[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 at http://www.os2ezine.com/ or zipped for off-line reading.  Some graphically oriented articles have been removed from this document.

For best reading of this ASCII version of OS/2 e-Zine!, use a text editor at full-screen width.]


OS/2 e-Zine!		July 16, 1997			volume 2, number 7
----------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 1997		Falcon Networking  		ISSN 1203-5696

                  "Half a million readers and growing!"


OPINIONS:

  From the Editor
  Chris' Rant
  My Turn: Java and OS/2 (by Dan Porter)

 
DEPARTMENTS:

  the Beta File
  Answers from e-Zine!
  News from the OS/2 World
  Gaming News
  Chris' Graphics Powertips
  Object Desktop Tips
  the REXX Files
  How Do I?


REVIEWS:

-Software-
Chorus for OS/2 - Christopher B. Wright
VoiceLearn v1.0 - Martin R. Hadam
Java v1.1.1 for OS/2 First Looks - Jeremy McNaughton

-Hardware-
EPSON ES-1000C Scanner (OS/2 Bundle) - Jon Winters

-Games-
PlusPak: B.U.G.S - Colin Hildinger
MasterGear for OS/2 - Inteller Vaz
Doom for OS/2 - Colin Hildinger


READER SURVEY

Results from our June Survey
    Find out what your fellow readers told us last month! 

What programs do you use?
    Answer these 4 simple questions and find out how you compare to
    other OS/2 users.  Results will be printed next month! 


CELEBRITY CORNER

OS/2 Past, Present and Future - Brad Wardell
    Each month, OS/2 e-Zine! brings you IBMers, ISVs, OS/2
    industry personalities, and celebrities to share their opinions
    and more!  This month, Stardock Systems' Brad Wardell begins a
    three part series on the life and times of OS/2.


THE OS/2 DEBATE

Focus: Paid Beta Programs - Chris Wright & Dr. Dirk Terrell
    Join OS/2 e-Zine! staff as they debate some of the most
    controversial topics affecting OS/2 users today.  Pick a side 
    and join in!


ARTICLES

OS/2 and RSA's Contests - Colin Hildinger
    Colin explains what exactly these RSA contests are all about and
    where the name "Bovine" effort comes from...

Networking Warp and Windows - Brian Juergensmeyer
    Ever wanted to connect Warp 4 and Windows machines in
    a peer-to-peer network?  It's easy with these simple instructions
    from our man Brian...


END NOTES:

  Hot Sellers - the top 15 selling OS/2 apps from Indelible Blue.
  Hot Sellers - the top 10 selling OS/2 apps from J3 Computer Technologies.
  Hot Sellers - the top 10 selling OS/2 apps from BMT Micro.


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 1997   -   Falcon Networking
ISSN 1203-5696

***********************************

OprahS/2 Advocacy

-----

A reader sent me a fantastic suggestion last month and I'm rather embarrassed that I didn't think of it myself.

His suggestion is one that I think can do some good for the OS/2 community and one which will require very little effort on any one individual's part.  It's not a new idea; in fact, many people and organizations on the 'net and off are already doing similar things.  It's not a complicated idea either.  In fact, it is so simple that you'll be able to take action on it before you finish reading this page.

This is the letter I received:

"I have recently been on a mission to reach, and thank all those companies that provide hardware support through constantly updated drivers for the OS/2 Market.  The most surprising thing I have found is the reaction from the teams in these companies.

Example: I decided to write S3, thanking them for the regular way in which they have released updates to their video drivers for OS/2.  (I use a Trio64 Video Card.  Quite generic, inexpensive, and thanks to S3, a very good card.)

The reaction?  An enthusiastic note from the team leader, thanking me for taking the time to acknowledge the work and time they have put in.  The same can be said of various other companies I have contacted via e-mail.

Are we OS/2 users doing enough to assure these companies that we see and appreciate their hard work?  Perhaps we only contact these companies to [complain] about the slightest problem.

Well, let us take a few minutes every week, pick a company that has provided updates and new hardware support for OS/2 and thank them.  Point out the good things, not just the bad.  Maybe we can get things rolling with a little kindness.

     (isxios@discovernet.net) Hector Lugo"

This idea reminded me of Oprah Winfrey's "book club": each month, Oprah encourages her readers to purchase a certain book.  With Oprah's influence, many moderate sellers have become huge successes..

Well, I'm certainly not Oprah Winfrey but, after reading the above letter, I realized that I had a similar opportunity.  Each month, 10's of thousands of OS/2 users read OS/2 e-Zine! -- including this very page.  After Hector suggested his idea, it seemed to me that as long as I didn't ask people to do anything that would cost them money or too much effort, I might be able to arouse a sort of Oprah-esque OS/2 advocacy.

So I decided that each month, I would advocate that readers of OS/2 e-Zine! take a moment to write a short note to a company that has shown dedication to OS/2.  Hector was primarily interested in thanking hardware driver developers, and this is certainly a great idea, but I suggest that we don't need to limit ourselves to just driver developers.  There are plenty of games, graphics, Internet utilities, and other OS/2 software developers that also deserve our thanks.

Each month, we will select one company or person who has shown dedication to OS/2.  Any reader who feels appreciative of that particular developer will be able to write a short note and send it directly from this page -- you won't even have to open your e-mail program.

To start this project off, this month we have chosen Jeppe Cramon as an example of a developer who has made a significant contribution to OS/2.  Mr. Cramon is the author of the (http://www.gbar.dtu.dk/~c948129/) Cramon Utilities for OS/2 and, more recently, PlusPak: B.U.G.S., which was published by Stardock Systems (and reviewed in this issue!).  I felt that any author willing and able to develop a high quality arcade style game for OS/2, in light of IBM's lack of support, definitely deserves our thanks and admiration.  If you're not familiar with Cramon's work, take a moment to browse his site with the link above.

So take a few minutes to write a short note to Jeppe Cramon thanking him for his support of OS/2.  Just use the form on our web site (http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n7/editor.htm).

Now, naturally, the point of this exercise is to encourage developers so please, send only positive comments via this form (we will not be monitoring your messages in any way).

-----

What about the future?  Who else should we acknowledge?  We're open to suggestions.  Who do you think has been a great supporter of OS/2 today or in the past?  Who deserves the recognition of our readers?  (feedback@os2ezine.com) Send us their names and we'll dig up their e-mail addresses!

And, by the way, don't feel you need to wait for us to suggest a developer to be thanked  -- please feel free to fire up your e-mail programs and write letters of support to any and all OS/2 developers you feel deserve it.  It can only be a positive thing.

***********************************

Corporate Sponsors of OS/2 e-Zine!

(http://www.bmtmicro.com/) BMT Micro
Your complete source for over 175 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/os2ezine) 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.fx.dk/) F/X Communications
Home of the top selling (http://www.fx.dk/injoy/) InJoy dialer, ranked #1 in worldwide OS/2 shareware sales (Jan-97).

(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.os2store.com/) J3 Computer Technologies
Serving the Global OS/2 Community, large and small!

(http://www.kellergroup.com/) Keller Group Inc.
Developers of FaxWorks for OS/2 and PMfax, the fax and voice solution for OS/2, with versions for stand-alone, LAN and Internet Faxing.

(http://nick.secant.com/mr2ice.htm) MR/2 ICE Internet Email Client
Delivering the electronic mail features of the future, today.  A product of Knightware Software Company.

(http://www.mensys.nl/indexuk.html) Mensys
The one place to go in Europe for all OS/2 Warp software.

(http://www.OberonSoftware.com/) Oberon Software, Inc.
Home of TE/2, TE/2 Pro and other fine OS/2 programs.  Specializing in telecommunications, Java apps and the Internet.

(http://www.pcs-soft.com/) Perez Computing Services
Defend against desktop freezes with Ctrl-Alt-Del Commander and create online documents/help with the IPF Editor.

(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.softouch.com/) SofTouch Systems, Inc.
Home of the bestselling set of disk and desktop maintenance products for 
OS/2: GammaTech Utilities, UniMaint, and FileStar/2!  ---- Your System's Safe and Sound with SofTouch Around

(http://www.stardock.com/) Stardock Systems
Providing quality software for the home and office.

(http://www.sundialsystems.com/) Sundial Systems Corporation
Productivity applications:  Relish - time management; Mesa 2 - spreadsheet; Clearlook - word processor; DBExpert - database.

***********************************

Chris' Rant	- by Chris Wenham

-----

A Lie of Omission

Actually, no, the OS/2 graphics market hasn't collapsed yet, despite what it might have looked like on June 30th.  During the week after SPG made the announcement that there would be no OS/2 version of ColorWorks: Web 3.0 (the successor to ColorWorks V2) no less than three different companies responded positively to the OS/2 community that had been temporarily left in the lurch.

I've had to postpone the piece I was originally going to write this month (a commentary about what I like about OS/2 and why I'm going to keep using it; please note the mildly alarming typographic mistake in last month's issue has been corrected ;-) and instead concentrate on this much more alarming mistake.

It's always harder and more expensive to get new customers than it is to keep old ones, except perhaps in SPG's case.  This is a company you've got to have pity for, just after you scowl at them for being so rude.  SPG didn't just leave the OS/2 market, they _LEFT_ the OS/2 market and did it in such a way that they couldn't come back.  Bridges burned, they're on their own, possibly more desperate than you or I know.

SPG's crime of ethics comes from a simple lie of omission.  While Joel Krautheim, President of SPG, never said there WAS going to be an OS/2 version of ColorWorks 3, he never said there WASN'T either.  You could also say he lead OS/2 users along with carefully worded Usenet posts in OS/2 forums that tantalized and allowed us to believe what we had good reason to think was true -- although this is still up for debate.

Choosing a platform to run your computer on is not a trivial decision, but SPG would have you think it is.  The fact is, if you don't pre-order the upgrade from ColorWorks V2 by August 31st you won't get any upgrade deal at all.  And just as you finish entering your pre-order via their suspiciously Microsoft-esque (http://www.spg-net.com/) web site you'll need to wait another month or two before the software is actually shipping.

This could be because SPG is very confident that they've finally got a killer app (third time's a charm, eh?) -- confident to the point where they're sure they can sell it based entirely on what you see on the web site.  To hear Joel talk is to think ColorWorks: Web will make it purely because of its technical merits alone.  But isn't that what we thought would happen for OS/2?

SPG now has an uphill battle ahead of them, spurred on by a rabble of disgruntled users behind.  You see, these ex-customers aren't so mad because SPG dropped OS/2 development, they're mad because they weren't told so until the last minute.  A lie of omission is still a lie, and from the viewpoint of these customers they were lied to and deceived on a royal scale.  No one's fooling anyone here, sales of ColorWorks would have dropped off to near zilch if SPG's intentions had been made earlier, but a customer is still a customer and they deserve to be treated and informed much better than this.

SPG had no legal obligation to tell anyone a thing, but I doubt that is any comfort to their customers.

SPG also doesn't care about the people now complaining in the newsgroups, e-mail and listservs, the numbers are too small.  And that leads us to SPG's Catch 22: they weren't selling many copies of ColorWorks anyway.  From their point of view, alienating the OS/2 userbase wouldn't have been much of a loss.

So where does that leave us?  If SPG has left because of slow sales, then how long should we expect the other graphics companies to stick around?

Fortunately it doesn't look as gloomy as you might think.  A week after SPG's announcement there came a flurry of press releases from the likes of TrueSpectra, Dadaware and Modular Dreams, Inc.  Both TrueSpectra and Dadaware have offered upgrade deals from ColorWorks to their products (Embellish can be had for $10 off the retail price of the boxed or electronic versions, see (http://www.os2ss.com/) OS/2 Supersite for details; and Photo>Graphics Pro can be picked up for $99 instead of the regular $249) while Modular Dreams have released a whole new product called SX Paint -- which will be bundled free with their other web graphics product WebAK.

After speaking with all four companies involved here I've also made another interesting observation; SPG has chosen to use several Windows-specific libraries in the development of ColorWorks: Web 3, even further putting an OS/2 port out of the question.  Modular Dreams, Dadaware and TrueSpectra, on the other hand, have adopted cross-platform libraries and 'engines' for their respective products.  These three companies are planning to publish (and in one case already have published) versions of their software for other platforms that are on-par with their OS/2 counterparts.  What's more, it isn't costing them much to do it.

That last detail could be crucial to us, since the OS/2 market is shrinking.

Unlike SPG, who's first product ran under DOS, TrueSpectra, Dadaware and MD+F are still committed to OS/2 as a supportable platform.  But now they have to make the same hard decision that SPG made, and that is to spread out and cover other markets too.  Remember what I said last month about the myth of vendors using Windows as their cash-cow to keep funding development for OS/2?  Well that's still a myth, because as soon as it starts costing more to support OS/2 than is gained from sales... *poof!*... you'll see these companies leave to go elsewhere.  It's to our benefit and the merit of these developers that they wisely chose the cross-platform technologies that they use now, keeping porting costs low and meaning they can stay even longer in a market with less dollars to spend.

It also means we've got to move our weight.  These guys don't run on affection alone, they need people who are willing to buy their software and support their efforts.  It's my opinion, as well as the opinion of many others, that the OS/2 market still has a lot of momentum in it.  I think for vendors and users alike it would do us all a lot of good not to slam our feet down now in panic.

Otherwise we'll see more companies like SPG, bitterly stung after putting so much effort and money and patience into OS/2, just leave in disgust without ever wanting to come back.

-----

(http://www.spectra.net/~fox/) Chris Wenham is a freelance web designer, writer and Englishman who now lives in Endicott, NY.  In the past he has written comedy, sci-fi, Pascal, Rexx, HTML and Gibberish.  He has been using OS/2 exclusively for the past 2 years.

***********************************

My Turn: Java and OS/2	- by Dan Porter

-----

"This commentary is a response to an article by Brad Wardell that appeared last month in OS/2 e-Zine!.  Dan Porter, the president of InnoVal, an OS/2 and Java software development firm, offers a different perspective."

Java: the future?

Can you name three OS/2 applications?  If you use OS/2, that should be easy.  Now, can you name three Java applications?  Most people can't.

For the past two years, the press has been carrying prophetic articles about how Java will become the most significant programming language for developing software.  IBM has made it clear that Java is fundamental to its future plans for OS/2.  Some see it as the necessary catalyst to strengthen OS/2's position in the marketplace; even as the agent to save OS/2 from becoming a small niche, eventually obsolete, operating system.  Many in the computer industry see Java as a means for breaking Microsoft's Windows stranglehold.

