card. Neither had exactly the same fonts, one machine had a sound card, one didn't, and the application suite differed markedly between the two machines. Most of these differences have doable workarounds like pre-installing the same fonts on the target machine before the restore, or determining whether printer or video information in the target machine is stored only in config.sys or the user or system profiles. However, the killer for me was not having the same applications on both machines. In this case, the restored Desktop would contain a large number of objects that would point to nonexisting locations. Bummer -- so instead, I decided to check out the multiuser aspects of the TWP. In this scenario, you can set up multiple Desktops for different users on the same workstation. Then all a user would have to do is restart the Workplace shell with his/her Workplace image and they would be able to get right to work in a familiar environment. I wanted to create a work profile for me, and a games profile for my son. My intent was to place the objects he would use out on the Desktop and hide or delete some of the objects he didn't need to be fooling around with, like System Setup and the Shredder. Setting up multiple users on one workstation is, in a nutshell, a hassle, and one false move and you've created junk. I really tried hard to follow the directions outlined in the manual, but I guess my boots are just not made for walking. I really created a mess. Before I knew it, I had several archives, several Desktop folders, several folders called "Temporary Desktop", and multiple on-line Desktops that all did the same thing. Some of this was undoubtedly my fault, however, the documentation is a little weak in this area, and does not adequately explain the relationship between archives, on-line Workplaces, and what happens when you restore an archive with or without clean up, or what happens when you restore an archive that cannot find its own Desktop folder (answer: OS/2 creates a "temporary Desktop"). So, the only thing to do was delete everything I created, hoping I wouldn't end up deleting my default .ini files. Then I went through the painstaking process of deleting Desktop folders from the command line (you cannot shred Desktop folders). I suspect one of the errors I had was caused by not entering correct information in one fields of the objects. I had to redo my setup three times before I got it right, and when I finally did, it was by accident. In all honesty though, it works very well once it's configured correctly. To change to another Desktop now, I just choose an on-line Workplace icon and I'm there in a few seconds. If I want to change to another person's Workplace, I choose their object and the system restarts the Workplace Shell using that user's profiles. Other Utilities As mentioned, The TWP comes equipped with two fairly useful utilities: the object editor and the object manager. Both of these utilities offer ways to create, query, customize, save and otherwise update settings of Workplace Shell objects conveniently. These utilities can also be used to implement a rudimentary level of security to objects you might want to protect from careless or malicious users (but don't tell Syntegration I said this as I'm sure they would rather sell you the full Secure Workplace product!). The Object Manager is a Workplace Shell class used to query, save, and update settings of any Workplace Shell object. You can also use it to destroy objects. It is activated by dropping another object on it to display the object's class, title, location, and settings. The Object Manager is intended for administrative use and should not be deployed for end users in a secure environment. The Object Editor is an alternative to the interactive drag and drop method of object creation using templates. This utility can be used for bulk object creation. While the settings you can change are available to anyone with a working knowledge of the REXX SysCreateObject function, the Object Editor provides a much more convenient interface to object settings such as: o template o no copy o no delete o no rename o no print o no shadow o no move o no drag o no drop o no settings o not visible For example, if you had a file containing financial data, you could call that object up in the Object Editor and check off the "no delete" and "no move" which would not allow a user to delete or move the data file from its location. If you're the real sneaky type, for example, you could set a sensitive folder's "not visible" property and no one would ever know it was there (except for you, of course). It's a nice little utility. Summary and Suggested Improvements The Traveling Workplace works as advertised, however just getting there can be a little cumbersome. There needs to be more in-depth documentation explaining the relationship between on-line Workplaces and archives. For example, I decided I didn't want a certain on-line Workplace anymore so I threw it away. However, an archive I didn't intend to delete somehow went with it. There is also little advice for recovery measures to be taken when you misuse the product. Several times I had the machine boot to either a missing Desktop folder (which would automatically create another instance of the "Temporary Folder" in my root directory) or to a blank Desktop with no explanation as to why. Luckily, I was able to recover from these errors by rebooting to the command line (ALT+F1, press C), starting the TWP, and performing a restore of my original archive. Without that original, I would have been out of luck. The multiuser creation procedure needs to be streamlined. It might be nice to just tear off a template for "log off", "Workplace Restore" and "User's Desktop". The TWP does not seems to deal with Printer objects very well, and it also doesn't seem to restore Desktops with the original object arrangement preserved. When I set up my son's Desktop I did not want to give him a printer object, so I shredded it. I also carefully arranged all his toy and games objects in the middle of the Desktop where he could find them easily. Then I saved his Desktop. Upon restoring his Desktop, all the objects were rearranged to the top of the Desktop and the printer object reappeared. Conclusions In summary, the Traveling Workplace is a powerful tool, but the documentation is a bit cryptic for the average user. If you just want a couple of different looking Desktops from time to time, such functions are built into products like Stardock's Object Desktop. If you are a network administrator and you wish to configure a company Desktop and distribute it among users, The TWP would be a good tool. The TWP also works well for multiple users on one machine, although it's somewhat of a pain to set up. And The TWP is a good tool for just saving archives; I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have wished I had a good backup to fix a corrupted environment. Currently, I use the OS/2 archive utility and a QIC-80 tape backup for my archiving. Neither of these are ideal, and once I found that every one of my three archives contained corrupted application information which was causing system problems. Using TWP is a much more convenient method to ensure the quality of your system and user profile backups. Hmmm. It's about time I did just that. ----- * The Traveling Workplace v1.2 by (http://www.primenet.com/~syntegrn/) Syntegration, Inc. MSRP: $59.95 Upgrade MRSP: $29.95 Secure Workplace Professional edition MSRP:$120.00 ----- (negcjfk@ibm.net) Jon F. Kaminsky is principal hydrogeologist of Northwest Environmental Geoscience Co. in Tacoma, Washington and when not practicing geology, he indulges in writing shareware OS/2 utilities. He has written articles for scientific journals, and now, an on-line