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Feedback from May 31

GNU for OS/2

Hi, I enjoyed your articles in GNU stuff for OS2. I'm not a programmar, but your article gives me more confidence to maybe try to install the compiler and compile some things. I've already got emxrt, Emacs 19.30, and emtex, and they are the best things on my system. I didn't have to do any compiling for this. But I've noticed that the Emacs mh-rmail seems to exist only in source code, so I'm wondering if I can learn enough from your future articles to compile some little things for myself?

Joan Bresnan


- Compiling (unix) programs for your own personal architecture (in this case OS/2) is generally a frightening prospect which really separates the true hacks (and most Unix sys-admins) and the rest of us mortals. In short, it is often not a simple task.

Here is a general tip, which applies for all unix-based programming and compiling. Packages come with a single file (or sometimes a collection of smaller files) called a Makefile. Often the name of the file is indeed "Makefile". There is a general "application" also called "make" whose purpose is to run the Makefile. For OS/2, the native make program is called nmake.exe. If I remember, there's another program which is the GNU-impementation of make.

The purpose of the Makefile is two-fold. First, it lists all the dependencies between files. In other words, if you have a header foo.h which is included in three different C++ files (main.cc, thing.cc, bar.cc) and you were to change foo.h, it would be necessary to recompile the three C++ files. (Files which did NOT incorporate the header file would NOT need to be recompiled.)

The second point (which is more relevant to our discussion) is that Operating System Specific information is kept in this file. If the C compiler on a Sun SparcStation requires a -foo parameter, but OS/2 instead needs a -bar parameter, these are set and changed in the Makefile.

REMEMBER: Humility and patience are required. This isn't rocket science, but it isn't trivial either. Trial and error are your friends. Also feel free to seek help in the Newsgroups. People there are always friendly if you've shown you've done your homework first.

Best of luck!

Murray Todd Williams


Regarding Chris Wenham's Rant.

Like Cliff Kelley, I pondered the decision of renewing or not renewing my subscription to "PC Magazine". Like Chris, I noticed an increase in the coverage for OS/2 related information and articles, but something more than that bothered me. The cost of the magazine in relation to what I was getting out of it.

When I received a "professional courtesy" offer at the office for a subscription to "PC Magazine" that was nearly $10 cheaper than a renewal notice that I received at home around the same time, I decided to take a hard look at what I was getting for my money.

First, I scanned several issues to see how many articles did I find interesting, informative and/or educated me to a higher plane of knowledge. Not many fit my area of interest. After all, and as Chris stated in his letter, "PC Magazine" covers topics that seem to coincide with the market mix that it follows. And what coverage I did find that hit on my interest levels/areas was weak compared to what I was getting elsewhere; like from "OS/2 e-Zine!".

Second, I went thru several more issues and I counted the number of pages of topic material of any type, including editorials and reviews, and compared that to the count of pages that were advertisements. I counted full and half-pages of both types. For full pages, there was a 60-40% ratio of ads to topic material! Of the partial pages, it was close to a 50-50% split but still the ad pages favored the topic material pages. I continued this 'survey' until my subscription ran out and at not time did any issue improve on these ratios.

I did not renew. Might I suggest to others that if they start to question whether they should continue a magazine subscription or not, dig deeper into your doubts. You, like me, will probably find that you do really need or want that subscription any way. It has just become an old habit; or, again like me, you might be afraid that you might miss something. You won't. It's all available somewhere else, probably in a format and content more appropriate to your needs.

Richard G. Curry, CCP


Most paper computer mags seem to be arms of the Microsoft publicity department! (including OS/2 Magazine of course) However in Australia PC User have started reviewing one os2 product a month and now have just started adding os2 drivers to their monthly CDROM that accompanies the magazine - all a result of the power of email!!!!

My tip with PC Magazine - just keep emailing them, it's the noisy wheel that gets the oil.

mblock@ibm.net


Graphics Software Reviews

I just finished reading the review of graphics software in the May issue. As always, your writers did a great job. I was a little disappointed, however, that there was no comparative features table. After reading the reviews of e-mail programs in the April issue I studied the features table, and decided to stick with PMMail. It would have been nice to have a similar table for the graphics software, perhaps also including PMView which you reviewed a few months ago.

I read your e-zine regularly because it helps me keep up to date. (I also read OS/2 Magazine, but their "news" is not nearly as new as yours, for obvious reasons.) I realize that putting together a features table for a comparative review is extra work for someone, but it sure is appreciated.

Herbert Holland


- You're quite right Herbert. We should have included a comparison table like the one we did for e-mail clients in issue #6. It was an oversight on our part but you can expect to see more such tables in the near future.

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