You have undoubtedly heard or read the slogan "write once, run anywhere." It is the theme of full page ads from Sun Microsystems that appear repeatedly in the Wall Street Journal and many other publications.  Sun is running eight-page ads in computer magazines and 30 second prime-time ads on the major television networks.  IBM talks frequently of its commitment to Java.  The Borders Bookstore in White Plains has 70 feet of shelf space dedicated to books on Java.  According to JavaSoft, a division of Sun, there are over 400,000 programmers writing Java programs.  Every month, in some major city, there are well-attended Java expositions.  There is a lot of excitement about Java in the press, on the Internet, in corporate information technology departments, and among individual computer professionals.

The excitement  stems, in part, from the fact that Java is both a programming language and an operating environment for multiple operating systems including OS/2, Windows 95, Windows NT, MacOS, AIX, and SPARC Solaris 2.3.  It also stems from the fact that Java implements the object-oriented  programming concept in a practical way that allows faster application development at reduced cost.  Java also includes a very strong security model that is essential in an increasingly inter-networked environment.  This includes safeguards to reduce the possibility of malicious code or code that compromises the user's private data.

To some, who perhaps do not understand the underlying technology of Java, nor appreciate the nature of the software marketplace, all the talk about Java may sound like hype.  It is not.

I characterize it as realistic promise: the commitment of companies such as Sun, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Netscape, Oracle, Symantec and many others to advance the technology and enable the marketplace.  Hundreds of companies, large and small -- companies such as IBM, Lotus, Corel, Oberon, and InnoVal -- are developing Java applications.  The work being done with Java probably eclipses anything being done by Microsoft to maintain Windows' dominance.  In fact, Microsoft has found that it must defensively embrace Java technology.  At this time, the Redmond, Washington, company is only a minor player in the grand scheme of Java.

Applets and Applications

If you browse the web at all, you have probably encountered Java applets.  You can think of an applet as something intended to be run in the context of a web browser and usually tied to a specific web page.  An application, on the other hand, is designed to be able to run outside of the browser context.

There is an example of an applet on the (http://www.bestofos2.com/) Best of OS/2 web site that scrolls messages across the top of the page.  Other applets try to attract attention with wavy words, bouncing text, marquees with moving lights, and so forth.  There are few applets that contain useful function.  Applets, today, are not unlike the very early programs that came with the first release of DOS for the original IBM PC.  I remember when I bought my first computer, it came with a mortgage calculator program.  I ran that program over and over until I was bored with it.  Most applets are still toy-like, as were those early DOS programs.

Java is only two years old.  Still, with all the people working with Java, with all the interest, and with all the benefits, why don't we have any substantial Java applications and useful applets?  The problem is that Java was not viable for robust applications until February of this year.  That was when release 1.1 became available for Windows 95, Windows NT, and Solaris.  (IBM's release 1.1 for OS/2 -- technically 1.1.1 -- is currently in beta and is expected by September.)  The prior releases of Java, which supported applets in web browsers, were adequate for applets but not for high-performance applications.  This fact is the main reason that there are still so few Java applications.

Performance

I was excited when Corel released a beta version of Corel Office for Java.  Finally, I thought, we are going to see a "real" cross-platform application, including a word processor,  that I can run under OS/2, 32-bit Windows, and other platforms.

But when I tried it, I was disappointed with the slow performance.  I had heard that the newer releases of the Java Virtual Machine (VM) were much faster than the version I had on my system (release 1.02),  so I downloaded the new VM for Windows 95 and the beta VM for OS/2.  As far as I could tell, Corel Office was still just as slow.  Because I didn't understand the meaning of the claims of increased performance, I mistakenly assumed that Java was just too slow for heavy-duty applications.

One of our programmers at InnoVal set me straight on the performance issue, though.  Java 1.1 is much faster than the previous (1.02) release, but only if the program is written to take advantage of certain features of the new release and compiled with the new compiler.  Corel's beta was written for the older release.  (It will need to be extensively modified before real performance improvements can be realized.)

Part of the problem is that window-based (GUI) programs are event intensive.  When you move a mouse pointer, you generate "mouse-moved" events.  Move a mouse pointer across a screen with a 640 by 480 resolution, and a minimum of 640 events are generated.  A click of a mouse button generates a "mouse-down" and a "mouse-up" event.  Keystrokes similarly produce multiple events.  Every event must be considered and either logically handled or ignored.  If events are not processed in the most effective way, the program will run slowly.

That was the major problem with release 1.02.  Release 1.1 handles events more effectively but, again, source code must be modified to take advantage of the new approach.  (The old way still works, but more slowly.)

Not convinced, I had to see this for myself.  So I wrote a small program that would act on every "mouse-move" event.  The program loads a full-screen GIF image into memory and paints it to the screen.  Then, every time the mouse is moved from one pixel to the next, the brightness of the color of the  pixel under the mouse pointer is calculated and the pixel is changed to a shade of gray of the same brightness.  Then the entire image is repainted on the screen, even before handling the movement of the mouse to the adjoining pixel.  In other words, I created a "paintbrush" program that converted a color image to a grayscale image as I moved the mouse.

Coding for the older event model in release 1.02, I found that the program could not keep up with rapid mouse movements.  This was true even if I ran the program with the newer release of Java.  After rewriting the program for the newer event model, however, I found that the program kept pace even with very fast mouse movements.

In short, when developing a Java version of the Post Road Mailer, we have tested numerous capabilities of Java.  I can say, confidently, that Java performance is, perceptibly, very fast when written to the release 1.1 specification and run with Sun's just-in-time compiler.  Some functions, such as sorting large arrays and complex math calculations are slower, but not significantly.

Other problems and solutions

Another factor that has delayed the development of Java applications is the lack of comprehensive development environments for release 1.1.  Within three months, however, we can expect to see several tools in the marketplace.  IBM, this month, released VisualAge for Java (OS/2, Windows 95/NT) and VisualCafe from Symantec for Release 1.1 (Windows 95/NT only) is expected before the end of July.  Up to now, many companies have been forced to write most of their code in a simple text editor and compile it with JavaSoft's Win32 compiler.  Debugging is almost impossible and GUI layout is time consuming.  Nonetheless, good progress has been made because Java is such a powerful language.  Better progress will be made soon, now that adequate tools are becoming available.

By yearend, when asked what Java apps you know of, you should be able to name Corel Office for Java, Post Road Mailer for Java, and several other Java applications.

Also by yearend, there will be several important enhancements to Java as well as numerous other development tools.  These improvements and new tools will propel Java into the mainstream.  The most exciting development to be delivered by yearend will be the HotSpot Virtual Machine developed by Longview Technologies.  This new VM, planned for release 1.2, will provide exponential speed improvements over Release 1.1.  Early reports from JavaSoft suggest that Java code will run at close to the speed of native C++ code.  This will virtually eliminate any performance issues, particularly for graphics intensive and compute-bound applications.

In addition, the foundation  for GUI components, known as the Abstract Windows Toolkit, or AWT, will be replaced later this year by the Java Foundation Classes (JFC).  Developed jointly by JavaSoft, Netscape, and IBM's Taligent subsidiary, this will significantly expand the GUI options for developers and leapfrog the component models found in OS/2 and other operating systems.

The Java Platform for the Enterprise is also expected to ship by yearend.  This platform will include the Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) API, an interface to CORBA objects, and the serverlet API for server-side Java applications.

Where Java is going

As an ISV, I have concluded that as tools become more readily available and the performance is improved, developers will be able to deliver reliable code faster than can be done with C and C++.  Because such software will be multiplatform, it will expand our market and lower costs which benefits our customers.  If you consider that the major release life-cycle of a typical desktop application is just over two years, and if you believe, as I do, that Java will become the dominant programming environment, it is easy to see that Java applications will replace existing applications quickly.  I think that we should see a significant turn from Windows development to Java development within a year and an end to Windows' dominance within three to four years.

Java will level the playing field for OS/2, as it will for other operating systems.  To really succeed in the marketplace with OS/2, IBM must deliver on the promise that OS/2 will be the best platform for running Java applications and continue to leverage the quality, reliability, performance and ease of use of OS/2.

Microsoft will certainly not sit by and watch its monopoly unravel though.  It is working on a number of strategies including platform-specific components such as ActiveX, component alternatives such as the Microsoft Foundation Classes (to counter the JFC), and compilers that compile Java to native machine code for Windows platforms.  Microsoft wants Java to succeed as a language but fail as an operating environment, thus enabling it to maintain control of the
desktop and dominate the server market.

I believe that Java will succeed as a programming language.  It is significantly better than C++.  As a multiplatform environment, however, it will only succeed if IBM and others can continue to deliver viable alternatives to Windows such as OS/2.  Java can expand the OS/2 marketplace as Java applications become a reality, but only if IBM delivers on its OS/2 promise.  Java, alone, will not revitalize or save OS/2.  IBM must do that.  Software consumers, who will benefit the most from Java, must insist that IBM do so.

Related reading:

"Conference Report: The Java Revolution, Year Two," by Philip J. Gill, Java Report Magazine, May 1997.

"Special Report: Java, Growing Up Fast in the Web Hot House," by Michael Moeller, ZD Internet Magazine, August 1997.

"The JDK 1.1's New Delegation Event Model," by Jeremy Sevareid, Java Report Magazine, April 1997.

-----

(porter@innoval.com) Dan Porter is the President of (http://www.innoval.com/) InnoVal Systems Solutions, an OS/2 and Java development company.

***********************************

the Beta File	- by Ryan Dill

-----

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, (feedback@os2ezine.com) drop us a note!

             *  *  * 

Let's begin this month by mentioning a cool-sounding search and retrieval application by the name of File Hound.  File Hound for OS/2 is meant to be used as a replacement for the "Find Objects" and "Seek and Scan Files" applets that ship with OS/2 Warp.  Since OS/2's built-in searchers simply search files for any occurrences of the text you're looking for, you might end up with a large list of files, of which few have the actual information you're seeking.

File Hound, on the other hand, creates an index of significant terms in a file/document, and uses this index to search with.  Since reading the significant terms takes less time than reading the whole file, searches using File Hound can be extremely fast, and also allow File Hound to order your results -- those files which seem to talk most about your search term(s) will be displayed first.  According to developer Aaron Gaalswyk, "aided by the index, File Hound can search hundreds or thousands of files within a few seconds and display the results in a user-friendly interface, which ranks documents according to their relevance to a query."

The program includes ZIP archive and drag 'n drop support, easy launching of applications on a found object, remote access, searching across networks, and more.  With the ability to use multiple indexes as desired, and user customization of indexing rules, it sounds like File Hound can find your lost file quicker and easier than anything else.  Having just entered public beta testing, you can download a copy of (ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/) File Hound from Hobbes if you'd like to see how well it works.  More information can be found at either (http://www.spacestar.net/users/gaalswyk/) File Hound's web page, or by contacting (gaalswyk@spacestar.net) Aaron.

Aaron expects File Hound will still be in beta until at least fall of this year, and pricing information will be made available around that time.  He welcomes any and all feedback you may have on the program, so download it and try it out!  (On July 15th, Aaron announced that beta version 0.2a of FileHound is now available.  For more information, see (http://www.aescon.com/bestofos2/msgs/messages/msg477.htm) the announcement at the old Best of OS/2 message board. -- ed.)

             *  *  * 

The people at (http://www.program.com/panacea/) Panacea Software, makers of the HTML Studio web page editor, have released the first public beta of their new Usenet newsreader product, (http://www.program.com/panacea/ProNews/index.html) ProNews/2.  ProNews/2 includes all the options you'd expect from a decent news client, including decoding, message filtering, off-line operation and extensive configurability.  In addition, it includes a few gems found in very few other offerings, including its own process manager, fully customizable tool bars, and configurability on a newsgroup-by-newsgroup basis (rather than only one set of settings for the entire program).

ProNews/2 had been undergoing an internal beta program of about 10 people since near the beginning of June, but with the early bugs fixed, the developers feel that the time is right for the public to have its first chance to sink their teeth into the product.  If you'd like to participate, download the (http://www.program.com/panacea/pn210b2B.zip) beta of ProNews/2 from its web site, install, and away you go.  This beta, 2B, will be fully functional until September 1st, at which time a new version (beta or GA) will no doubt be released.

The developers (Brian Lamb and William Young) say the newsreader will stay in beta, "until it's ready.  When 1.00 comes out we really want it to be 1.00 and not 'still beta with a new name'."  And when the GA version is available, it'll sell as a shareware product for around US$30.  Any bugs that crop up should be reported to the team at (panacea@program.com) panacea@program.com.

             *  *  * 

If you were interested in OS/2 e-Zine!'s (http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n5/netchat.htm) May review of NetChat for OS/2, developer Gary L. Robinson released the first cross-platform beta version on June 25th.  Now available both on OS/2 Warp and Win95/NT, NetChat is an even better solution than before -- cross platform communications applications are the way to go, because you're not limited to talking to people from your own platform.

For those unaware, NetChat is a "talk" application which allows a direct, two-way text communication between users of the program.  Unlike normal chat applications which require you to know the IP address of the person you want to talk to, NetChat includes a 'hailing feature' which allows you to simply e-mail a special message to a user, and their NetChat program (if running) will e-mail back that person's current IP address, allowing you to communicate.  The procedure is simple, so there's no need to memorize any arcane commands like IRC; just hail and talk.  You can even use (http://www.southsoft.com/pmmail.html) PMMail or (http://nick.secant.com/mr2ice.htm) MR/2 ICE as the hailing monitor, so NetChat doesn't even need to be on to receive a hail.

No information yet on how long this version of NetChat will stay in beta, but registration at BMT Micro now is US$25, and I'd expect the price to remain about the same for a while.  One great new feature of NetChat's license policy is that the license now includes the right to two registration keys for the price of one -- i.e., buying NetChat once allows you to give one of your friends a key for the program, and you immediately have someone to NetChat with, whether they use OS/2 or Win95.

If you'd like to try out the latest NetChat beta, it's available for download from (http://cud.cow-net.com/badams/index.htm) NetChat's home page.  More information about NetChat for OS/2 (and now Win95/NT) can be found either on the home page, or by e-mailing the author, (grobin@iname.com) Gary Robinson.

             *  *  * 

Keeping in the vein of person-to-person communications, Kim Kruse Hansen, author of CUSeeMe/2, has announced the next release of the program is ready for beta testing.  CUSeeMe/2 is the OS/2 version of a video conferencing program originally (http://cu-seeme.cornell.edu/) developed by Cornell University.   Cornell wrote versions of the software for the Windows and Macintosh, and Hansen thought an OS/2 version was necessary, so began writing one.  Since the OS/2 version hasn't been developed by Cornell, it includes a few features which are not found in the Win and Mac versions.  (A list of current features can be found at CUSeeMe/2's (http://inet.uni-c.dk/~deckkh/news.htm) news page.