magazine. *********************************** Photo>Graphics v1.0- by Christopher B. Wright ----- TrueSpectra brings new possibilities to OS/2 Most of us are aware of the great possibilities of OS/2 as an operating environment for graphics designers and desktop publishers. With its superior multitasking and crash protection, you can do a lot of heavy stuff without worrying too much about your computer grinding to a halt and choking up on you. Unfortunately, at the moment most of OS/2's potential in this area is unrealized. Although ColorWorks is a superior, high-end product for paint and image processing, that's only 1/3 of the Graphic Design world. OS/2 has no desktop publishing or vector drawing applications to speak of (Clearlook and DeScribe approach DTP standards with their use of frames but don't quite make it; Freelance for OS/2 is a very rudimentary product and CorelDraw 2.5 for OS/2 is no longer sold anywhere). So to cover the other 2/3 of the Graphic Design/DTP world, we are forced to rely on Windows applications. But we're making some progress in these areas. Aside from those companies mentioned above, TrueSpectra, a Canadian Company that has already released a high-end 3D animation package for OS/2 under the same name, has now released Photo>Graphics, an innovative graphics program that takes a "holistic" approach to graphics design -- it tries to do it all. Overview Photo>Graphics was designed to cover a wide spectrum of the graphics design world: paint, image processing, vector graphics, and even some layout functions are included. These tools are integrated with each other fairly seamlessly -- to the extent that the differences between paint and vector graphics become less apparent the longer you use this program. The secret to this is the TrueSpectra ColorWave Level 2.0 render engine, which gives painted and digitized images resolution independence. In other words, digital images can be scaled on your screen just like vector drawings can, without loss of image quality. Not only can you scale your image on screen, but you can determine its exact size when you print it as well. Photo>Graphics is a multi threaded application that allows you to continue working while it is rendering other portions of your graphic. It is also object-oriented; each specific shape, effect, and mask is an independent object that modifies the objects sitting below it. All objects can be named, allowing you to better differentiate what they are. At the moment, Photo>Graphics it is only available for OS/2, but later this year a Windows 95 version will be out. There are also plans to make it available for NT, Unix, and other platforms. Specifics But what, you ask, can you do with it? A lot, actually; I pounded on Photo>Graphics for quite a bit before I felt comfortable with writing this review, and I'll still leave a lot of its capabilities unmentioned. Photo>Graphics is strongest in the area of "painting" and "digital imaging", that is, creating a picture from scratch or modifying an already existing graphic. The basic idea behind Photo>Graphics is that all objects -- even text and vector lines -- consist of a shape and a modifier. Depending on these combinations (and although there are not many tools to choose from, the combinations are varied and interesting) you can create a great many objects. Choosing a shape and a color gives you a geometric object: a rectangle, ellipse, triangle, star, or crescent moon. Choosing a non-rectangular shape is a little confusing at first, because Photo>Graphics maps out all areas with rectangular fields before it fills in the area with the shape you've chosen. For example, if you decided to create a blue ellipse, dragging the mouse across the area you want the circle to appear in will give you a dotted rectangle, and when you reach the size you want, releasing the mouse will create an ellipse within the region of that rectangle. Photo>Graphics tools are correctly named "Ellipse" and "Rectangle" -- there are no tools for creating squares or circles independent from these. Circles and squares can be made from the ellipse and rectangle tools readily enough, but if you're a perfectionist you might find the absence of circle and square tools frustrating. The triangle, star, and crescent moon shapes are interesting but I've found no use for them as yet -- I guess a little more experimentation is in order. What I've found very useful are the "rectangle fade" and "ellipse fade" shapes. These shapes take the color you've chosen and fade it out as it reaches the edges, so the edges of the shape are undefined. This can produce some amazing effects, as shown in the example I drew for this review. You can, if you want, choose to use a multicolor fill tool. You can assign a color and hue to each "corner" of the object (ellipses are given four "corners") and they will bleed together toward the center. The default setting is an interesting tie-dye effect. One of the more frustrating things about the geometric shapes, however, is that you can't create "hollow" objects. In other words, you can't create an ellipse that isn't filled. Further, Photo>Graphics doesn't let you differentiate between the edge and the fill; they are the same color. And, Photo>Graphics doesn't come with a "fill" tool (so you can't drop a color in an enclosed, empty space). More about some of the inconveniences of this later. Choosing a shape and an effect gives you a mask or a filter to place over visible shapes. There are only a few masks and filters available at this time -- pixelate, noise, sharpen, blur, wave, contrast/color, emboss, button, and a "custom tool" feature I haven't quite figured out yet -- but you can do quite a bit with these objects. And if you choose a shape and a bitmap, the shape you draw will be filled with a bitmap of your choosing. Photo>Graphics can use a wide range of "bitmaps" (.gif, .tga, etc., not to mention its own .GDO format) so you're not limited to just .bmp files. The vector drawing (line) tools aren't as complete as the "painting" tools, but they're close, and you can combine the two in interesting ways. Photo>Graphics gives you three basic types of lines: straight lines (that can be connected or disconnected), freehand lines, and a "paint roller" tool that's a lot like the PhotoShop airbrush tool. All of these lines, when highlighted, will have a slew of X's running down their length. These are control points that you can grab and drag, changing the line's shape. The distances between the control points can be converted into Bezier curves with a simple right-click selection of the object's pop-up menu. Control points can be added or removed from any part of a line. Line thickness and "softness" can be modified, as well as the shape of connecting lines (beveled, etc.). Furthermore, lines can be given effects instead of colors, allowing you to place masks "freehand" on graphics for touch up work or for weird, oddball additions to your work. You can even elect to fill the lines with bitmaps: if you choose a thick line, and draw on the screen, parts of the picture will fill in wherever the line passes. Photo>Graphics's text-manipulation tools are not as fleshed out as the other areas, but you can still do some impressive stuff. There are two kinds of text tools: headline and block text regions. Either of these tools can have any effect applied to it, and text in either can be easily moved and resized. But resizing can be awkward, because Photo>Graphics doesn't size text in terms of point size, it sizes it in terms of "how many characters can fit in one line of this region?" This can be difficult for people who have a lot of different text regions that must use the same size text, but may have different sized text regions. Also, Photo>Graphics doesn't let you flow text from one text