Welcome back to the Beta File. Once again, big news is afoot on the OS/2 software front. Small to medium sized ISV's and shareware authors alike are working feverishly to make sure we all have endless new toys to play with on our OS/2 machines. And then there's the IBM-Lotus team. Well, let's just say, we've got a lot to talk about.
And of course, during any given month, we don't come across every company currently in development. What's that you say? You want to help fill out this column? You have a product that you're sure is going to be the next killer app? You want a little free hype? Well get off your keister and drop us a note!
Now, to business.
For those of you who have been waiting for one of the software giants to jump into the OS/2 market in a big way, the wait is over. Of course, it's not surprising that the big splasher is Lotus--they have a history of attempting to support OS/2 with their previous lackluster SmartSuite offerings and of course, they are now a part of the blue elephant itself.
The new release of Word Pro 96 and the rest of the new SmartSuite for OS/2 should improve on Lotus' half-hearted OS/2 development of the past. Word Pro, which will be released before the rest of the SmartSuite, should be in internal beta testing by the time you read this. I've been told by the folks on Lotus' OS/2 development team that all the heavy bug killing was done by those hardy jungle-faring Windows 95 types and since the two versions share a common code base the OS/2 version will only need to be tested for OS specific features. This means the beta will be short--possibly only a month--and Word Pro could be on the street as early as March. The official word is to look for a release sometime during the first quarter of 1996.
"So what's new?" you ask. Just about everything. Lotus has overhauled its venerable word processor to bring it into the age of the network. Team Computing, as Lotus' new focus is called, means that almost every function of the new product will be network aware. It will even be possible to publish documents over the Internet as well as import files directly from WWW and FTP sites.
A note of caution though: this kind of functionality needs a lot of resources. The recording played to you while waiting for a Lotus rep to answer the phone claims that Word Pro 96 will have over 1500 new features. Expect an already large word processor to grow substantially in size. Get those 32 meg simms warmed up, you're going to need them.
Also in the word processing department is Escriba Word Processor for OS/2 PM. We first brought mention of this shareware offering to you last issue and since then Rick Papo has continued to push forward with features and stability. If you're not in the market for a Word Pro size application, the medium-scale Escriba might be the one for you.
Despite its relatively small size, Escriba is a WYSIWYG word processor. It features drag and drop importing of graphics, printing to any PM supported device, including the display, printers, plotters and fax, spell checking and more. It's also multilingual and is already translated to German, Dutch, French and Spanish (as well as English, of course).
About 25 people have been kicking Escriba's tires for the past eight months and in a few more months we should finally see a v1.0 release. As with much shareware, this is a part-time project for the author, but Papo believes, "the current market for word processors is dominated by over-priced and over-weight programs," and hopes to cure this with his low cost, medium sized offering. Registration will be US$30.
Stardock's back at it again--don't these guys ever take a break? Among their many irons in the fire is the upcoming Process Commander, a commercial product to manage and control OS/2 processes, threads, etc.
The project manager, Thomas Ophreys, and others from WatchCat fame are busy polishing the code based on the input of public beta testers and expect to have a final version ready for the second quarter of '96. The expected price is US$79.95.
Process Commander will supposedly allow total control over the keyboard and get you out of virtually any hang. It will certainly let you view your processes in detailed ways. Sounds like a must have for system administrators, IS professionals and the power monger in all of us. Once again, thanks Stardock!
Sapphire Software is now beta testing the next release of their shareware HTML editor, WebWriter/2 v1.1. Around 20-30 testers have been on the job since the beginning of January. The final version is due out in mid February but there's still time to get in on this public beta (check the web page).
The new release will address some important issues for those who write HTML pages to be displayed on WebExplorer v1.03 such as Tables, Backgrounds, and WebExplorer icon animations. Also new to version to v1.1 will be improved drag and drop features, preview capabilities with both WebEx and Netscape, "Attributes Menus" for easy modification of already inserted tags and a table generator and table assistant.
John Blumel, president of Sapphire Software, says they are, "committed to making WebWriter/2 the premier HTML editor for OS/2." With all these feature (and more!) and a registration price of US$30, I believe him!
On the Internet front, NeoLogic Inc., the first company to bring us Internet software in a big way, is beginning to wrap up testing of the new version of their NeoLogic Network Suite. NNS is a suite of PM applications for Internet News, FTP, Gopher and Mail as well as a server for FTP and Mail. The obvious addition in this version is that of the Mail client and server. Apparently, with the other mail software developers starting to branch out into news and other areas, NeoLogic felt it was finally time to add a full-featured mailer to their suite.
Possibly the biggest change in this version is that NNS will become a commercial product and will no longer be distributed as shareware. However, like InnoVal, NeoLogic will make a 30 day demo version available on the Internet. While final pricing has yet to be decided, Steven Gutz is apparently getting ready to take on the growing competition in this area head-to-head.
About 100 users have been testing the suite since August on various setups. The full release, including mail, should be available in late March or early April, however, there may be a release before then without the mail client and server.
And finally this month, IBM is getting ready to take us all to the cutting edge with their public beta of the Java Developers' Kit. Having licensed the code from Sun Microsystems, IBM programmers have been working to deliver a beta product which they finally did on January 26th.
Despite an earlier leak of an alpha version of this software to popular FTP sites, the real deal can be obtained by signing up via IBM's Java web page. Once interested parties fill out a questionnaire they will be given access to download the JDK1 beta and to mailing lists, "secret" web pages and some other nifty things. Hopefully it won't be long before there's a native Java-capable browser for OS/2 widely available.
It's too early to tell what features will be included in the final version of IBM's product and release dates are still tentative. However, at least one observers claims that Java is a technological innovation on par with the transistor or microchip. We'll certainly be waiting!
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