Since it's a cross-platform program, CUSeeMe/2 is an excellent way to bring Windows, Mac and OS/2 users together.  In addition, since in its simplest form it requires no more than a 14.4k modem (of course, more is better, and recommended) and Warp 3, most OS/2 users can use it.  (The optional sending of video which is available in this latest beta, however, requires a Connectix Quickcam -- later versions may support MMPM VideoIn as well)

The beta phase has just begun, and is open to all interested.  To participate, (http://inet.uni-c.dk/~deckkh/download.htm) download the beta and test away.  (This beta version, v2.08, is fully functional until October 1st.)  Any bug reports should be sent to (deckkh@inet.uni-c.dk) Kim Kruse Hansen.

             *  *  * 

The people at (http://www.dadaware.com/) Dadaware, makers of the cross-platform graphics manipulation program (http://www.dadaware.com/embellish.htm) Embellish, have been busy the past few days.  Not only have they announced a competitive upgrade of Embellish for ColorWorks users (see (http://www.os2ezine.com/announcements/july8.htm#embellish) the announcement in e-Zine!'s News Folder), but they've also announced beta testing for the new version 2.02a of Embellish.

The main difference between version 2.01 of the program (see its web page above for a list of current features) and the new v2.02a is that Embellish now features GIF animation capability.  This capability is untested on a wide scale (hence the release of a beta), but the developers say it should be fairly stable.  Even if not, the beta has been designed so that it can coexist alongside of a currently installed version of Embellish, allowing you to continue with your graphics work even if something nasty should happen with the beta.  The GIF animation feature adds to Embellish's current subset of Web-based graphic tools, which includes the creation of image maps, and the ability to deal with transparent/interlaced GIFs and JPEGs.

Beta testing has just begun, and is open to all interested.  (It's primarily intended for experienced users of Embellish, but anyone who wants to can play around with it.)  To be a part of the testing process, simply download the (ftp://ftp.dadaware.com/dadaware/embobeta.zip) OS/2 beta from Dadaware's FTP site, install it, and e-mail any bugs you find to (beta@dadaware.com) beta@dadaware.com.

Be quick, though, because Dadaware intends to release the GA version of 2.02 on August 1st, only two weeks from the appearance of this issue of the Beta File.  Once released, Embellish 2.02 will sell as a commercial product, retailing for either US$59 (for the electronic version) or US$69 (for the full package, including the Win95 version).  If you've never tried Embellish and want to try a non-beta version, there are demos for both OS/2 and Win95 available on (http://www.dadaware.com/) Dadaware's web site.  For more information, either visit their site or e-mail questions to (marketing@dadaware.com) marketing@dadaware.com.

             *  *  * 

To conclude with this month, we'll talk about a new multiplatform graphics front-end available on Linux, MS-DOS, Warp, Windows 3.1, and Win95/NT.  Sentient Real Time Systems Ltd. has a new product out called (http://www.demon.co.uk/titan/) IPAD.  IPAD is a vector drawing package that uses intelligent graphics objects to make repetitive tasks easier.

By 'intelligent', well...  Normally in an application that uses graphics objects, when you want to do something to an object, you have to put it in a certain 'mode' first.  With IPAD, every object has a set of rules governing it that tell it what to do when it's grabbed a certain way, or when it's touching a particular type of object, so when you click it a certain way it automatically switches into the right mode and you can keep editing.  In the author's words:

"User interaction with IPAD is such that there is very little setup required (often none) prior to modifying some component of a drawing.  Most other packages require objects be selected in order for special handles to be provided and then for these handles to be used to edit the object."

In addition, this intelligence allows you to move an object and have those around it automatically adjust their positions to compensate for the movement.  Finally, when objects are grouped, each group can have its own properties completely independent of those of the objects inside it. 

Besides its powerful 'intelligence' features, IPAD includes various other useful abilities, including some bit-mapped image handling, various printing formats, multiple windows for easy editing between images, support of the widely-used png and ppm formats, and an object-oriented file format which allows IPAD to be used as a front-end for various third party software, including code generators and state machine generators.

If it sounds like IPAD might be useful to you, you can (http://www.demon.co.uk/cgi-bin/titan/getfile?/IPAD/os2/ipad204b.zip) download a beta copy to try out.  The expected date of final release is September of 1997, and once released IPAD will sell as a commercial product for US$99.  (There will be a limited evaluation version made available at this time as well.)

The OS/2 beta was announced with the other platforms back near the end of last month, and since then there have been more than 450 downloads of the product with no reported problems.  If you _do_ encounter a bug, or just have more questions on the product which its (http://www.demon.co.uk/titan/) web page doesn't answer, get in touch with IPAD's author, (sergio@titan.demon.co.uk) Sergio Masci.

             *  *  * 

-----

(dill@os2ezine.com) Ryan Dill is a student in Computer Science at Acadia University in Wolfville, NS and OS/2 e-Zine!'s Technical Editor.  He is reported to be relieved that, with the advent of Warp 4, talking to your computer is no longer considered a sign of mental instability.

***********************************

Answers from e-Zine!

-----

Q -- I am currently using IBM Works for my PIM needs (Phone, notepad, appointments, etc..).  When installed, the program defaults to use the "X:\BONUSPAK\IBMWORKS\DATA" path for its data.
                
I operate my system in 2 partitions, 1 partition for the operating system, and another for programs and data.  I would like to move this IBM Works data from its default path, to say "Y:\DATA\IBMWORKS".  I've searched every .ini file in the IBM Works directory, and have not found a way to change the data path location.  Any help on this one?

A -- Absolutely!  The solution here lies in the file:

X:\BONUSPAK\IBMWORKS\ibmworks.ini

This file is not an OS/2 binary .ini file, it is a plain text .ini file similar to those found in Windows 3.x.  In this file you will find a section that says:

[PIM]
PIMInitPath=x:\BonusPak\ibmworks
PIMInitFile=FPWPIM.INI

(where x: is the drive you have installed IBM Works on).  All you have to do is modify the:

PIMInitPath=x:\BonusPak\ibmworks

line to point to any existing directory (if you specify a nonexisting directory, all files will be saved in the root directory of the drive you specify) and start your To Do list.  The IBM Works PIM will create a DATA directory for itself and populate it with all its required data files.

If you want to move over your existing PIM data, simply follow the above procedure, then copy all the *.db* and *.md* files from your original DATA directory (x:\BonusPak\ibmworks) to the new one that the PIM has created for you.

You may also want to move the IBM Works applications to your programs and data drive instead of just the data.  If so, after backing up your data directory, you can run 'Selective Uninstall' from the OS/2 System --> System Setup -->  Install/Remove folder and uninstall IBM Works.  Then run 'Selective Install' from the same folder, this time choosing to install it on the programs and data drive.  After this, you should be able to restore your data with little effort.  (You will probably be asked to shut down and reboot after the uninstall and again after the install.)

            - (feedback@os2ezine.com) OS/2 e-Zine! Staff

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Q -- I'm looking for info or help in configuring a peer to peer Ethernet network with OS/2 Warp 4 and Windows 95 PC's.  I'm having trouble finding out whether the OS/2 Peer support can talk directly to the Win95 client, or whether I still need a NOS like Lantastic for OS/2.  Apparently, Win95 PC's can set up a peer to peer network with no other NOS.  Can a Warp 4 PC join in similarly?

A -- Yes, as long as you install an OS/2 compatible Ethernet card and the appropriate protocols (in this case NetBEUI to network with Win95), you should be able to see Win95 clients with no problem.

For more information see my article in this issue on networking Warp and Windows machines. 

            - (brianj@kansas.net) Brian L. Juergensmeyer

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Q -- I have a question regarding OS/2 Warp v4.  How do you reset the system font back to Warp Sans (the new Warp font)?  I was playing around with fonts, and set the system font to another, but now can't get it back again.

A --If you've changed the default font on some objects, the simplest thing is:

o  In your "OS/2 System" folder, open the "System Setup" folder.
o  In it, locate the "Scheme Palette" object and double click on it to open it.
o  Now hold down the Alt key, drag the "OS/2 Warp 4" scheme and drop it somewhere on the Desktop.

This will reset everything on the system to the Warp 4 defaults.  This includes all fonts and colors for all WPS objects and the background bitmap for the Desktop.

To reset individual objects, you can drag fonts from the "Font Palette", located in the "System Setup" folder.  The font palette hasn't changed since at least OS/2 Warp, and probably since v2.1 or v2.0, so its default settings don't contain the Warp Sans font.  You can either change one of the existing fonts to Warp Sans or create a second font palette and set one of its fonts to Warp Sans.  (You can create as many different "Font Palette", "Mixed Color Palette", and "Scheme Palette" objects as you want).

To create a new "Font Palette" object:

o  In your "OS/2 System" folder, open the "Templates" folder.
o  Drag a "Font Palette" object to the folder in which you want to create the new object and rename the object as desired.
o  Double click on the new object to open it.
o  Select the font you want to replace with Warp Sans and click the 'Edit font...' button.
o  Select Warp Sans for the name of the font and whatever other properties you wish.  (It should default to the normal size of 9 pt.)

You can now drag from this palette to almost any text in OS/2 to change its font.

            - (feedback@os2ezine.com) OS/2 e-Zine! Staff

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Q -- I periodically have to dial into a Windows NT 4.0 server to access files and e-mail.  I have as yet been unable to find away to do so without rebooting my system and starting my Windows 95 system on my secondary hard drive.  I would love to reclaim that wasted space as all I use Windows 95 for is to access the NT network.  Any suggestions?

A --In Warp Connect there is a RAS client called "LAN Distance Remote"; in Warp 4 it's called "Remote Access Client".  There is no RAS client for OS/2 Warp version 3, non-Connect.  Unfortunately, there's also more to the story than that...

There are two levels of service: straight PPP, for which Dial Other Internet Providers, iLink/2, In-Joy, etc. should work (but see below) and NetBIOS over PPP, for which LAN Distance or Remote Access Client would be used.  "File and Print Sharing" requires NetBIOS, thus LAN Distance/RAC, (it should be noted that LAN Distance/RAC disables NetBIOS LAN access while active).  If you're willing to live without printing and to use FTP for file access, you can get by with just PPP access.

If you need to access an Exchange server, Microsoft's 16-bit Exchange client works in WIN-OS/2 once Exchange Service Pack 2 or later is applied to it.  This should be available from (ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/) Microsoft's FTP site.  You'll need to acquire the 16-bit Exchange client from your NT administrator.

Now for the sting in the tail: PPP uses an authentication protocol.  NT 4's Remote Access Server supports the two standard protocols (PAP and CHAP) and adds a third, proprietary protocol; the NT documentation is slanted to imply that the proprietary authentication is "more secure" and therefore preferable.  The truth is, the additional "security" is in fact minimal.  But it does serve to lock out non-Microsoft clients -- including OS/2.  If your server is using this, the best thing for you to do is ask that they use PAP or CHAP, since all it really is is a password verification protocol.

I am not sure, but it is also possible that Warp 4's Remote Access Client may understand or may be modifiable to understand Microsoft's new protocol.  The latest FixPak I could find for it was at (http://service2.boulder.ibm.com/pspfixpk/2a56_47e.html) http://service2.boulder.ibm.com/pspfixpk/2a56_47e.html (I can't promise that this FixPak will work, but you might look into it if all else fails).

If you're going the PPP route, In-Joy does support Microsoft's proprietary protocol, but does not support NetBIOS over the PPP link.  (Theoretically, all that should be needed for RAS access is a PPP dialer and IBM "TCPBEUI".  However, IBM seems to have taken the cheap approach and not actually implemented proper routing in TCPBEUI, so it doesn't work.)

While Microsoft's method is more convenient, some of the biggest security holes in Microsoft's TCP/IP stack have come from the fact that Microsoft lets any network protocol talk to any other protocol without restriction, thereby enabling easy dialup NetBIOS but also enabling the remote to do the same in reverse and do just about anything it wants.  These aren't the holes which crash the system, but instead the holes which give the remote system access to every resource on the local network that the Win95 box can access, regardless of protocol.

If any of this seems terribly confusing, that's because it is.  I'll try to sum it all up in one paragraph:

You want LAN Distance Remote (Warp Connect) / Remote Access Client (Warp 4), but you're out of luck if you're running Warp 3 non-Connect (time to upgrade).  You're also out of luck if they're using Microsoft's authentication and you're using Warp Connect (ask them to change to PAP or CHAP), but you may be able to get it to work with Warp 4.  If you're willing to live without printers and use FTP for files, you can use recent versions of In-Joy on any version of Warp including regular Warp 3, regardless of which authentication the RAS uses.

            - (bsa@kf8nh.apk.net) Brandon S. Allbery

-----

That's it for this month.  If you have a tip or question that you don't see covered here, don't forget to (feedback@os2ezine.com) send it in!

***********************************

News from the OS/2 World	- by Ryan Dill

-----

Greetings all, and welcome again to OS/2 e-Zine!'s monthly news update.  This column is designed to go over certain topics that e-Zine!'s own (http://www.os2ezine.com/news.htm) News Folder might have missed, or only glossed over.

We still believe our News Folder can't be beat when it comes to up-to-the-minute, accurate information, but it usually contains more "official" things like press releases and such.  This column will include a bit more detail about things we think are of interest to OS/2 users everywhere.  Grass roots support, off-the-record news and updates -- stuff that other sources may have missed -- you name it, we've got it.

             *  *  * 

To begin this month: an apology to you, the OS/2 user.  Last month in the Beta File, e-Zine! reported that (http://www3.smart.net/~cybercom/) Cybercom would be releasing a demo version of their much-anticipated AccuCount/2 software within a few days of that issue of the mag...  Well folks, you probably know that never happened.  The demos have been delayed once again while the AccuCount/2 team finishes stamping out a bug in one of the demo's device and process management routines.

Cybercom promises that this fix will be completed within "mere days", and once that happens you'll be able to (http://www3.smart.net/~cybercom/DM_Accu.zip) download the demo version directly from Cybercom's web site.  (This link isn't valid yet, but it should be in a few days, so attach an (http://www.netmind.com/URL-minder/) URL-Minder flag to it or something to let you know when it changes.)  To keep abreast of all the latest info about AccuCount/2, check out (http://www3.smart.net/~cybercom/Chrono.html) Cybercom's Status page.

             *  *  * 

Moving right along, for those of you who use (http://www.mcafee.com/prod/av/vscan.html) McAfee VirusScan to keep your OS/2 system healthy and happy, on June 25th McAfee updated VirusScan for OS/2 to version 3.02, bringing it to the same service level as its Win95/NT counterparts.  (Finally!)  If you'd like to try VirusScan for OS/2 before purchasing, McAfee offers (http://www.mcafee.com/leads/evallead.html) evaluation versions of VirusScan free for download and use for 30 days.  Fill out the form to let them know who you are (mention you're interested in the OS/2 version!), and download either a self-installing version or a manually-installed version.  Every 6 to 8 weeks, McAfee releases new DAT files which allow you to combat the latest viruses, and these can be downloaded free from (http://www.mcafee.com/down/dat.html) McAfee's DAT site.