region to the next; the text just gets smaller, and you have to resize everything. All objects, whether they are shapes, lines, masks, or text can be named to differentiate them from other objects. This can be very useful, especially if you have five or six invisible masks sitting on top of a graphic. Unfortunately, you can only see the name of one object at a time, so if you've got 20 objects sitting on top of each other, you have to click up to 20 times to get to the object you want to work with. I'd like to see a feature added that lets you view a list of every object on the screen, so you can select what object from that list you want to work with. The resolution independence works extremely well in this product. You can scale bitmaps of many types to extremes without losing any noticeable image quality. There are limits, though. I tried cropping a picture of a child so that only his right eye was left, then expanded that to fill my entire page. It didn't look like an eye, but it didn't look like a bunch of separate pixels either (Photo>Graphics still made an attempt at interpolating the picture). I don't know how TrueSpectra managed to do it, but they've got a killer piece of technology at work here. In most cases, objects can be resized the way you'd expect to resize a vector graphic, and they can be rotated as well. Changing objects is so easy in Photo>Graphics that you'll rue the absence of an "undo" feature. While masks floating on top of an object don't change the object itself (so you don't have to worry about applying an effect you don't like; you can delete it and the graphic will still be the same), if you do happen to change the object itself, you'll find yourself trying to re-create it. An undo feature would be a good addition for future releases, but if you're careful you won't have to worry about it. The User Interface The UI is awkward when you're first learning it, but is very logically designed and you'll catch on eventually. There are three major tools at work in Photo>Graphics: The Power Tool, the Object Tool, and the right-click menu. The Power Tool can be displayed as either a box or a vertical tool bar. As a vertical tool bar, it can be locked to the left-hand side of the screen. The Object tool can either float above the work area or be locked at the bottom of the screen. The Power tool lets you choose whether you are going to draw or edit an object, or zoom in/zoom/out/pan. If you choose to draw or edit an object, you use the Power Tool to choose a shape and modifier. The Object Tool allows you to "finesse" what you've drawn. From the Object Tool, you give the object a name, alter the colors, and affect other parts of the object (how strong a mask will be, how transparent an object will be, whether or not an object will be "locked" into its perspective so you can resize it without destroying its shape). Using these two tools in conjunction, you can do almost everything you need to do in Photo>Graphics. Photo>Graphics does not have a menu bar, instead, you use a right-click to open menu lists. The only way I've found to exit the program is to double click on the upper left-hand close button (or to use the one-click exit button that comes with apps like Object Desktop or Xit). There are a few inconsistencies worth noting. Some of the Object Tool settings can be "torn away" from the tool itself (such as the line characteristics palette) so they are always floating on the desktop. This can be useful if you're working with lines a great deal, and want the line setting within easy reach. However, when you leave the palette floating on the desktop, you can only use it to define the characteristics of lines you're about to draw. If you want to change the line thickness of a line you've already drawn, for example, you cannot use the floating palette, you must use the settings on the Object Tool. Usability After going through the tutorial, I tried to do two things with Photo>Graphics to see how well it worked. First of all, I tried to draw one "Help Desk" strip with it (Help Desk, the strip I've neglected for a month and a half!) to see how strong its drawing skills were. Second, I tried to create a fairly realistic picture of a planet hanging out in space. Of the two, I thought the second would be the more difficult, since it was a more ambitious project. I was wrong. Surprisingly, I found trying to draw the Help Desk Strip so frustrating that I gave up. Because I like to reuse shapes over and over again, I keep all my basic objects (Alex's head, his computer, his torso) in black and white and color them later. Photo>Graphics will not let you make "hollow" or "black and white" objects... if I wanted to create a circle with a white interior and a black edge, I had to make two circles, one black, and one slightly smaller white one sitting on top of it -- in other words, I had to fake it. Also, since Alex's hair is an irregular shape, I had no way of actually coloring it (when it came time for that) because there was is no fill tool in Photo>Graphics. While I think I could have eventually drawn an entire Help Desk strip with Photo>Graphics, it would have taken much longer than in, say, Presentations 3.0 (which is what I use now). On the other hand, creating the planet hanging in space was simplicity itself. I created a black rectangle to act as the backdrop, then placed a 50% transparent noise effect on top of it to make it look like there were stars. To create the sun, I used a faded ellipse colored white, then placed a blur mask on top of it to make it look more fiery. The planet consisted of a multicolored ellipse (the "upper left" part of the planet was a light grey, and the other three colors were black, to make it look like the light was hitting it), a noise mask to give the planet some texture and a 50% transparent blur effect to make it look like there was a thick, hazy atmosphere covering it. And finally, I placed a contrast effect over the entire picture to make everything look a little brighter and more defined. Then I added a title and my name, and voila -- I was done. All this took about half an hour -- not bad for how it turned out. The Future I called TrueSpectra and asked a few question about what we could expect in future versions of the product. At the moment, TrueSpectra is concentrating on getting versions of Photo>Graphics out for other platforms, but by early next year we may see a "high end" version available for OS/2. The high-end version hasn't been completely locked down, as I understood it, but they're planning to include more toys, especially in the terms of more layout and Desktop Publishing features, support for multiple pages, multiple documents, color separation, and greater file support. Conclusion Photo>Graphics is a powerful and useful product that many graphic designers (and amateurs like me) will like a lot. While some of the UI functions are difficult to learn, some tools need to be fleshed out a bit and some tools that I would find handy are missing, it can do a lot with what it has. If you're looking for a good graphics program for your OS/2 machine, I recommend this one. ----- * Photo>Graphics v1.0 by (http://www.truespectra.com/) TrueSpectra Inc. MSRP: US$99, CDN$49.95 (introductory prices -- these will be higher after September) ----- (brennanw@richmond.infi.net) Christopher B. Wright is a technical writer in the Northern Virginia/D.C. area, and has been using OS/2 Warp since January 95. He is also a member of Team OS/2. *********************************** 3D Logic Minesweeper v1.0- by Tim Middleton ----- You hear it said sometimes, in newsgroups and other places, that OS/2 users are generally of a higher quality than Windows users. OS/2 users supposedly demand more from their operating system of choice, and generally are more technically knowledgeable. I can't vouch for the veracity of the above statements, but in light of its hypothesis it seems like poetic justice that 3D Logic Minesweeper by (reid@isarsoft.de) Paul Reid of Isar Software GmbH, has been released as an OS/2 program. I'm sure most everybody is familiar with the classic Minesweeper game which was bundled with Windows 3.1. Probably many people besides myself became addicted to the simple deductive puzzle: It is played on a two dimensional grid where you uncover squares which, if they are not a mine, reveal a number which reports how many of the adjacent squares do contain mines. An amazingly simple concept, yet beguilingly intriguing. 