Now VirusScan for OS/2 is still a text-based application, but e-Zine! has been told by reliable sources that the McAfee development department is looking into hiring/contracting an OS/2 programmer or two to develop a GUI version of VirusScan -- it seems that McAfee has realized their hold on the OS/2 antivirus market isn't as strong as it used to be (IBM and C_Prot both have OS/2 AV products), so McAfee may be thinking about remedying the situation.  Now would be a perfect time for all of you virus-conscious users out there to let McAfee know the OS/2 world is interested in their products, and urge them to port more of their NT products to OS/2.

(http://www.mcafee.com/support/contact.html) Contact McAfee and let them know that more OS/2 products would be appreciated (and more importantly, would be economical for them).

             *  *  * 

Now, to Netscape.  If you haven't heard already, there was a 'stealth upgrade' of Netscape Navigator for OS/2 released on June 27th, one which fixes some of the bugs of the March 31 version -- a partial list of glitches fixed can be found in the Time-line section of the (http://www.netscape.com/people/danda/) Unofficial Netscape for OS/2 home page.  (Which, by the way, has changed addresses; Dan Libby is now maintaining it, so be sure to update your bookmarks to the new address.)  The new version of Netscape can be downloaded from the usual place: (http://www.internet.ibm.com/browsers/netscape/warp/) Netscape for OS/2's official home page.

IBM's Netscape Plug-in Pack was also updated at the same time.  According to Lauren Post of the development team: "OpenMPEG has a lot of fixes...  Here are some of the new things:

o  Audio only support for MPEG 2 audio (MPEG-1 layer 2 audio) files.  Check out (http://www.jazzcentralstation.com/) www.jazzcentralstation.com for lots of samples to try.

o  Many Video CD fixes, so if your video cd/CD-i isn't working, try the latest and check out the diagnostic information in the openmpeg.spy file.  It might help.  I worked with some internal IBMers to get some of these problems solved.  I can't guarantee I've fixed all of them, but hopefully I've fixed some of them.

o  The OpenMPEG.spy file concatenates versus recreating each time.  So if you have it set on, make sure you delete it periodically.

o  There is now a way to decrease CPU usage of OpenMPEG.  Use the synchronization factor slider in the OpenMPEG setup page in the Multimedia Setup Notebook.  At 40-74, OpenMPEG will drop all B frames.  I've noticed that this will bring CPU usage down about 25%.  It works well for talking heads videos but not great with movies with a lot of motion.  At 75-100, it will drop all frames but I think this is useful for very slow systems.  This is not a linear slider.  At 39 and below, it just mucks around with the drop frame rate of B frames.  If this is confusing, just try 50 and 100 and see the difference in the video.

o  Visual circuits Single Stream support.  It was in there before but didn't work well at all.  If you have this card, Video CD works now which wasn't supported well with this card on the old MPEG architecture.  OpenMPEG will play it fine."

If you find any bugs in the new Plug-in Pack, Lauren requests you let her know by posting a bug report to comp.os.os2.multimedia where she can see it.

Still on the subject of Netscape, two of the members of the Netscape Communicator for OS/2 team are going to be available on IRC on July 18th.  Join the Undernet IRC channel #OS2 at 8:00 PM (EST), and you'll be able to ask questions of Mike Kaply and Dan Libby, two of Netscape's OS/2 gurus.  Since this IRC session will be moderated, any questions you ask will actually be directed to the moderator, who will forward the questions on to Mike and Dan when they're ready for a new question.  This way, they aren't bombarded with a thousand questions so fast they can't answer any of them.

If you have serious questions about the development of Communicator for OS/2, this is the place to ask them.  This IRC session was coordinated by the "Soundoff With..." event series, a program designed to bring ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) and the public closer together.  More information can be found at the "(http://www.gt-online.com/~tandie/soundoff.html) Soundoff With.." home page.

             *  *  * 

In other news, Stardock has released an update and a demonstration version of their PlusPak: PMINews product.  PlusPak: PMINews 1.01a (the released version and the demo are at the same code level) incorporates a number of fixes and enhancements over the 1.0 release (http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n6/pminews.htm) reviewed in last month's OS/2 e-Zine!, which are said to include better handling of character set translation and improved database algorithms to enhance performance.

While our review last month was generally positive toward the initial release, it closed by suggesting that waiting for the first update might be in order (it's always a good idea to play it safe with the initial release of any product).  Well, that update is here and so is a demo (which is nice).  Interested users should seek the appropriate file on (http://www.stardock.com/) Stardock's web site.

             *  *  * 

Some months ago, the 'teamos2.org' domain (former home of (http://www.teamos2.org/) the main North American TeamOS/2 web site), was lost to the OS/2 world when a malicious hacker reportedly broke in to its ISP's computer system and did some nasty things.  Even after TeamOS/2.org's ISP had repaired the damage and increased security, the web site remained down for various reasons (which differ, depending on who you ask), so the large amount of OS/2-related information TeamOS/2.org had hosted was lost.

However, recently another group has reopened the TeamOS/2.org domain, and is working hard at building the site up to be a must-have site for OS/2 users again.  In order to make themselves into a great site, the people at the new (http://www.teamos2.org/) TeamOS/2 Online are asking for your help, and offering you some great stuff in exchange.

The site is currently running two contests, and entries are being accepted until July 22nd.  The first contest is a challenge to produce some top-notch graphics for the new site, including a logo, buttons, backgrounds, etc., while the second involves the creation of the web site itself, including HTML/Java design, browser compatibility, and loading time.  Full details on the contest rules and guidelines can be found at (http://www.teamos2.org/online/contest.html) TeamOS/2 Online's contest page.

Of course, the TeamOS/2 Online crew doesn't expect you to do any if this for free!  A slew of software vendors have donated their products to be used as prizes for the contest, including (http://www.softouch.com/) SofTouch Systems, (http://www.lotus.com/) Lotus, (http://www.stardock.com/) Stardock Systems, (http://www.panaceasoft.com/) Panacea, and more.

To win some great software and help out the OS/2 community at the same time, submit your entries to TeamOS/2 Online today!

             *  *  * 

Now, to hardware support.  The Connectix QuickCam is a popular computer video camera used for various tasks, including Internet video conferencing.  However, Connectix only produces Windows and Macintosh drivers for their cameras, and since Connectix is being fairly secretive about how the QuickCam's VIDEC compression is implemented, it's anything but easy for third-party developers to produce drivers with features equivalent to those on Windows and the Mac.  OS/2 has third-party drivers for the QuickCam, but if Connectix made development information freely available to the OS/2 (and other platforms) developers, the drivers could be _better_.

(hmueller@mail.kabel.de) Hanno Mueller has started a campaign to attempt to convince Connectix that it's good business for them to allow third-party driver developers to use the VIDEC compression format; if they can, then the drivers they produce will have more features, and will cause more people on that third-party platform (like OS/2) to buy Connectix QuickCams.  The campaign has many supporters from various platforms, including the developers of OS/2's own QuickCam drivers.  If you own a QuickCam, it's in your best interest to support this campaign, because it means better quality OS/2 drivers for you if Connectix sees the light.

So if you use the QuickCam under OS/2, or have ever wanted to use it under OS/2, why not visit the (http://www.kabel.de/~hmueller/qc/freevidec.shtml) Free VIDEC Campaign home page and add your name to those already on the list.  You won't be agreeing to boycott, berate or blow up Connectix, all you're doing is adding your voice to the masses who want the QuickCam to be usable by everybody, not just by operating systems that Connectix wants to support.

             *  *  * 

News Flash: Creative Labs ends OS/2 Driver Drought!

Creative Labs has confirmed that they will be releasing a patched AWE 32 driver to support the AWE 64 card.  This driver will not support the newer Creative technologies and will probably not provide any more functionality over the current AWE 32 driver except for AWE 64 support.  Whether it contains bug fixes is not known; neither is it known whether Creative will be adding features or fixing bugs with future versions.

We can only hope and stay tuned...

The driver should be available soon at the (http://www.creaf.com/) Creative Labs web page and shortly afterwards at (http://www.ionet.net/~colin/awe32.html) Colin Hildinger's AWE32 and OS/2 page.  (In fact, you should probably check Colin's page first. --ed.)

             *  *  * 

News of another grass roots program all OS/2 users might be interested in came to OS/2 e-Zine! this month.  As you may know, OS/2 does not have a whole lot of software out there which can take advantage of today's voice modems.  Sacha Prins, author of the shareware Answering Machine for OS/2, has put forward a proposal for a joint development effort for OS/2 voice modem software.  Since not many OS/2 developers by themselves have access to a large numbers of voice modems, it's difficult to make a voice modem application compatible with more than a handful of hardware types -- each modem has subtle differences from others which make compatibility difficult.  According to Sacha:

"Hence my posting.  I myself lack the resources (modems, time) to finish a good application in this lifetime.  However, a joint effort could result in a useful program.  Therefore I have set up a mailing list, have reserved some space on our corporate web-server, and am willing to invest time into a project that may result in something beautiful.  If you are interested in this also, either to discuss, or participate or for another reason, subscribe to the mailing list and visit the web-pages every now and then."

To subscribe yourself to the mailing list, send an e-mail message to (voicemodems-request@businessnet.net) voicemodems-request@businessnet.net, and include the following two lines in the message:

	subscribe
	end

Contributions to the mailing list should be sent to (voicemodems@businessnet.net) voicemodems@businessnet.net, and any problems should be (sprins@businessnet.net) e-mailed to Sacha.  Information about the project will be stored at the (http://www.businessnet.net/people/sacha/voicemodems/) VoiceModems web page; at the moment it's empty, but as more people join the campaign, it'll no doubt fill out somewhat.  If you have a modem with voice capability and want to help develop software for it, or even if you just want to know what's being done, this project is a good way to keep up on the latest.

             *  *  * 

Lastly, IBM has finally released an entry-level evaluation versions of its Visual Age for Java development software.  Available for both OS/2 and Windows, the entry-level version is virtually identical to the Professional version of the product -- the main limitations of the evaluation version include:

o  It can not build more than 100 classes into a project
o  Documentation is only available on-line through VAJ's web support, and no other support is provided by IBM
o  Any existing Visual Age for Java beta code must be uninstalled first

To run VisualAge for Java, IBM recommends a Pentium or higher, and the program requires at least 32 megs of RAM (48 is better), and anywhere from 45 to 100 megs of free hard disk space.  (The actual VAJ evaluation download for OS/2 is around 20 megabytes in size.)  More information can be obtained from (http://www.software.ibm.com/ad/vajava/) VisualAge for Java's home page.

The Professional version of VisualAge for Java is set to be released on July 25th, and is expected to cost around US$99, as opposed to close to US$2000 for the enterprise version.

             *  *  * 

That's it for this month.  If you have a tip that you want followed up or a news item you think should be reported, don't hesitate to (feedback@os2ezine.com) let us know!

-----

(dill@os2ezine.com) Ryan Dill is a student in Computer Science at Acadia University in Wolfville, NS and OS/2 e-Zine!'s Technical Editor.  He is reported to be relieved that, with the advent of Warp 4, talking to your computer is no longer considered a sign of mental instability.

***********************************

Gaming News for July 1997	- by Colin L. Hildinger

-----

This is the first installment of a new monthly gaming news column.  Each month, I will be summing up the latest news I can find that affects OS/2 gaming and gamers.  Since this complements my (http://www.ionet.net/~colin/games.html) Ultimate OS/2 Gaming Page, I hope to not miss any information; if you know something that you think I don't, (colin@os2ezine.com) let me know.

PlusPak: B.U.G.S. Released

(http://www.gbar.dtu.dk/~c948129/) Cramon Utilities and (http://www.stardock.com/) Stardock Systems have teamed up to release Bill's Unbelievable Ghastly Spaceships for OS/2.  It's available from Stardock's commerce server for $24.95.  See the review in this issue.

Codename: Tsunami

It seems an ex-Naval intelligence guy and self-proclaimed "OS/2 Grognard" named Rodney W. Harper is working on a naval warfare simulation game called Codename: Tsunami.  It will probably be similar to Harpoon, and since he has a background in REAL simulations, I expect good things.  He hopes to have a web page up soon with some early screen shots.

Digger for OS/2

(http://www.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/~maschuma/digger/digger.html) Digger is a new shareware clone of the classic game Boulderdash has been released by Marco Schumann of Germany.  It's an addicting little game and he's made several improvements in the last month or so.  The current version is 1.20 and he's asking $10 registration.

Drilling Billy

The OS/2 version of (http://www2.dk-online.dk/users/games/) Drilling Billy is being updated to use the 2.0 version of SVGA Kit so it will run in both DIVE and full screen modes.  The DOS demo is really cool, so I can't wait to play the OS/2 version.

Entrepreneur Enters Final Beta

Brad Wardell of (http://www.stardock.com/) Stardock Systems has announced that the latest beta, 7C, will be the final beta of Entrepreneur.  There will be some private gamma testing before the game is released, but it should be out soon.  Look for a review right here in e-Zine!, hopefully in next month's issue!

G.W.A.N and Wall/2

G.W.A.N. is a new real-time strategy game that has recently been announced.  Tels, the developer, has posted some early screen shots and has alpha code available for download.

Wall/2 looks to be a Breakout clone that Tels developed while learning to do the interface for G.W.A.N.  (http://www.Bonn-Online.com/~tels/games.htm) Check out his page for further details, and sign up for his mailing list to receive periodic updates on his progress.

Handy for OS/2

It looks like Darrell Spice is up to it again.  He's ported Stella, ComEm, and MasterGear to OS/2, and now he's getting ready to start working on an Atari Lynx emulator called Handy.

MOTE is Alive and Kicking

Look for a release of (http://ares.csd.net/~tsp/game1.htm) Masters of the Empire some time in the next month or so.  I'm glad the guys at Trilliun are getting it out the door, because I can't wait to play it.  You might also notice that they've started a new game (a sequel?) that will also be available for OS/2 and Win32.

Solar Systems Releases Stellar Frontiers Beta 6 to Testers

Work is progressing nicely on Stellar Frontiers.  Beta 6 is out and I suspect beta 7 will be out soon.  SF is looking like it will be a great network game.  For those who don't already know, it's being written by (http://www.solarsystems.com/) Solar Systems and published by (http://www.stardock.com/) Stardock.


That's it for this month.  Drop by next time to find out what has changed and what is new in the OS/2 gaming market!