3D Logic Minesweeper, like some say OS/2 did for operating systems, takes the concept to a whole new level of sophistication. To keep with the metaphor, there are some other common comparisons between OS/2 and Windows which seem to apply to this new "3D Logic" version of Minesweeper vs. "Classic" Minesweeper. o Many people say that the "learning curve" of OS/2 is steeper than that of windows, but is well worth the effort. The same could be said of 3D Logic Minesweeper. It's a whole new perspective. o Many (but not all) admit that OS/2 is a bit plain, or even ugly, in the interface department. 3D Logic Minesweeper is not going to win any interface beauty pageants. (But it is solid). Users with monitors in 640x480 resolution will find the fonts in the game too small to read at first, but maximizing the window will solve this. o The OS/2 interface (as plain as it may or may not be) is generally considered far more practical, flexible and powerful than its Windows counterpart. 3D Logic Minesweeper has some very helpful interface enhancements over traditional Minesweeper. o Some say that Windows is inconsistent and illogical in places. Windows' version of Minesweeper is also often illogical in that it creates games randomly in which you are almost always eventually left with having to make lucky guesses. Those that maintain OS/2 is more consistent and logical will appreciate 3D Logic Minesweeper's intelligent multi-threaded game generation; it churns out grids which are tested, rated for difficulty, and fully solvable by deduction. o The object in 3D Logic Minesweeper is to find and identify the mines, if you can. In Windows' Minesweeper, the goal is to attempt to find safe squares and work around the bombs. This is a subtle difference, perhaps, but an important one. A few may be a bit disappointed, in this world of virtual reality and first person perspective 3D games, to find that the "3D" part of 3D Logic Minesweeper is conceptual rather than visual. The game is played on three 2-dimensional grids which are laid out side by side. The grid on the left represents the top, the middle is the middle level, and bottom level is on the right. This is quite challenging to get used to at first. However, 3D Logic Minesweeper includes several very helpful toggles and visual aids. There is a "Learn Mode" which warns you when you have made a mistake, instead of blowing you up. There is a "Hint" function which will analyze your game and show you where the first free cell(s) or bomb(s) are that the program can deduce -- you can then blindly accept the information or actually try to figure out the logic required make those identifications. In addition to these, there are also several other functions available on the "assistance" menu. One very nice interface feature which helps one's three dimensional visualization quite a bit is the big box outlines 3D Logic Minesweeper can draw which shows you all of the cells, on all levels, adjacent to a current safe cell. The box feature can be toggled to happen automatically or only with the right mouse button. The program can also tally up for you how many of the juxtaposed hidden cells contain mines or are free. Very handy, very helpful. I find myself fascinated and obsessed by these puzzles. It is all the more frustrating knowing that they are all logical and solvable -- I have yet to solve more than half of one, and usually I mess up most games long before I even get that far! However, over the course of many games, the astute player will slowly discover various strategies to be used to eliminate cells and deduce their contents. When I first saw the game I was completely overwhelmed by the magnitude of complication in the puzzle. But, liking a good challenge for the old gray cells, I stuck with it a while and found myself soon learning new methods of logic to apply to patterns and situations, and making some very satisfying progress. 3D Logic Minesweeper is released as fully functional shareware. The author requests a registration fee of, "DM 25.00, $15.00, or some approximate equivalent." If you like tricky logic problems, and brain twisting challenge, you can pick up 3D Logic Minesweeper v1.0 from ftp.hobbes.edu in the os2/games/ subdirectory under the filename "mine3d.zip". ----- * 3D Logic Minesweeper v1.0 by (reid@isarsoft.de) Isar Software GmbH download from (ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/os2/games/mine3d.zip) Hobbes (ZIP, 58K) MSRP: US$15 ----- (tm@io.org) Tim Middleton is the maintainer of the (http://www.io.org/~tm/bells2.html) OS/2 Yarn (Off-Line Mail/News Reader) "Bells and Whistles" Web site. *********************************** The Wintel Monopoly, Netscape and OS/2- by Brett J. Cohen ----- Corporate executives, pundits, and Microsoft-bashers have new hopes that Microsoft's days of controlling the personal computer market via its popular operating systems will soon be over. Companies are betting hundreds of millions of dollars that Java will replace WIN32 as the dominant API (application programming interface) on the PC. Netscape, whose popular web browsers prevail on nearly every platform (with one coming for OS/2) is gambling not only money but its entire future that it will be the first company to outmaneuver Microsoft in a lucrative consumer and business market. The gamble, however, is not likely to pay off. The Intel PC architecture has existed since the inception of the PC in 1979, and by 1990 was replaced by the so-called Wintel architecture, which consists of Microsoft Windows running on Intel processors. Mac users, watching Apple's market share slip to 7 percent and below, eye Netscape eagerly as a possible threat to this Wintel monopoly. Similarly, although OS/2 market-share is actually increasing (as compared to Windows NT), OS/2 devotees hope that Netscape, along with Sun, will make the operating system irrelevant with operating system-independent Java apps, dislodging Microsoft's control of the PC platform and giving OS/2 a real stab at major market-share. As much as it pains me to say so, it's not going to happen. Not because of Netscape, that is. Netscape cannot hold onto the browser market indefinitely. When Microsoft bundles Internet Explorer, its browser, into Windows, most users will stick with it since it will be perfectly integrated. (If Windows users switched to better products, they'd be using OS/2, right?) This theory was proven with The Microsoft Network, which quickly grew to one million members through its inclusion in Windows 95. Since Windows ships on forty million plus computers each year, in a few months Microsoft will most likely have the majority of the browser market. This makes the Netscape-Sun scheme of running Java apps cross-platform less of a threat to Microsoft. Microsoft, the company that made a late entry into yet another market, will have yet another monopoly. If you're not thoroughly convinced, remember what happened to WordPerfect? 1-2-3? Both WordPerfect Corporation and Lotus were in situations similar to Netscape's. No one ever thought they'd decline (both were bought out). Like Netscape Navigator, both WordPerfect and 1-2-3 were at one point superior products. That said, there is little need to mention that financially Netscape is quite insecure; its quarterly revenues are in the tens of millions, whereas Microsoft's are in the billions. Furthermore, Microsoft has over 17,000 employees, whereas Netscape has a few hundred. Even with Netscape's aggressive, Microsoft-inspired marketing, they face an opponent that is not only bigger, more experienced and well-established, but one that controls the major environment on which Netscape Navigator runs! But is there no hope for Netscape's success? What of the markets in which Microsoft has foundered? Certainly desktop publishing and CAD niches are nearly free of "Microsoft encroachment", as some would put it. However, these markets are just that -- niches, and Microsoft probably feels it has other, more profitable things to do. That leaves OS/2 as Microsoft's only serious competition, and only in the business market; IBM no longer even attempts to target consumers or the so called "home user". However, IBM, unlike Netscape, has staying power, and so does OS/2. Whereas there is negligible need for dumb-computers running JAVA (over 28.8k modems? yeah, right) the need for a stable, low-resource operating system will remain for years. So will OS/2. In the end, only a truly equivalent but superior alternative to the Windows platform will be able to prevail against the Wintel monopoly. If IBM doesn't have that alternative with OS/2, probably no-one does. ----- (jeanluc@netaxs.com) Brett Cohen is an OS/2 enthusiast and web page designer who currently maintains (http://www.netaxs.com/~jeanluc/os2/) The Best Freeware, Shareware, and Beta Software for OS/2 page. *********************************** OS/2 Dead? and IBM Snubs Game Developers- by Dave Peterson ----- As CEO of an independent software vendor developing applications for OS/2, I am very concerned about some recent articles I have come across while browsing the 'Net. The first is an article published in the online edition of (http://www.pcweek.com/news/0812/14ewill.html) PC Week on August 15. In this startling article, PC Week quotes an IBM executive as saying, "It's over," when referring to the future of OS/2. Equally disappointing is that the main thread of the article relates how William Zachmann, a longtime, high profile supporter of OS/2, has publicly declared his belief that OS/2 is dead and that IBM is, "going to pack it in." The second article was found in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.os2.programming.tools. This post contains a quote from IBM which can be taken as a strong demonstration that IBM is backing away from the many home users of OS/2. John Knutson wrote that when he inquired why certain items had been removed from the Developer's Connection CD he received the following response: In keeping with IBM's current OS/2 strategy to focus primarily on the business user, the IBM Developer's Toolkit for OS/2 Warp Version 4 has been slightly modified. Modifications include the following: The Entertainment tools heading has been removed from the Developer Connection Catalog. The following tools, formerly in the Entertainment section, have been moved to new locations in the toolkit: - FSDIVE and MIDI support: Multimedia Directory - MIDI, Direct Audio, Beehive, and FS Dive samples: Multimedia Samples - Headers and Bindings for MIDI and DIVE support: System Headers and Bindings The following Entertainment tools have been removed altogether because they are used exclusively for the development of games and are unrelated to the development of business applications: - Joystick device driver - Robot sample - BRender - tictactoe (signed) DevCon Support And the third article was concerning the quick-release of the 'Merlin' release of OS/2. It has been reported in both PC Week and InfoWorld that the decision was made to forgo a second beta because of the imminent release of Microsoft's NT 4.0 and IBM's belief that Merlin is in 'releasable' shape. This information subsequently caused an uproar, as gauged on the Usenet newsgroups, among the 10,000 original beta testers who felt that there were numerous bugs in the product. I'm sure I don't need to remind anyone that a buggy product will detract from users' opinions more than will a delay in its release. After all, look at Windows 95: delayed for more than two years but widely acknowledged as being usable as a day-to-day operating system. A question of marketing? Maybe, but the fact remains that Windows 95 was delayed for two years and Microsoft claims it has already sold, in one year, more copies than IBM claims for OS/2 in its complete history. And who, exactly, is the voice recognition in Merlin targeted for? Business users? A large majority barely use the advanced multimedia capabilities they already have. I think the VTD is going to be more of a hit with the home user and the "OS/2 champion". Why disappoint these users with a lack of entertainment software while teasing them with the fun of voice recognition? All this adds up to a hauntingly pervasive feeling that the death of OS/2 as a viable user operating system is almost upon us. While I'm not privy to the exact number of users of OS/2 who are using it as their personal day-to-day workhorse operating system, I am confident that it is a rather large number as judged by the success of Stardock, BMT Micro, Indelible Blue, etc. Those users are going to feel abandoned and confused when IBM ceases to support development of applications for their operating system and focuses solely on business customers. OS/2 needs champions in order to continue to make inroads at the business level! Where do those champions come from? They come from users who have the operating system on their home machines and find it useful, productive, and fun. It seems to me that IBM is cutting off its nose to spite its face when it removes preexisting, and working, toolkits from its developer support. While I am concerned about the future of OS/2 on a personal level, as it is my operating system of choice, my main concern is the lack of information about IBM's long term plans regarding their future support and targeting of the OS/2 operating system. As I am a commercial member of the IBM Solution Developer Program I would expect, at least as a common courtesy, to be provided some kind of official information about continuing support in more depth than what I can read in the weekly news magazines. As a company that has so far staked its existence on IBM's promise of continued support, I believe that a little more in depth knowledge is the minimum that should be done. And is it too much to ask that IBM not hide the removal of developer resources by not publicizing them (which is what happened with the removal of game support)? (A slightly modified version of this letter was originally sent to IBM directly by the author. They have yet to reply.) ----- (davmp@sinequanon.com) Dave Peterson is CEO of (http://www.sinequanon.com/) Sine Qua Non, Incorporated. They are currently finishing up an upcoming release of their URL management software which will work with both the IBM WebExplorer and the recently announced Netscape Navigator for OS/2. *********************************** IBM Technical Connection Personal Software CD- by Stacy King ----- Your Personal Support Center As a former help desk person and the CO-SIG leader for the OS/2 User's group here in Austin, I am often asked where I get my technical information. Well, here is my biggest secret in trouble shooting OS/2 Warp... the IBM Technical Connection Personal Software CD-ROM (we'll call it the TC from here on in). Although there is a DOS implementation, I am going to speak of the OS/2 side of it (of course, the only side we're interested in!). The best way to describe the