-----

(http://www.ionet.net/~colin/) Colin Hildinger is an Aerospace Engineering senior at (http://www.okstate.edu/) Oklahoma State University and has been using OS/2 for the last 3 years.  In addition to being the Games Editor for OS/2 e-Zine!, he maintains (http://www.ionet.net/~colin/games.html) The Ultimate OS/2 Gaming Page and the (http://www.ionet.net/~colin/awe32.html) AWE32 and OS/2 Page in his "spare" time.

***********************************

Chris's Graphics Powertips	- by Chris Wenham

-----

Apologies in advance for a somewhat 'stringy' column this month.  I'm sure you'll agree that there's been an upheaval in the OS/2 graphics world and, because of it, I've been busier than usual.  In particular you should notice the change of name and focus for this column.  No longer is it dedicated entirely to just ColorWorks.

(Now think what you want, but the prime motivation really was so I could talk about different software. <g>  Seriously, the decision to branch out had been made before we were aware of SPG's plan to leave the OS/2 market.)

Five minute tips

While playing around in Embellish I discovered a simple trick to try with the gradient tool for making quick buttons with beveled edges.  It's really just a case of drawing two shapes, one smaller and fitting within the other, filled with opposing gradients.

This trick also works in ColorWorks V2 and Photo>Graphics, the instructions for which I'll also provide.  The effect doesn't look quite as good in ColorWorks without going into a lot more complexity, however I'll let you figure that out for yourself (hint: it involves using the "Instant Sphere" trick I explained in my (http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n7/powertip.html) first ColorWorks tips column).

Embellish:  Start with a blank canvas and draw a shape with either the filled square, rectangle, circle or ellipse tools.
Photo>Graphics: Pick any solid shape tool and draw one on the canvas.  You might then want to go to the "Miscellaneous Properties" button under "Object Settings" and check Fixed Aspect to make the following steps easier.
ColorWorks V2: Go to Effects.Gradients and select a diagonal gradient, palette checked, opacity unchecked, then pick a palette that fades from one color to the other.  Now pick a shape tool, make sure it's filled, then draw on the canvas.

Now for step two:

Embellish: Click on the Gradients button in the Materials tool bar (icon of a brush with a gradient fanning across the bristles) and make sure a 4 Point gradient is selected.  Then, set the top left hand color to whatever highlight color you please.  In my example I'm using green.  If you want, you can set the color in Embellish's color palette (which gives you the eyedropper tool, should you need) and then drag-n-drop the color to and from each "inkwell." The other three corners should be black, or whatever shadow color you want.  Once complete, right click on the shape you've just drawn on the canvas and pick Apply Shape, Recreate.  You can leave the gradient settings dialog open if you want while you do this.
Photo>Graphics: The Tool Type for the object should be Color Fade.  Click on the button just to the right of the list box and you can set the colors of each corner of the fade.  Top left should be the highlight color, while the other three should be black or shadow colors.
ColorWorks V2: Go to step three.

Step three:

Embellish: Grab one of the corner handles of the shape in the canvas and shrink it by a few pixels so it fits inside the first object you just applied.  With the gradient settings dialog open, drag the highlight color from the top left "inkwell" and drop into the bottom right corner, then set the top-left inkwell black again.
Photo>Graphics: Right click on the object and select Object Management.Duplicate Object from the pop-up menu.  Now adjust the gradient colors the same way you did the first time, except now swap the colors of the top left and bottom right corners.
ColorWorks V2: Double click the shape icon you just used and make sure that Filled is unchecked.  Now go to the Brushes menu and make sure you have a suitably thick brush.  Lastly, hold down the shift key while selecting Effects.Gradients again and check the 'Invert Gradient' check box.  You might also want to go back to the Brushes menu, pick Settings and give the brush a light softness factor of 1.

Step Four:

Embellish: Right click on the shape and pick Apply Shape.
Photo>Graphics: Re-size the second shape until it fits within the first.
ColorWorks V2: Press Shift+Backspace or pick Edit.Reapply.  

You'll notice that ColorWorks seems incapable of doing a top-left to bottom-right gradient, even rotating a horizontal gradient doesn't work properly.  Also, I'm not quite sure how to get the 'jaggyness' out of the Photo>Graphics rendered image, if I come up with a solution (or you do and (chris@os2ezine.com) send it in) I'll include it with next month's column.

Download Depot

If you ever want to check out either Embellish or Photo>Graphics you can download evaluation (demo) versions from the web.  The Embellish demo is limited only in that you can use it for a maximum of 35 sessions before you need to purchase it, while the Photo>Graphics demo has some file-saving features disabled.

For Embellish, try (http://www.dadaware.com/) Dadaware's download page: (http://www.dadaware.com/downloads.htm) http://www.dadaware.com/downloads.htm

For Photo>Graphics, (http://www.truespectra.com/) TrueSpectra's samplers page is: (http://www.truespectra.com/files/samplers.html) http://www.truespectra.com/files/samplers.html

-----

(http://www.spectra.net/~fox/) Chris Wenham is a freelance web designer, writer and Englishman who now lives in Endicott, NY.  In the past he has written comedy, sci-fi, Pascal, Rexx, HTML and Gibberish.  He has been using OS/2 exclusively for the past 2 years.

***********************************

Object Desktop Tips 'n Tricks	- by Alexander Antoniades

-----

Control Center vs WarpCenter and Reader mail!

Last month's column about using Control Center instead of WarpCenter sparked the interest of a number of readers who wrote me with their comments from both sides of the issue.  So this month I thought I'd respond to their comments and publicly address some of the letters in the old PMMail-bag.

First: let me say that I appreciate everyone who's sent in their opinions.  While I may not agree with all of you, we're always glad to hear suggestions about how we can improve our product and what you think about it.  Now, on to making the Control Center behave like WarpCenter.

Starting from the left on WarpCenter and working our way over, I'll give my best example of what the Control Center can do to replace that functionality.  By all means, if any of you have tricks out there that can do this better, please let me know.

Obviously the first thing to do is reorient the Control Center so that it's horizontal.  Then, in the properties notebook, set it to not show the title bar.  Snap to the desired screen edge, and reduce Desktop size to position.

The first component too add is the Start... er... Warp menu.  This is basically the same as having the Desktop in the Control Center browser.  Control Center has this option set up by default so all you have to do is position it on the left hand side and you're in business.

Next to the Warp menu on the WarpCenter is the 'Switch to Other Application' button.  The best way the Control Center has of dealing with this is to drag the Minimized Window Viewer into the browser.  (Note: you can drag any regular Desktop object into the Control Center browser by dragging it into a neutral (non drop target) area of the Control Center and then positioning it on the Sections tab of the Properties notebook.)

After that are the Shutdown, Find and Lockup buttons.  To integrate those into the Control Center, take the objects with the same names that are in the Object Desktop folder and simply drag them into the Control Center browser.  You can also use any other programs that provide similar objects, such as Process Commander's shutdown object.

The next step is to implement the area where WarpCenter displays various "monitors".  Control Center offers all of these system status indicators, but instead of cycling through them one at a time, Control Center allows you to place as many of them as you want on the screen at the same time.  Don't forget to change the CPU_NOFILL=0 line in the Control Center's object settings (accessible either through Object Package or Object Inspector in Object Desktop Professional) to "=1", if you want to get the pulse effect of Warp Center's system monitor.

The next item, the trays, were a source of controversy with some e-mails I received.  Some readers such as Scott D. Taylor felt that Control Center's solution to replacing trays was inadequate for what he used trays for.  Before I respond to that, let's talk about how you can get tray-like functionality with Control Center.

The solution that I've found is to either create new folders that group your current objects or use folders that already exist, such as the Applications folder, to organize your objects into groups that you can easily launch applications from.  While some people object to this approach, my take on it is that this is a truly object-oriented approach, and as such is more in line with the way OS/2 and Object Desktop work.  Because you're not grouping your objects into some artificial category, you're essentially creating a series of shortcuts that reflect the way your Desktop is actually organized.  I realize this column won't be the final word on this matter, but it does offer the same functionality and it does work.

Lastly, is the clock which falls all the way on the right hand side of the WarpCenter.  While Control Center has a number of clocks to choose from, I think that the text clock, especially when modified with drag and drop colors, provides the best solution for this configuration.

Finally, you can make the width of the "ControlWarpCenter" just the height of the smallest icon, the same size as the real WarpCenter.

There you have it.  Here is a screen shot of a ControlWarpCenter that I made for this article.  The ordering is not the way that I would arrange it, but it does mirror WarpCenter's layout.  I've added three monitors instead of the usual one, and I've placed four virtual Desktops between the "monitors" and "trays".

Also, I should mention that Control Center isn't the only program launch mechanism that can handle virtual collections of programs and folders the same way the WarpCenter can; Tab LaunchPad can as well.  That said, some readers said that this wasn't a solution for them because of Tab LaunchPad's size and structure (because it doesn't map off the screen or stick to the edge), but those of you looking for a "tray" holder might want to consider this as well.

And now comments and questions from our readers:

Michael Jenkinson wrote:

"Funny that you wrote that article for OS/2 e-Zine! just as I was bringing the Warp Center to my Desktop for the first time.  I still use the Control Center, but only for the virtual Desktops.  The reason why I changed over to the Warp Center (and abandoned the Tabbed LaunchPad in the process) was real estate/screen space.  I much prefer the trays in the Warp Center...  and I would move back to the Control Center as my mail program handler in a flash if Stardock could find a way to a) allow CC features to be added to WC or b) vice versa.  For instance, why not redesign the CC with trays?  Or allow the virtual Desktops to be added to Warp Center?"

We won't be doing this any time soon.  The article above shows that Control Center can duplicate the functionality of WarpCenter but since we don't have access to WarpCenter, we couldn't do anything with it even if we wanted to.

Bill Costlow wrote me to say:

"I saw the winners of the Desktop contest and have a question:

How do I configure the OD "X" close-window icon in Warp 4?  I like that a whole lot better than the OS/2 close-window icon but can't find a way to replace it."

This only happens with earlier versions of Object Desktop.  Object Desktop 1.5.2 (AKA Object Desktop 1.5 with FixKit 2 applied) fixes this conflict with OS/2 Warp 4.0, so the solution is either to upgrade or update your Object Desktop version to this level.

Anders Gjerlov (one of the winners of the Object Desktop screen shot contest) offered the following comments about creating transparent Control Centers:

"Actually, the "transparent" look in the Control Center is not really that difficult, if you make sure that the following conditions are met:

1. Use a bitmap that's the same size as your Desktop -- it shouldn't be scaled.

2. Have the Control Center "Snap to screen edge" on the left or on the bottom.

Then one can just define the same bitmap for the Desktop background, and for the Control Center background to get the transparent effect.

There's no need to cut the image, unless you want the Control Center somewhere else."

Thanks, Anders!

-----

(sander@stardock.com) Alexander Antoniades is the former Associate Editor of OS/2 Magazine and the current Vice President of Marketing at Stardock Systems.

***********************************

The REXX Files	- by Dr. Dirk Terrell

-----

REXX is a great choice of language if you need to process text files.  Since all variables in REXX are treated as strings, it makes sense that the language would have some very useful functions for manipulating them.  This month, let's look at some of these string-handling functions.

One need that arises quite often when processing strings is the need to know how long the
string is.  That is, what is the length of the string?  In REXX, you use the LENGTH function:

string_length=LENGTH(string)

where string_length is the length of the string in bytes, and string is the string whose length we need to know.  Nothing too complicated there.

Another common need is to know whether or not a string is contained within another string, and if it is, at what position.  The Pos function returns the first position of one string within another.  If the first string is not found in the second, the function returns 0 (zero).

For a concrete example, let's write a program that scans a CONFIG.SYS file and looks for a particular string that we specify.  For safety, let's copy the contents of CONFIG.SYS to CONFIG.TST and use that file rather than mess with CONFIG.SYS directly.
 
/* Scans the CONFIG.SYS file for a specified string */
Parse Arg Target
Target_Uppercase=Translate(Target)

/* Exit if the user didn't supply a string for the search */
If Target="" then Do
   Say " "
   Say "You must enter a string to find..."
   Exit
end /* do */

/* Copy CONFIG.SYS to CONFIG.TST for safety
   Assumes that CONFIG.SYS is in the root directory of the C: drive
   change as appropriate
*/
"copy c:\config.sys config.tst"

/* Exit if we can't find the file */
if rc<>0 then Do
   Say " "
   Say "Could not find CONFIG.SYS!"
   Exit
end /* do */

At this point we have copied the contents of CONFIG.SYS to CONFIG.TST.  Now we can read in 
the contents of CONFIG.TST with the I/O functions that we looked at last month:

/* Now search the file for the target string */
Current_Line_Number=0
Do While Lines("CONFIG.TST")
   a_line=Linein("CONFIG.TST")
   Current_Line_Number=Current_Line_Number+1
   Test_Line=Translate(a_line)
   found=Pos(Target_Uppercase,Test_Line)
   If Found<>0 then Do
      Say Current_Line_Number a_line
   end /* do */
end /* do */
rc=Stream("CONFIG.TST","C","Close")
Exit

The variable Current_Line_Number is a counter that is incremented each time we read a line from the file.  We are using Linein to read a line and store the contents in a_line.  But what is the purpose of this Translate function?  Translate is used to translate characters in a string to other characters.  For example if you wanted to replace all instances of the letter A with B in "FOOBAR", you would use Translate:

New_String=Translate("FOOBAR","B","A")

The variable New_String would have the value "FOOBBR" after the above function call.  Note that this function (and all string functions in REXX for that matter) is case-sensitive.  Making the above call like this:

New_String=Translate("foobar","B","A")

would result in New_String's value being "foobar" (i.e., no change) because there are no capital A's in the string.  The default parameters for Translate are such that calling it with just the string as the argument results in the string being converted to uppercase.  This is handy in situations like the one we have here -- comparing strings in a case-insensitive manner (i.e.  you want "FOOBAR" and "foobar" to match).  In the above code, we use the call:

Test_Line=Translate(a_line)

to convert the contents of a_line to uppercase.  We then compare the result to the uppercase version of the string we are searching for with the Pos function:

Found=Pos(Target_Uppercase,Test_Line)
If Found<>0 then Do
   Say Current_Line_Number a_line
end /* do */

If the value returned by the call to Pos is not 0 (zero), it means that our
target string was found in this line of the file.  The program prints out the line number 
(variable Current_Line_Number) and then the contents of a_line.

What happens when a string appears multiple times in another?  For example, what happens if we search for O in "FOOBAR"?  Pos returns the position of the first instance of the string, so:

location=Pos("O","FOOBAR")

would set location equal to 2 since the first instance of O is at character number 2.  The more general calling form for Pos allows you to specify where the search should start:

location=Pos("O","FOOBAR",1)

This call would return the same result.  But the call:

location=Pos("O","FOOBAR",3)

would return 3 because we are telling Pos to start at character number 3.  If we do this:

location=Pos("O","FOOBAR",4)

then the value 0 will be returned because there are no instances of the letter O in "FOOBAR" after the fourth character.