TC is that it's like an encyclopedia. Information on the TC is refreshed monthly, and you can buy a single copy or subscribe to get monthly or quarterly updates. It's a single source for valuable information, presented in an easy to use format. The components of the TC (which I will describe in detail later in this article) are: o Table of Contents o What's New o How Do I Use the TC o Usage Tips o Product Information o APAR Reference o Corrective Service o Most Frequently Asked Questions o Technical Bulletins o Reference Diskettes o Device Drivers o AskPSP The US/Canadian version of the TC (check the web site listed below for information on the worldwide issue of the TC) contains two CD-ROMs, and the installation is painless. I have personally installed it on several different PCs and haven't had a problem. You can accept the default paths that the installation routine suggests, and in a few minutes you're off and running with your very own help desk at your fingertips. The installation consists of two parts: loading the required files on your hard disk, with the desktop icons being created, and the installation of AskPSP (the support database). Because it does modify your config.sys (for update and path purposes) you will need to reboot after the installation is completed. If you are like me and do not like defaults, here are a few things to keep in mind: o Which partition are you going to use? This is important, because when you update your TC, it will use the information in the config.sys to find the files to update. o Whether to install AskPSP to the hard disk or run it off the CD-ROM? I've done it both ways. The hard disk installation of course is faster, but if space is an issue, run it off the CD. I personally run it off the CD. The information on the TC comes from a lot of people... technical support experts, developers, testers and, of course, the users themselves. It covers a wide range of IBM products, both LAN and standalone. OS/2 Warp, OS/2 2.1, OS/2 LAN Server, OS/2 Warp Server, TCP/IP, OS/2 Warp Connect, DCE for OS/2, DB/2, Communications Manager, MMPM/2 are just a few of the products you can get information on. Data is also pulled from various bulletin boards, internal IBM documents, problem databases, etc. Of course, outdated material is removed as warranted. Y'all want to know what's available? Here is a breakdown on a per section basis: o Table of Contents -- self explanatory o What's New? -- This section tells you what's new with the TC, what's been added, what's been removed, what's been changed. It includes a new "SMART" feature that allows you to go directly to a new item from this section. o Usage Tips -- This gives you hints on more effective use of the TC. o Most Frequently Asked Questions -- Answers to the frequently asked questions from various support centers. This could save you a call to IBM! o AskPSP -- This is where I get a LOT of my information. AskPSP is like having your very own technical support desk, 24 hours a day. It is an expert system tool which allows you to interactively obtain answers to problems and questions concerning many IBM software products. o OS/2 APARs -- Here, you will find the latest closed APARs (Authorized Program Analysis Report). This is the same information that the support centers use for workarounds and code patches to problems. The products currently covered are: OS/2 Warp (this also includes OS/2 Warp Connect and OS/2 Warp Server), OS/2 2.1, DB/2, MMPM/2, NTS/2, LAN Distance, PC DOS, OS/2 LAN Server, Communications Manager/2, IBM TCP/IP for OS/2, OS/2 Development Tools, Netware Requester for OS/2, DCE for OS/2 and Windows, Personal Communications/3270. More categories are added as needed. You can view the categories singly or select several to search. o Technical Bulletins -- There are three sections to this gold mine of information: OS/2 Assist -- contains 9 different databases, including Timothy Sipples' OS/2 Warp FAQ (a must have!), tools, employee written software (TOYS! TOYS! TOYS! Need I say more?), and OS/2 Debugging Tools (for those more persistent problems). PC Assistant -- contains 11 books of technical documentation on all types of IBM PC hardware. Product Compatibility Information -- contains 6 files on what works with what, including integration test information on the hot new IBM Software Servers, the LAN Systems Supported Adapter List, and the Ready for OS/2 / Ready for LAN Certified Software, an extensive listing of applications and hardware that have been tested AND certified to run under OS/2. o Corrective Service Diskettes -- No more downloading them from the BBS or FTP site. Pull 'em off the CD! Included are TCP/IP CSD's, OS/2 CSD's (French Canadian and US English), DOS CSDs (French Canadian and US English) as well as the Fix Strategy book. Select the product you want, follow the instructions provided, it's that simple! o Reference Diskettes -- Vital to most of IBM's own computers, and they are provided here. Again, the TC is refreshed monthly, so you can have the very latest at your fingertips. The process is similar to the CSDs: select the one you want, follow the links and instructions... easy! Current product categories include Aptiva Diskettes, Files Specific to the IBM PS/1 Line, IBM PS/2, PC Server, PC 300 and PC 700 Series Diskettes, ThinkPad Diskettes, Displays and Video Adapters, Memory Adapters, Internal and External Devices, IBM Communication Adapters, and many others. o Device Drivers -- anybody ever need one of those? I see a few hands... well, a lot of them can be found here, too! There are too many individual drivers to list, but some of the categories included are printers and video... plus instructions on what to do if you can't find what you are looking for. o Product Information -- Contains the latest news about IBM products, including: o IBM's Worldwide Electronic Resource Guide -- contains information on IBM's presence on the Internet, BBS and Faxes, etc. o TeamOS/2 NewsLetters o PSP Developer Support NewsLetters o Personal Systems NewsLetters o IBM OS/2 WarpNews o Demonstration Programs -- demos on OS/2 LAN Server 4.0, OS/2 Warp, PSP LAN Systems, etc. o OS/2 Connect NewsLetters As you can see, there is a LOT of information, and it changes monthly. You can have all of this on your desktop... without downloading from the Internet, or calling support. It really is a help desk on CD!! For more information, or to order the TC, call 1 (800) 992-4777 or see (http://pscc.dfw.ibm.com/info/techcon.html) the TC web site. For those of you who reside outside the US/Canada, also check the above web site or call for more information regarding distribution to your country. ----- (wizzywig@jumpnet.com) Stacy King is a Level 2 analyst for CTG at IBM. She is married to wonderful husband, Larry, has a 3 year old son, Brandon (future computer geek), is a member of the Central Texas PC User's Group, the OS/2 Co-SIG Leader for CTPCUG and a member of Team OS/2. *********************************** Nethead's Nook- by Brandon Fesler ----- I had several people ask me to put the poem I posted on USENET a few months back on here. So, who am I to be a spoilsport? Enjoy! A Day In The Life Of An OS/2 User I was in my local PC store, Looking for some games, But when I mentioned OS/2 They put my legs in chains. I asked them what was going on, But didn't get replies. They dragged me through the dark back room And blindfolded my eyes. I was shoved into a van of sorts And driven far away, And when they dragged me out the door It was no longer day. I looked around and all I saw Were people with blank stares, They sat in front of big PCs In plush ergonomic chairs. My captors pushed me to a desk, And on the PC came. Up came the latest glass OS, And it promptly asked my name. I slipped up in the last name part, And went to make it right, But that PC crashed right then, And it wouldn't restart all night. My captors became furious, They beat me over the head, Shouting, "Next time you get it right Or we will beat you dead." I made the thing start up again Sometime in that week. I tried the Internet access, but that needed many a tweak. I tried to do some drag and drop, I looked for SOM. But every time I did all that stuff The PC crashed again. By that time I was beat down hard, And my memory isn't that great. But I swear I overheard somewhere a name that sounds like "Hate". He's the one who shouted, "OS/2 is dead! Get our stuff, you idiot fool." I only remember him so well Because of his persistent drool. One day I found a big long pipe, And beat my way outside. I found a passing trucker, And hitched myself a ride. He told me I was in the northwest, In Washington state, And that it was the capitol Of all OS-debate. I'm back home, alive and well, Still using OS/2. But I'll warn you, next time you want games, Just call Indelible Blue! ----- (nethead@okc.oklahoma.net) NetHead is a working stiff. He uses OS/2 to get the most out of his home PC. He is the acting President of the (http://www.oklahoma.net/~nethead/okc2.html) Oklahoma City OS/2 Users Group and his web site is back on-line, albeit in not-so-great shape, at http://www.oklahoma.net/~nethead/. *********************************** The Chronicles of (dmccoy@mailhost.mnsinc.com) John Ominor- by (dmccoy@mailhost.mnsinc.com) John Ominor, The Inhuman ----- The masses have spoken. Netscape Communications in conjunction with IBM has announced the development of the Netscape Navigator for OS/2. This version of Netscape will include support that will allow OS/2, and OS/2 users only, to natively navigate the Internet with something straight out of science fiction itself. Their voices. Include with this ability, frames and Netscape plug-in capabilities and suddenly, the entire expanse of the Internet lies within reach of (dmccoy@mailhost.mnsinc.com) John Ominor, the glorious Inhuman himself and his most worthy of servitors, the users of OS/2 Warp. Are you reading this Edward Leger, the Truthman? Do you fully comprehend that once again, the agenda of The Inhuman has proven you incorrect? It seems that Netscape's bitter struggle against Microsoft has caused it to reconsider its earlier decision to ignore the growing OS/2 market. The prodigal son has indeed returned home. I, for one, am glad to welcome him. I am David H. McCoy, Avatar to (dmccoy@mailhost.mnsinc.com) John Ominor, The Inhuman. As Avatar, my mission sometimes carries me to incredible places, but none more hallowed than the halls of OS/2 e-Zine!. The Inhuman has given me a chance to deliver his message to all. No words could possibly do justice to the brilliance that is (dmccoy@mailhost.mnsinc.com) John Ominor, so I ask the forgiveness of all readers, most of all (dmccoy@mailhost.mnsinc.com) John Ominor for what is surely to be my failed attempt to stand in as his guest writer. Know this though, these are truly the most exciting times for OS/2 marked by the second major OS/2 based game, Avarice: The Final Saga, the release of the eagerly awaited Object Desktop Professional and even the release of a graphics package known as Photo>Graphics from TrueSpectra Inc. Lotus SmartSuite is almost upon us, and even Netscape, a company that defines mainstream is porting to OS/2. However, all is not perfect. Brad Wardell, the Chief Executive Officer of Stardock has reported via his Internet Relay Chat appearance that other OS/2 Independent Software Vendors are not entirely pleased with the current state of OS/2 (most likely in terms of sales and of course, IBM's mysterious motives). Brad also stated that some Windows 95 ports were in the future. Still, Netscape, a company that should be paying me some kind of endorsement considering the number of times their name has been mentioned here, has shown that cross-platform support is crucial to remain ahead of Microsoft. IBM believes this. Check out the amount of beta software IBM is currently working on that is cross-platform. Multimedia software, Visual basic-like applications, compilers, WBI or Intelligent Agent (you should be (http://www.raleigh.ibm.com/iag/iaghome.htm) downloading this now; it is free, stable and should make browsing a little more interesting -- despite what the directions say, do not turn off the image cache.) So, should we worry about OS/2's future, about the concern of OS/2 ISVs? Perhaps... yet major Windows supporters such as Symantec and Corel have posted less than stellar profits and in some cases, losses. This is, of course, because of their decision to write only for Windows 95, the operating system that was supposed to change the way computers were used. It seems that now, a year after the release of Windows 95, the world is still the same complex machinery that it has always been and to some, computers are still difficult to grasp, let alone use. (By the way, where are those thousands of Win32 applications that the were promised? I don't see them.) I know that some of you are not happy with the decision to bring in Steven Den Beste as a contributing author for OS/2 e-Zine!. He has already made a most grievous mistake in his last article implying that (dmccoy@mailhost.mnsinc.com) John Ominor had limitations. Now he is applying some kind of economic theory to explain why Windows 95 and Windows NT will succeed in outselling OS/2. Technological advances do not matter he says. The major difference between Windows 3.x and Window 95 is the interface. That is clearly the one item in Windows 95 the everyone can agree has changed. The same is true for Windows NT. Let's be realistic, when people say Windows NT 4.0, other people think, "Oh yeah, it has the Windows 95 interface." This is what differentiates the newest Windows OSes from their siblings. I feel that the VoiceType of OS/2 Warp 4.0 will have the same effect. Computer Shopper's September issue has an article on the different voice packages available, for Windows of course, and in the Monday 26, 1996 Business Week section of the Washington Post, they too talked about the newly blossoming importance of voice recognition. Now, guess which operating system was mentioned in both articles as the only one to have voice software included in the base package? Who here used OS/2 Warp when it came out in November 1994? How many native e-mail packages were available at that time? Now, we have PMMail 1.52 (the personal choice of The Inhuman), MR/2 ICE 1.1, and Post Road Mailer 2.0. We have two graphics programs where before we had none. Several games, with more on the way, along with nearly 14 million users as stated by IBM in their Netscape announcement. All of this for a "dead" operating system which, incidentally, was the same adjective that flew around when OS/2 Warp 3.0 was released. And yet, here we are. Still growing, still finding and using more software and still contradicting the beliefs of computer industry analysts who can't see the forest for the trees. Let's hear some noise people -- get excited. As a famous puppet from an ice tea commercial once said: "This gig's just gettin' started." Fire up an app for me. ----- (dmccoy@mailhost.mnsinc.com) David H. McCoy is a full-time programmer and a rollerblading, volleyball & basketball playing, sci-fi book reading, happily married man who serves The most powerful Being in existence, John Ominor, The Inhuman, in his spare time. *********************************** August's Top Selling Commercial Applications ----- Note: The following list represents only the top selling OS/2 applications. OS/2 Warp and OS/2 Warp Connect are not included in the rankings. This Month Last Month Product Company 1 4 IBM AntiVirus v2.4 Desktop Ed. IBM 2 2 Partition Magic v2 Personal Ed. PowerQuest 3 5 Backmaster v2.0 MSR Development 4 8 System Commander v2.2 V Communications 5 3 Faxworks Pro v2.0 Global Village 6 6 Unimaint v5.0 SofTouch Systems 7 9 BackAgain/2 v4.0 Prof. Ed. Comp. Data Strat. 