The LastPos function is similar to the Pos function, but, as its name suggests, it returns the position of the last instance of the target string.  So, the call:

location=LastPos("O","FOOBAR")

would return 3 because character number 3 is the last time O appears in "FOOBAR".  Like Pos, you can specify the starting point for the search by passing it as the third parameter in the function call.

The sample code (below) this month is the program that scans the CONFIG.SYS file for a specified string and prints out the lines that contain the string.  Try modifying it so that the user could specify a command line switch, say -s, that would allow the search to be case-sensitive.  Next month we'll continue our exploration of the string handling functions in REXX, by extending the program to actually modify the contents of the file.

-----

(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.

***********************************

/* Scans the CONFIG.SYS file for a specified string */
Parse Arg Target
Target_Uppercase=Translate(Target)

/* Exit if the user didn't supply a string for the search */
If Target="" then Do
   Say " "
   Say "You must enter a string to find..."
   Exit
end /* do */

/* Copy CONFIG.SYS to CONFIG.TST for safety
   Assumes that CONFIG.SYS is in the root directory of the C: drive
   change as appropriate
*/
"copy c:\config.sys config.tst"

/* Exit if we can't find the file */
if rc<>0 then Do
   Say " "
   Say "Could not find CONFIG.SYS!"
   Exit
end /* do */

/* Now search the file for the target string */
Current_Line_Number=0
Do While Lines("CONFIG.TST")
   a_line=Linein("CONFIG.TST")
   Current_Line_Number=Current_Line_Number+1
   Test_Line=Translate(a_line)
   Found=Pos(Target_Uppercase,Test_Line)
   If Found<>0 then Do
      Say Current_Line_Number a_line
   end /* do */
end /* do */
rc=Stream("CONFIG.TST","C","Close")
Exit

***********************************

How Do I?	- by Eric Slaats

-----

Hi, and welcome to our next episode on dialogs.  Last month we had a small introduction on dialogs in which some essential concepts were looked at.  The most important were the concepts of "parent" and "owner" windows and the concept of "modeless" and "modal" dialogs.  We also took a look at a special OS/2 API which enabled us to quickly produce a simple dialog in which the user can receive a message and give a simple reply.

This month, on the brink of my summer-holiday, we delve deeper into the way dialogs are made.  We will take a look at resources and what they have to do with dialogs.  I will discuss how to handle Modeless and Modal dialogs (again <g>) and how to get some interface functionality from dialogs without programming by introducing the "group" concept.

Remember, some columns back (in the Dec. '96 issue) when I put down my philosophy on how programs should be made?  Be lazy (don't do what can be done for you) and KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid).  In that column we had our first taste of resources.  Also in that December issue, a resource script for a menu was created.  This was done by writing a text file, but it sure was a lot easier than having to program every menu option with an API call or by letting your program send messages to the menu window.  We also gave a simple definition of resource-files.  Here's a recap:

In a resource file (.RC) we can describe controls with a scripting kind of language.  This isn't exactly a programming language, but more a language that is used to describe the way things look.  Some examples of resources that can be defined in resource files are:

o  Menus
o  Accelerator tables
o  Dialog and window templates
o  Icons
o  Fonts
o  Bit maps
o  Strings

In most cases, we don't have to bother to write the resource scripts ourselves.  With most compilers, as well as with the OS/2 toolkit, come dedicated resource editors.  These tools offer a graphical environment in which you can paint the resources you'd like to use.  (See also the description of VisualAge C++, Borland C++ and Watcom C/C++ in (http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n11/) vol. 1, no. 11).

We won't look at the scripting language for dialogs in depth just now.  (Although a deeper understanding of this language comes in handy every once in a while.)  I will just assume that everyone can get hold of a visual dialog editor.  Almost every compiler for OS/2 has such a tool.  If you use a public domain compiler, there is always dlgedit.exe from IBM that comes with the developer's toolkit.  Personally, I prefer the BCC 2.0 for OS/2 resource workshop.  But there are also other excellent products on the market.  Prominar designer is one of them (this is actually a LOT more than a dialog editor).

How does a dialog editor work?  Well if you have ever worked with Delphi, Visual Cafe or other visual tools, you won't have any problems with the way dialog editors work.  You can drag various controls like notebooks, entry fields, spin buttons, etc. to the dialog window.  Here you can resize them and change their attributes like the color and font used.  Now, this is the simple part.  Probably anyone can learn dropping controls on a window in a matter of minutes.

Now is a good time to start (http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n7/sample9.zip) the sample application for this month (ZIP, 16.7k).  When you start it, you'll notice it has two menu options.  We come to those in a minute.  For now, click one of the menu options and this dialog will appear.  Now try the following:

o  Select radio button 1 and use the cursor keys
o  Select radio button A and use the cursor keys
o  Select one of the entry fields and use the cursor keys
o  Select the X-button and use the cursor keys

The effect you should experience is caused by grouping the controls in the dialog.  By using the cursor keys, you can select one of the controls in the dialog (give it the focus).  This is a very common way to handle radio buttons, but is almost never used when the dialog contains entry fields.  Especially with entry field controls, I find the grouping effect very convenient.  You can walk through the entry fields by simply using the cursor keys in a natural, intuitive way.  It's unbelievable that this feature is so infrequently used!

This grouping effect can be achieved with most controls in the OS/2 palette.  There are, of course, controls that react to the cursor keys themselves; for these controls you can always use the Tab key to select the next control.  The dialog in this month's sample demonstrates this effect for buttons, radio buttons and entry fields.

Now for the good part.  To achieve these effects, no programming is needed.  In fact, we won't write a single line of dialog-code this month.

Now, let's take a look at the .RC (resource file) in this month's sample.  I've arranged the groups of controls in this file with one line of spacing.  It's as simple as this.  The resource compiler will put the controls in the dialog in the order they are put in the RC file.  This will also dictate the order in which the controls are selected when the tab key is used to select the next control in a dialog.  So the first thing you've got to do after you've put all the controls in the dialog window is to make sure the controls are in a logical sequence.  Almost every resource editor I've ever seen has a method for ordering these controls.  Here's a screen shot of the BCC 2.0 resource editor when it's in ordering mode.

By simply ordering the controls, we can't achieve the grouping effect.  Normally, every control would have been handled as a group of its own.  This means the effect that we achieve in this month's example would not have been achieved.

Now let's take another look at the .RC file.  You can see that some of the lines feature a WS_GROUP attribute.  If a line contains the attribute, it marks the beginning of a group.  The controls that are added to the group are all the controls after the control with the WS_GROUP attribute that don't have this attribute.  You can look at the RC file in the example to see this effect.  To make things a little clearer, here's another simple example.

Say you would like to build a simple dialog box with three buttons and four entry fields.  The buttons must form a group as well as the entry fields.  This means the RC script must have the following structure:

DLGTEMPLATE DIALOG 
BEGIN
	CONTROL "", ENTRYFIELD1 ....................  | WS_GROUP
	CONTROL "", ENTRYFIELD2 ....................  
	CONTROL "", ENTRYFIELD3 ....................  
	CONTROL "", ENTRYFIELD4 ....................  
 
	PUSHBUTTON "A",.............................  | WS_GROUP
	PUSHBUTTON "B",.............................
	PUSHBUTTON "C",.............................
END

If you don't want to use the group effect, simply give all the controls a WS_GROUP (done automatically by most resource editors).

Now that we can create resources, take a look at the API that is used to activate dialogs that reside in a resource file.  As you may have guessed, there are two API's available to start a dialog.  One for a Modal dialog and one for a Modeless dialog.

With the WinDlgBox API we can start a modal dialog.  The syntax for this API looks like this:

HWND	hwndParent;     //  Parent-window handle.
HWND	hwndOwner;      //  Owner-window handle.
PFNWP	pfnDlgProc;     //  Dialog procedure.
HMODULE	hmod;           //  Where is the resource.
ULONG	idDlg;          //  Dialog-template id in the resource file.
PVOID	pCreateParams;  //  Pointer to application-defined data area.
ULONG	ulResult;       //  Reply value.
 
ulResult = WinDlgBox(hwndParent, 
                     hwndOwner,
                     pfnDlgProc, 
                     hmod, 
                     idDlg, 
                     pCreateParams);
                     
How does this API work?  Let's go through all the parameters one by one.  First, the return value ulResult.  This isn't too exciting.  It's a value describing if the system was able to create the dialog or not.  It will return a system constant DID_ERROR if something went wrong.  The next two parameters speak for themselves, the parent and the owner window handles.  (If you're unsure what the effect of the parent and owner was, check (http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n6/howdoi.htm) last month's How Do I? column.)

The next: pfnDlgProc.  Well, this one needs a little explanation.  Dialogs are handled by a sort of window procedure as well as the main window of an application (see the (http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n12/howdoi.htm) Oct. 96 issue of How Do I? for an explanation of the window procedure).  In this parameter we should mention the name of the window procedure that handles the dialog (we'll check into that somewhere in a future column).  For now we use the default window procedure to handle the messages sent to the dialog.

So a dialog has its own window procedure, should this mean it can also use the default window procedure WinDefWindowProc?  NO!  This is one of the most common errors made by programmers and can lead to erratic and uncontrolled behaviour.  Dialogs have a special default procedure.  This procedure is called WinDefDlgProc.  If we use this name for pfnDlgProc, the dialog will show and react to our actions.  However, it won't do a specific task.  For that we've got to program.

Next: hmod.  This is a handle to a resource file.  It's possible to store resources in DLL files.  This can be very convenient when you wish to release a multi-language package.  Simply make more RC files, one for each language, and compile them into DLL's.  Pick the right DLL at install time and you can set up an application in any language you like.  For now we won't delve into this great possibility.  We will simply link the resources to the .exe file.  (Normally it's done like this.)  If the resources reside in the exe file, hmod should be filled with a NULLHANDLE.

Then: dDlg.  This is the resource ID of the dialog we want to display.  It's simply the number we gave the dialog when creating it.  This is normally dome by a predefined constant in a header file.  In our case this is the DIALOG1 constant.

Finally, we have pCreateParams.  It's possible to pass a pointer to the dialog to provide it "from" information.  In our case, this isn't necessary, so we fill in a 0.  When we talk again about the dialog window procedure, this value will reappear.

Knowing all this we can create the call needed to display a modal version of the DIALOG1 dialog.

WinDlgBox(HWND_DESKTOP,		// Parent
		  hwnd,        		// Owner
		  WinDefDlgProc,	// Dialog window procedure
		  NULLHANDLE,		// Where is the dialog resource?
		  DIALOG1,			// Dialog Resource ID
		  0);				// Creation parameters (used in WM_INITDLG)

The API call to create a modeless dialog is very similar.  Even the parameters are the same.  There is one very important difference though: the return value of this call is the window handle of the dialog.  We will see where this comes in handy in moment.  The call is called WinLoadDlg.

Last month I said that the possibility of an application to create multiple modeless dialogs of the same dialog can be seen as an error when this effect isn't explicitly wanted.  I will discuss a simple trick to prevent this behaviour.  When I tried to handle this situation for (http://www.bmtmicro.com/catalog/smalled/) Smalled, I found some things that weren't as straightforward as I thought they would be.  Let's first define the problem we want to handle.  It breaks up into two different parts:

1. A modeless dialog can only exist once.  This means that activating the menu item that will create the dialog must not create a new dialog.

2. If the modeless dialog already exists, it should be made active when the menu item that normally creates the dialog is activated.

To handle the first part of this little problem, if the menu option that creates the dialog is activated, it should first check if the dialog already exists.  For this, the minimum we need is the window handle.  Besides that we need to remember it the next time this part of the window procedure is called.  For this purpose we'll create a static variable.  This variable will be a sort of global var, but it only has a local scope.

The next thing that we've got to decide is if we need to create the dialog.  We can do this by checking if the dialog is showing.  It took me quite a long time to figure this out.  It would be more logical to use WinIsWindow function, but strangely enough, this function still returns a TRUE for the hwndDlg after the dialog is closed!  So I started to look for a function that could be used instead.  I decided on WinIsWindowShowing.  This function will return a TRUE when any part of the window is showing.

So the first thing to do is to make sure the dialog is showing! We can do this by calling WinSetActiveWindow.  This will make the dialog visible if it exists.  After that, we can call WinIsWindowShowing function.  If the dialog exists, this will return a TRUE.  This gives the following code:

static HWND hwndDlg = 0;

WinSetActiveWindow(HWND_DESKTOP,hwndDlg);
if (!WinIsWindowShowing(hwndDlg))
	{
	// Create dialog
	}
	
This simple piece of code will take care of business for the first part of our problem.  The
nice thing is that the second part of the problem is also fixed!  The WinSetActiveWindow takes care of that.  So the complete code looks like this:

case IDM_DIALOG2:
	{
	static HWND hwndDlg = 0;

	WinSetActiveWindow(HWND_DESKTOP,hwndDlg);
	if (!WinIsWindowShowing(hwndDlg))
		{
		hwndDlg = WinLoadDlg(HWND_DESKTOP,	// Parent
						 hwnd,        		// Owner
						 WinDefDlgProc,		// Dialog window procedure
						 NULLHANDLE,		// Where is the dialog resource?
						 DIALOG1,			// Dialog Resource ID
						 0);				// Creation parameters (used in WM_INITDLG)
		}
	}
break;

Why does this work?  Well, we are sure of the fact that every window in the system will have a unique HWND at every moment.  So we always know that we are querying the right window.

Well, that's it for this month, I hope you enjoyed it.  Next month we will delve deeper into the treasures of dialogs.  Next month we will take a look at how the Dialog procedure should look.

-----

(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.

***********************************

Singing the Praises of CHORUS for OS/2	- by Christopher B. Wright

-----

OS/2 has some of the best utilities on the PC market.  For some reason, OS/2 users belong to a demographic of people who like to tinker with their systems, and there's plenty of shareware that will let you do just that.

A while back, BMT Micro got the bright idea to take some of the more popular shareware games and utilities and bundle them together in one handy package.  The result of this idea is (http://www.bmtmicro.com/chorus/) Chorus for OS/2, also known as "Chorus/2": a suite of utilities designed to make your life easier.

Chorus/2 takes 5 useful utilities (DragText, FileFreedom, Smalled, SwapMonitor, and Xit), 1 add-on utility (Smalled HTML Extensions) and 1 game (Matrix), throws them into one simple installation package, and puts a price tag on it that is lower than all of the individual programs combined.  This package is a must for beginners who would like to make life using OS/2 a bit easier.  For those of you who already have more than one of these applications, however, your mileage may vary.