8 -- Seagate Backup v2 Personal Ed. Seagate 9 -- Impos2 v2.0 Upgrade Compart 10 -- Object Desktop Professional Stardock Systems ----- Compiled by (http://www.indelible-blue.com/ib/) Indelible Blue, Inc. - Your Single Source for OS/2 Solutions. *********************************** August's Top Selling Shareware ----- This Month Last Month Product Developer 1 1 PMMail SouthSide Software 2 2 Xit CodeSmith Software 3 5 InJoy Bjarne Jensen 4 4 NeoLogic Network Suite NeoLogic 5 3 PMView Peter Neilsen 6 8 WebExplorer Organizer ONG Software 7 9 MR/2 ICE Nick Knight 8 7 iLink/2 Mental Static 9 6 ScreenSaver Siegfried Hanish 10 -- Intercom Revolutionary Software ----- This list is compiled by (http://www.bmtmicro.com/) BMT Micro - Your Source for Over 100 Quality OS/2 Shareware Applications. *********************************** How to Subscribe for FREE If you would like to recieve notification when new issues of OS/2 e-Zine! are posted, send a note to (subscribe@haligonian.com) subscribe@haligonian.com with the following information: subject line: subscribe os2 notify message body: your name The following is an example of how your e-mail may look (your answer to the last question may vary): To: subscribe@haligonian.com Subject: subscribe os2 notify ----- John Smith ----- We require your name to process your subscription request. Please send all subscription requests from the e-mail address you wish to subscribe. Make sure your software is properly configured! You will receive an automated response verifying that you have been added to the list with instructions on how to remove yourself should you decide to. If you do not receive this response within a few days please try again making sure that the software you are using is properly configured with your e-mail address. If you have further problems please (editor@haligonian.com) e-mail us or contact us at: Haligonian Media 26 Victoria Rd. Dartmouth, NS CANADA B2Y 2V9 (902) 461-2266 *********************************** Sponsor OS/2 e-Zine! * Corporate Sponsors OS/2 e-Zine! has space for a limited number of corporate sponsors and advertisers. A variety of affordable advertising options are available including high impact, inline graphical advertising. Arrangements are available for multiple issue insertions. For more information please (editor@haligonian.com) e-mail or phone (902) 461-2266. * Readers can sponsor too! If you feel OS/2 e-Zine! is useful, entertaining or educational, please send whatever 12 issues are worth to you. Even sponsorship of a few dollars is appreciated. Individuals sponsoring US$ 10 (or CDN$ 15) or more will be listed in our Sponsors Page with an optional link to their home page (this listing is voluntary). Please send: o cash, cheque or money order (International or Canadian--payable to Haligonian Media), o a note stating that it is for OS/2 e-Zine! sponsorship, o your name, o address (city, state/province and country), o e-mail address, and o web url if applicable. Alternatively, you may choose to sponsor OS/2 e-Zine! through BMT Micro by cash, cheque, money order, Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express or Diner's Club. Just call: o (800) 414-4268 (Voice) 9:00am - 7:00pm EST, o (910) 350-2937 (Fax) 24 hours a day, o (910) 350-8061 (Modem) 10 lines, all 14.4K, or o (910) 799-0923 (Modem) Direct 28.8K line. Any amount is appreciated and whether you choose to sponsor or not, you will still be able to enjoy every issue of OS/2 e-Zine! on the WWW! For more information or any other questions please (editor@haligonian.com) e-mail us or contact us at: Haligonian Media 26 Victoria Rd. Dartmouth, NS CANADA B2Y 2V9 (902) 461-2266 *********************************** Our Sponsors (http://www.bestofos2.com/) Best of OS/2 Your complete OS/2 resource centre. News, demos, catalog of over 150 software products, daily Hobbes Report and links to numerous sites. (http://www.bmtmicro.com/) BMT Micro Your complete source for over 100 of the best OS/2 shareware applications available. Drop by today and check out our WWW catalog or download the .INF version. (http://www.ChipChat.com/home00.html) ChipChat Technology Group ChipChat produces excellent 32-bit OS/2 software for wireless text paging and state-of-the-art multimedia Sound Cards for Micro Channel PS/2 computers. (http://www.bmtmicro.com/catalog/zoc/) EmTec Innovative Software EmTec Innovative Software produces state-of-the-art OS/2 ISDN, modem and telnet communications software. OS/2 Magazine and Inside OS/2 1995 award winner. (http://www.hotinc.com/) House of Technology, Inc. Your Canadian Source For OS/2 Applications. (http://www.indelible-blue.com/ib/) Indelible Blue Indelible Blue, a mail order company, provides OS/2 software and hardware solutions to customers worldwide. (http://www.belle.dk/~bj/dialer.html) InJoy Try the ultimate in PPP/SLIP dialing. Lots of features, high performance and ease in configurability! (http://www.os2store.com/) J3 Computer Technologies J3 Computer Technologies -- your OS/2 software store. (http://www.Mount-Baker.com/) Mt. Baker Software Developers of "Money Tree", a full featured personal financial package for OS/2. (http://www.ncia.com/~pcs/) Perez Computing Services Defend against desktop freezes with Ctrl-Alt-Del Commander and create online documents/help with the IPF Editor. (http://www.bmtmicro.com/pmview/) PMView PMView is the fast, fun, flexible way to view and modify images under OS/2. COMING SOON: PMView 0.93 (http://www.aescon.com/innoval/) Post Road Mailer The Post Road Mailer is a high performance, 32-bit, email program with drag and drop filing, printing, shredding, word wrap and multiple MIME attachments. (http://www.prominic.com/) Prominic Technologies Software developer and IBM PC VAR preloading OS/2 Warp. Expert staff provides advice on hardware and creates custom software. (http://www.prioritymaster.com/) ScheduPerformance, Inc. Dramatically improve performance on your OS/2 system now with the patented priority scanning logic and visual priority identification of Priority Master II. (http://www.cfw.com/~shenan/) Shenandoah Equipment Co. Providers of lifetime warrantied name brand simms, laptop and printer memory at competitive prices. (http://www.spg-net.com/) SPG Inc. Creators of ColorWorks for OS/2 - The Artist's Ultimate Power Program! ColorWorks has earned both the 1995 OS/2 Magazine Editor's Choice & the 1995 OS/2 Professional Magazine Best New Product Awards. (http://www.aescon.com/innoval/) Surf'nRexx Use REXX to build powerful Internet utilities using our DLLs. Package also includes 10 utilities as samples. *********************************** Coming up next time- on the Web October 1, 1996 ----- *Feature OS/2 Warp v4.0! - IBM is promising a September 25th release date and we'll be bringing you the up to the minute reports and first looks. *Reviews HyperWise - IBM's WYSIWYG editor for INF, HLP and HTML files promises to make the world a better place for documentation professionals. We see if it lives up to its claims. IPF Editor - Perez Computing also thinks they can make your documentation editing and creation an easy task. Do they succeed? We'll let you know next month! Avarice! - The final saga is finally here!! You aren't the only user who has waited what seems like an eternity for this sequel the the beta/preview released by Stardock and Continuous Software Systems oh-so-long ago. We finally get a look at the finished product. *All the Regular Stuff the Rants the Beta File the Rave Opinions Humour Tips AND MUCH MORE! *********************************** Copyright 1996 - Haligonian Media ISSN 1203-5696