The Apps

For those of you who don't know much about the utilities and games included in Chorus/2, here's a quick rundown on what they are and what they can do:

DragText v2.0

DragText is an amazing application that is so simple it's easy to overlook how useful it is.

Basically, with DragText, you can highlight almost any text, anywhere and drag it to the Desktop as a new file.  If you're browsing along the web and you come across some interesting text, you can highlight it with your mouse, drag it to the Desktop and you get a text file.  If you're perusing a newsgroup and find the URL of a magazine has made another bone-headed claim about something OS/2 supposedly won't do, you can highlight it, drag it to the Desktop (or a folder) and it will become a URL object -- double clicking it will launch Web Explorer or Netscape/2, depending on what program URL objects are associated with on your machine.

DragText has a settings notebook that allows you to customize what it does, but other than that you don't need to do much to use it.  It integrates with your system and operates invisibly.  After a while, you'll forget you're using it and you'll get annoyed when you're using an OS/2 machine without it because it won't "work right."

The success of a good app is that you forget what it does and start assuming the operating system does it.  This is a good app.

File Freedom

While this doesn't have all the bells and whistles some other file managers (notably Windows' File Manager and Stardock's Object Navigator) do, it is one of the fastest I've seen.  File Freedom is a simple, useful, fast and configurable file manager that covers all the basics.  It's a good file manager for beginners who don't want so many options that they get lost using a program that's supposed to make disks easier to navigate.

It does need a feature I sorely miss, however: the ability to show more than one drive at a time.  Moving a file from one drive to another should be a simple matter of drag-and-drop, but unfortunately, I haven't been able to figure out how to do this.  I can't even open multiple instances of this app from the same icon!

Still, File Freedom is a nice but lightweight file manager.  If it showed multiple drives simultaneously it would offer a little more flexibility, but it's still a good app for beginners to use.

Matrix

Matrix is not a utility, it's a game.  While most of the other apps in Chorus/2 are designed to make work easier and save you time, Matrix is guaranteed to waste your time, because you'll be engrossed in trying to beat the computer when you should be getting work done (like, er, this review <g>).

Matrix is sort of an unholy mix of Tetris and Othello -- unholy because it's terribly addictive and your productivity will go down the tubes.  It's a devilishly fun game to play, though.

Smalled

While the basic editor that comes with OS/2 is sufficient for most things, I find it a bit annoying that it won't let you print.  The Enhanced Editor, on the other hand, doesn't have a true "wrap" function and seems more set up to be a programmer's utility than anything else.  Smalled is a great tool that combines the best of both programs.  While it is small and fast, like the OS/2 editor, it's very configurable (like the Enhanced Editor) and, most important, it can PRINT.

While it doesn't have some of the features of word processors (like a spell checker) it does let you wrap text and do some basic paragraph formatting.  It makes a pretty good editor for on-line text.

In fact, I'm using Smalled to write this article now...

Smalled HTML Extensions

Smalled comes with a surprisingly full-featured application that allows you to create moderately complex HTML documents.  While it doesn't have the ability to create frames-based documents, it does have some text format features I haven't seen in some other HTML programs, such as the ability to insert umlauts over letters.  It also has a tab that allows you to set up your own HTML fields.

Smalled HTML Extensions isn't restricted to Smalled, by the way.  You can configure whatever editor you want it to default to on the settings tab of the notebook.

For those of you who are serious about web design, you might find Smalled HTML Extensions a bit limiting.  On the other hand, you can do quite a lot with the tools it gives you, and it could be a valuable addition to a web enthusiast's resources.

SwapMonitor

Creating a decent-sized swap file can be a chore for a lot of people, and if your swap file is too big or too small, it can noticeably affect OS/2's performance.  SwapMonitor is a utility that allows you to keep track of OS/2's swap file while you're busy doing other things.

SwapMonitor is a handy tool to have around if you don't already have a swap monitoring utility.  When I first installed it, it polled the swap file every five seconds, which slowed down my system noticeably (for an idea of what that means, take a look at my machine's stats below).  I recommend setting it to 10 or 20 seconds to keep your system functioning smoothly.

Xit

Xit is another one of those programs that integrates so tightly with OS/2's Presentation Manager interface, you forget that some of its functions aren't part of the operating system itself.

The most noticeable features of Xit are its title bar icons.  Xit allows you to configure a series of buttons that can appear on the right, left, or both sides of a window's title bar.  These buttons can do many things: sort icons, copy and paste highlighted information, even change the font size of OS/2 and OS/2 DOS CLI (Command Line Interface) windows.

This ability is neat, but there are other, less noticeable features of Xit that I like even more.  Most notable of these are the ability to configure the third button on a three-button mouse, and the ability to automatically drop-down combo boxes just by clicking on an entry field.

Xit, like DragText, is another "good app" in that the more you use it, the less you notice it.

Dislikes

Chorus/2 is a good package, but I was disappointed that there were no new releases of any of the apps in the suite.  Xit and DragText have been at versions 2.4 and 2.1 (respectively) for a long enough time that a lot of people probably already have them.  And the more apps you already have, the less compelling it is to buy the suite.

Also, I would have liked to have seen Xfile included in the suite.  Xfile, from the maker of Xit and Matrix, allows you to configure file dialogs on your system and would make an excellent addition to the suite.

Overall Evaluation

If you don't have any of these apps, you should definitely get Chorus/2.  It's a good price for what you're getting, and you'll find all of the applications useful to some degree.  If you already have some of the applications, buying the suite may be redundant.  Still, all of the applications are quite good -- and Xit and DragText are "must-haves".

So, I'd strongly recommend it to anyone who doesn't have any of the applications -- it's too good a bargain to pass up -- and recommend at least considering it if you have one or two of them.  If you already have most of the applications, or counterparts that you're comfortable using, it's probably not something you should purchase at this time, but keep an eye out for future versions.

-----

Test system:

Pentium Pro 200
128 mb RAM
4gig EIDE drive
2gig SCSI drive
Matrox Millennium PCI video w/4mb WRAM

-----

* Chorus for OS/2
by (http://www.bmtmicro.com/chorus/) BMT Micro
MSRP: US$49.95

-----

(cwbrenn@ibm.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.

***********************************

VoiceLearn v1.0	- by Martin R. Hadam

-----

The Vocabulary Trainer for OS/2 VoiceType

Have you ever considered giving up on VoiceType just because every other word needed correction?  Or because you were tired of stop-and-go?  It didn't perform like this because your pronunciation was bad or you did something wrong; your vocabulary just didn't match the one provided with the installation.  When you checked with IBM they would not sell you a professional, pre-made vocabulary simply because those are only available for extremely few topics (like radiology, emergency medicine, journalism, etc.) and even fewer if your native language is not German or English.

What did you do?  Keep up the good spirit and go all the way through all the pain?  Some did and ended up with a splendid personal VoiceType vocabulary, perfectly suited to their needs.  On the other hand, my guess is that many of you only kept VoiceType in your tag-line or used it only for dictating e-mail.  Hardly any people use it professionally without add-on vocabularies.

Rejoice!  As of today, relief is available: just order your copy of VoiceLearn (available in both German and English) from (http://www.pol.de/users/rom/) ROM LogicWare, makers of the venerable (http://www.pol.de/users/rom/ENGLISH.HTM) PAPYRUS word processor for OS/2, which beats the competition by being the first and only word processor to accommodate direct dictation and formatting using OS/2 VoiceType.

What I Like About VoiceLearn

What will VoiceLearn do for you?  In brief, VoiceLearn will read text files and extract all words unknown to VoiceType.  It will present them to you as an editable listing and request pronunciations for each selected word.  Finally, VoiceLearn will store those words with your personal vocabulary and update the associated trigram statistics, resulting in a much enlarged and improved personal vocabulary.

What does this mean to you?  Assume you're a student and supposed to write a paper on topic "X".  The topic is new to you and VoiceType, but some colleagues of yours have written papers on this and related topics in the past.  Using those papers with VoiceLearn will enable you to use VoiceType with optimal recognition rates on every detail of topic "X" right from the start.

Do you intend on dictating your thesis?  Are you a scientist?  You can grab the vocabulary of an entire scientific discipline from the appropriate CDROM of a standard textbook or multi-megabytes of text perfectly tailored to your needs from Medline or other services' abstracts.  (Please note however, that many sources of text data are subject to Copyright regulations and act accordingly.)

If you are a business professional, grab all your previous correspondence and feed it into VoiceLearn: almost immediately after, VoiceType will be knowledgeable about your business and know all the words you are using.

As a medical specialist, do the same with your patients' records and start using VoiceType, now, all of a sudden, highly specialized into neurology's, pediatrics' or ophthalmology's (you name it) terminology, etc.

If you're into translation, you may notice that VoiceLearn supports all language versions of VoiceType out of the box.  Thus, using a single installation of VoiceLearn, you can update all your personal vocabularies in a multi-language installation of VoiceType using the procedures mentioned above.

Installation and Initialization

Your personalized copy of VoiceLearn installs easily into any directory.  Since it will automatically hook into the current default VoiceType registration, you may have to choose the appropriate one before using VoiceLearn, though.

On opening, you are prompted with a notebook in classical style, which is nice since you can read through the tabs without scrolling.  First you select your text files (wildcards are allowed), which should be in straight ASCII.  Then you decide on any characters which may or may not be part of a "proper" word.  (This is required since VoiceLearn takes everything separated by spaces as a separate word and punctuation has to be taken into account.)  While this may appear difficult to you, the default settings usually cover almost everything, so there is no need to worry.  You may then decide what to do with text enclosed within various kinds of parentheses.  (This and the preceding settings can be used to read HTML or SGML based text straight away.)  If you're using formatted documents, you can define which parts should be skipped during evaluation.  And finally, you may select the proper codepage for your documents to correctly display the special characters in your language (like umlauts, accents etc.).  Off you go!

Learning

When the progress bar has reached its end, which takes about 8 minutes for about 7MB of text on my 133MHz Pentium, you are prompted first with statistics, and then with a list box containing all novel words listed either in descending frequency or alphabetical order.  It is advisable to define a cutoff for the minimum frequency (a good value is 5) in order to (i) keep the list at reasonable length and (ii) maintain good trigram statistics for each newly added word.  Please note, however, that you may come up with more than 50,000 new words in total without much effort!

Once finished editing your list, you'll have to press "start" and concentrate on the neat traffic lights used for dictation: if green, you just pronounce the word displayed in the entry field below.  VoiceLearn will automatically determine the end of your word, and go back via yellow to red for processing voice information.  Yellow again will alert you for a new cycle and there it goes...

Dictation this way is fast and easy; if you wish, you may define your own pace by pressing the spacebar though.  Finally, before exiting the program, VoiceLearn will quietly update the trigram statistics of all newly added words.  On the next start of VoiceType, it will operate just as if you'd never dictated anything other than the words you just added.  It's amazing to me every time I see that!

Other Notes

From my own experience I'd recommend to collect as much text as possible and process it all in one run or a few major ones.  Even though this may result in a significant task at one time, you are rewarded with an optimal vocabulary based on the increased word frequency and resulting improved trigram statistics.

This has nothing to do with VoiceLearn but rather with the way VoiceType operates.  Of course, if only small amounts of text are available to you, you'll have to live with it.  It will still be worthwhile to run VoiceLearn.  In such cases, however, you may also decide to look at words of lower frequency and consider that the trigram statistics will only be based on a few occurrences.

Backing up your basic VoiceType enrollment is also highly recommended and you may decide to keep different specialized vocabularies for various tasks.  

Complaints

Any complaints?  Only gripe is that I've been waiting for something like this for years...  Seriously, the program is that good!

Conclusions

In summary, VoiceLearn is a must for the professional VoiceType user in any of the supported languages.  It works with VoiceType 3.0 for OS/2 and also with the special Aptiva VoiceType Preload v1.2; it will not operate on other VoiceType 1.x versions.  VoiceLearn is easy to use and replaces the need for costly pre-made vocabularies.  It works flawlessly and is worth every penny it costs.  Highly recommended.

-----

* VoiceLearn v1.0
by (http://www.pol.de/users/rom/) ROM LogicWare
MSRP: US$298

-----

(Hadam.Martin@MH-Hannover.de) Dr.  Martin R. Hadam is in the Department of Pediatrics at the Medical School in Hannover, Germany.  His research focusses on inborn errors of the immune system.  He has used OS/2 since v2.0 and has been using IPDS (later dubbed VoiceType) from its very beginning in both the US and German versions.  He also owns one of the few German VoiceType v1.2 preloaded Aptivas in existence (which, sadly enough, never made it to the market).

***********************************

IBM's OS/2 Java Progress	- by Jeremy McNaughton

-----

A look at the prerelease of OS/2 JDK 1.1.1, and the IBM Java porting progress
On June 15th, 1997, IBM released a prerelease version of the OS/2 JDK (Java Developers' Kit) 1.1.1.  This follows the alpha release of the OS/2 JDK 1.1.0, which succeeded the OS/2 JDK 1.0.2 (released April 6th, 1997).  Before this came the OS/2 JDK 1.0.1 (October 25th, 1996).  It has been interesting to watch the porting progress of the IBM Java team, as they have been playing catch-up with Sun Microsystems' JDKs for Windows and Solaris.

(Currently, both the Windows 95/NT and the Solaris JDKs are at code level 1.1.3, and each has had its first bug-fix since its final release, while the product discussed here is only code level 1.1.1, and is only a preview of the finished product.)

The prerelease of Java 1.1.1 for OS/2 includes a JIT compiler, and according to the IBM download site, adds:

o  Sun Microsystems Inc's JVM (Java Virtual Machine)
o  Support for JavaBeans
o  Performance enhancements
o  Improved Security Features
o  Improved AWT (Abstract Windows Toolkit, used for developing GUI)
o  ICAT Debugger for OS/2 (Interactive Coed Analysis Tool, a source level debugger)

Generally, this release allows OS/2 users to use new Java 1.1.1 applets and applications, such as IBM's IRC Client for Java v1.30 (which requires Java 1.1.1 or higher).  JavaBeans will allow integration with other architectures such as OpenDoc and ActiveX, further expanding the potential of Java.  Performance enhancements are, as always, a welcome sight, as are improved security and AWT.  The ICAT Debugger will aid the OS/2 Java developer in creating his/her applets and/or applications.

The computer used for this review is a Cyrix 6x86 P120+ with 24 MB RAM and a Trident TGUI9680 1 MB video card.  It is running OS/2 Warp version 4.0 with FixPak 1 installed.  Some of the software used for research and testing while writing the review include: Corel Office for Java beta 1, IBM IRC Client for Java 1.1.1 version 1.30 and Pendragon Software's CaffeineMark 2.5.

Installation

OS/2 JDK 1.1.1 has a new installation procedure, using a new add-on for Netscape/2 called "(http://service.boulder.ibm.com/asd-bin/doc/en_us/catalog.htm) Feature Install".  Feature Install is a plug-in that allows software to be installed via HTML.  At first, I was skeptical, but soon realized the value of this new idea.  My change of attitude had several reasons:

1. Having the installation done with a web page guarantees the user's experience to be easy.  If you were able to get the JDK off of the labyrinth of IBM sites, then installation will be a blast.

2. Because the entire installation is done through Netscape/2, users have the ability to use the familiar "Go Back" option and change mistakes.

Because OS/2 JDK 1.1.1 is not quite finished, IBM has allowed it to coexist with the previous JDK -- your previous JDK will remain in x:\javaos2, and will continue to be used by Netscape/2 and the WPS.  The prerelease OS/2 JDK 1.1.1 is installed to x:\Java11.  To use it, one must specify the entire path from command prompts (i.e.: "[D:\] d:\Java11\..." is needed to use JDK 1.1.1 on my system), or drag Java classes directly to the appropriate icons in the "Java 1.1.1 for OS/2" folder.

IBM has also changed its method of distributing Java for OS/2.  Instead of being divided into separate files for each component (i.e. RUNTIME.EXE for the Runtime, TOOLKIT.EXE for the JDK etc.), the entire package is included in one massive archive.  Get ready for a shocker, the prerelease OS/2 JDK 1.1.1 is one 25 MB file.  It includes the Runtime, Toolkit, Toolkit Samples, API Documentation, ICAT Debugger and Double Byte Character Support (DBCS).  Send your ISP a tip after you (http://service.boulder.ibm.com/jdk/s-elic.htm) download this one, and think a little bit more about how much multitasking means to you.

Success Stories

As this is a prerelease, OS/2 JDK 1.1.1 has not yet been perfected.  Perhaps the most notable disappointment was that Corel Office for Java beta 1 did not run.  When Shell.html was dragged to the "Applet Viewer from HTML" object, the Corel Office Desktop started to appear, then vanished, leaving only a "SYS3171 (title unknown)" error.  IBM IRC Client 1.30 for Java 1.1.1 started to run as well, only to find that it was not compiled properly.  Despite this, all of the toolkit samples (save the spreadsheet example) ran wonderfully.  They also ran fast; really fast.  TicTacToe no longer has the 3/4 second wait between each move, and animations seemed a little smoother.  Thankfully, Pendragon Software's CaffeineMark 2.5 Java Benchmark System worked without as hitch as well -- this is what I chose to measure the difference in execution speed between OS/2 JDK 1.0.2 and the prerelease OS/2 JDK 1.1.1.

Speed Issues

CaffeineMark 2.5 reported some very considerable gains in overall execution speed.  As a test, I closed all of the windows on my system, and ran CaffeineMark 3 times each for OS/2 JDK 1.0.2 and prerelease OS/2 JDK 1.1.1.  I then averaged the 2 sets of results to reach a final conclusion.

The average CaffeineMark for OS/2 JDK 1.0.2 was 1525, while this jumped to 1630 CaffeineMarks with OS/2 JDK 1.1.1.  The most notable speed increases were in string manipulation and floating point math.  Although most areas tested by CaffeineMark remained roughly the same, the score for the dialog test was cut in half, from the 60s in 1.0.2 to the 30s and even 20s in 1.1.1.  Looping also seemed to lose a little steam, but if this is the compromise for an overall higher CaffeineMark rating, the trade-off is a good one.

I have included all my CaffeineMark test results below for those who are interested.

I was unable to test the JDK's integration with Netscape/2 as this portion of the code is not yet available.  Don't let this dissuade you from downloading the prerelease, though.  Keep in mind that it can coexist with a previous JDK.

New Features

There have also been some changes to the interface.  Applet windows no longer have the ugly yellow "Warning: Applet Window" bar at the bottom of any window they spawn.  The Applet menu in the Applet Viewer has new options as well.  Now users can start & stop applets, save where they currently are in an applet, and even print the applet window.  I tested these new commands on the TicTacToe applet.  "Save..." opened a file-save dialog box, allowing me to choose a file name and directory.  That done, pressing OK generated an error message in the Applet Viewer text window, and TicTacToe continued to run.  "Print..." got a little bit further, allowing me to choose settings for my printer.  It did not let me choose to print to a PostScript file, and my non-PostScript printer ejected a blank piece of paper.

Documentation and Support

For documentation, OS/2 JDK 1.1.1 includes all the URL objects linked to readme's and Java Web Sites found in previous releases of the JDK.  It also includes the entire Java 1.1 API documentation in HTML format.  All of the classes are listed in alphabetical order, but this really serves as a reference.  Trying to learn Java from the documentation included with this prerelease would not be a fun task, especially for a novice programmer.

As this is a preview of what is to come, IBM is not really supporting the prerelease OS/2 JDK 1.1.1 -- there is, however, a feedback form that they would like you to fill out reporting any bugs or problems with the JDK.  A link to the feedback page can be found on the download pages.

The Future

Overall, the prerelease OS/2 JDK 1.1.1 is a very impressive step forward for OS/2 Java support.  In the future however, I would like to see IBM's porting progress do better at keeping up with Sun.  It would also be nice to see a simple Integrated Development Environment included with the JDK, but I'm sure IBM would rather see us use VisualAge for Java.  Another welcome addition would be a local Java tutorial for beginners, or perhaps a link to IBM's on-line Java course.

In the end, I was really wowed by IBM's prerelease OS/2 JDK 1.1.1.  It is much faster than JDK 1.0.2, and adds extra functionality to OS/2's Java support.  I hope that the final release of code level 1.1 by IBM will be at least 1.1.2, and that it will be out soon.  The Java applets and applications that did not run for me with this prerelease version will hopefully run by the next release.  Perhaps if IBM were to put more steam into Java support for OS/2, more users would feel comfortable switching from other operating systems, knowing that they can keep up with technology.  Java has the potential to do marvelous things for OS/2, but only if IBM can keep up with current standards.

For more information about Java and IBM's porting progress, or to download this or any other IBM ported JDK, visit the (http://ncc.hursley.ibm.com/javainfo/hurindex.html) IBM Centre for Java Technology Development.  All of the IBM JDK ports are free for download from this site, but users must register with IBM first.  (Registration is free, and can be done on-line.)

You can also check out (http://www.javasoft.com/) Javasoft's web site, which has a link to the above page and information on Java toolkits for most other platforms.

Finally, if you want to check out CaffeineMark 2.5, go to (http://www.webfayre.com/) Pendragon's home page.

-----

* Feature Install for Netscape for OS/2
by (http://www.ibm.com/) IBM
download from (http://service.boulder.ibm.com/asd-bin/doc/en_us/catalog.htm) IBM (700 k)
Registration: FREE

* Java Development Kit 1.1 for OS/2 Pre Release
by (http://www.ibm.com/) IBM
download from (http://service.boulder.ibm.com/jdk/s-elic.htm) IBM (~25 M)
Registration: FREE

-----

(jeremy@cybermail.net) Jeremy McNaughton is a student at Sir Fredrick Banting Secondary School in London, Ontario.  He is studying Computer Science, and has been using OS/2 since version 3.

***********************************

Pendragon CaffeineMark 2.5 results for Java for OS/2
----------------------------------------------------

  For each version (1.1.1 pre-release and 1.0.2), three tests
were done, and the averages were found. The AppletViewer was the
only window open for all of the tests, and I started immediately
after system startup.

  About this computer system:
    
    Cyrix 6x86 P120+ (actually 100 Mhz)
    24 MB RAM
    256 KB 2nd level burst write-back cache
    Trident TGUI9680 1 MB at 800x600x64k
    OS/2 Warp v4.0 with FixPak 1 installed
    


  1.0.2
  -----

     Test # 1                               Test # 2
     --------                               --------

       sieve     2142                         sieve     2142
       loop      9205                         loop      9226
       logic     3266                         logic     3283
       string     655                         string     655
       method    1952                         method    1949
       float     1391                         float     1386
       image      144                         image      141
       graphics   155                         graphics   167
       dialog      68                         dialog      67 

         CaffeineMark: 1527                     CaffeineMark: 1531

     Test # 3                               Average
     --------                               -------

       sieve     2134                         sieve     2139
       loop      9190                         loop      9207
       logic     3280                         logic     3276
       string     577                         string     629
       method    1947                         method    1949
       float     1384                         float     1387
       image      140                         image      142
       graphics   181                         graphics   168
       dialog      66                         dialog      67 

         CaffeineMark: 1517                     CaffeineMark: 1525



  1.1.1 pre-release
  -----------------

     Test # 1                               Test # 2
     --------                               --------

       sieve     2283                         sieve     2280
       loop      8061                         loop      8050
       logic     3477                         logic     3467
       string     728                         string    1169
       method    2344                         method    2350
       float     1830                         float     1824
       image      281                         image      272
       graphics   182                         graphics   186
       dialog      31                         dialog      29 

         CaffeineMark: 1590                     CaffeineMark: 1650

     Test # 3                               Average
     --------                               -------

       sieve     2285                         sieve     2289
       loop      8050                         loop      8054
       logic     3465                         logic     3470
       string    1169                         string    1022
       method    2358                         method    2351
       float     1804                         float     1819
       image      276                         image      276
       graphics   203                         graphics   190
       dialog      29                         dialog      30 

         CaffeineMark: 1651                     CaffeineMark: 1630

note: averages were rounded to drop the decimal points.


  Just by looking at these results, we can see that 1.1.1 is going
to be considerably faster than 1.0.2, especially with strings,
floats and images.  Dialog and loop ratings took some falls, however
one must bear in mind that this is only a preview release.

***********************************

EPSON ES-1000C Scanner (OS/2 Bundle)	- by Jon Winters

-----

Being both a Photographer and an administrator of an OS/2 powered web server I have wanted a scanner for a long time and I was thrilled when my wife told me she was getting me one for my birthday.  A scanner is a big purchase and some research was needed to determine which scanners work best with OS/2.

A quick (http://www.os2ezine.com/search.htm) search at the OS/2 e-Zine! site turned up some great articles about OS/2 and Scanning.  Several mentioned (http://www.gate.net/~stidev/) Solution Technology, the makers of TWAIN for OS/2.

Having been an OS/2 user now for a couple of years I know that compatibility and good driver support are important though, so I wanted to get information directly from the source.  I placed a phone call and spoke with Leon at Solution technology.  He informed me that the company was getting fantastic results from a combination of their drivers and EPSON Scanners.

More importantly, they were also in the final stages of putting together a (http://www.gate.net/~stidev/press/epson.html) new bundle with EPSON and (http://www.os2store.com/) J3 Computer Technologies.  The scanners would actually ship directly from EPSON with the OS/2 TWAIN software and Applause image manipulation utility.

Scanner specs and details available at the EPSON site:

(http://www.epson.com/homeoffice/scanners/actscan2/) Action Scanner II
(http://www.epson.com/graphicarts/scanners/es1000c/) ES-1000C
(http://www.epson.com/graphicarts/scanners/expression636/) Expression 636

Before I jumped in with both feet though, I went to shop the "local computer megastore" and compare the cost of buying a scanner there and ordering drivers from Solution technology.  Amazingly, I was unable to find any of the EPSON Scanners for sale in the Houston area.  Some of the other compatible scanners were available but they would have been more expensive after paying tax and ordering the driver software from STI.

Why I chose EPSON:

1. OS/2 compatible 
2. Bundled with OS/2 drivers/software
3. Excellent price
4. Recommended by Solution Technology
5. Same brand as my printer
6. Ability to connect to two computers at once

(EPSON scanners are cool because they are the first to allow you to hook up two computers to one scanner at the same time. (one SCSI and one Parallel) As of this writing I have not tested my scanner with two computers attached.)

If you are only scanning images for the web you could probably get everything you need from the Action Scanner II.  The ES-1000C packed a good mix of performance and value.  I chose the latter and ordered it.

Arrival Day

I was very excited when the scanner arrived.  It was a good feeling to see the "Ready for OS/2" Badge prominently displayed on the EPSON box!  I was also surprised to see that the model I bought was a Mac Scanner!  I called Solution technology to verify that this was correct and found that the model for the Mac was indeed the one I was supposed to get (I didn't ask why).

The bundle did not come with a SCSI adapter, however.  I use an Adaptec model 1520A and have never had a problem with it, but I took a look inside the scanner box and saw that I would need to pick up a SCSI cable.  It shipped with a "50-25" and I needed a "50-50" pin cable (US $29.95).

The Moment of Truth

I powered down my computer and installed the scanner.  My Jazz drive has automatic SCSI termination so I switched off the terminator switch on the scanner, connected it in between the Jazz and the Adaptec card, and crossed my fingers.

I booted up and preceded to install the TWAIN/Applause software.  Another reboot was necessary and I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the "found scanner" message during the boot process.

Using the Bundle

The drivers for the EPSON scanners were very new and the scanning interface was actually different from the examples in the book.  At first I was getting very disappointing color from the scanner.  Frustrated, I called Solution Technology for some pointers.  It turned out that there is a pull-down menu that is not labeled in the docs, for gamma settings and after setting it to SVGA mode, the scanner started delivering very nice scans.

To put the scanner through its paces, I first made a test image in ColorWorks.  It is a swatch with red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, black, white, and a grayscale.  To fill things out I added the default ColorWorks color palette and printed the image on Kodak Ink-Jet photographic paper with my EPSON Stylus Pro.  (Note: it is impossible to print pure colors but the test image is designed to make the printer get as close as possible.)

As soon as the ink dried I scanned the test image at 72dpi.  The comparison image is a good representation of what the printed image looked like.

Now I ran into a problem...  What else could I Scan?  I looked around and found a forty year old toy camera box.  Without any modification from the default settings, I got a decent scan that cleaned up nicely in ColorWorks.

Next I scanned a colorful image of some artist's lofts.  I scanned another image at different resolutions all the way up to 800dpi where I was able to make out detail that was impossible to see holding the picture in my hand (Buffalo Bayou Art Complex).

Finally, I tested using the scanner and my printer as a copier.  With Applause Image Utility it is easy to scan a full page and send it to the printer without saving it to disk.  I was amazed at the ease and quality of the copied image.

Problems

After more testing, there were a few minor problems to report.

1. Applause crashes if you try to scale an image during scanning.  (As a work-around on the scale you can boost the DPI and then re-size the image.)

2. The TWAIN software did not work with PMJPEG or ColorWorks.  It would be nice to scan directly into my applications.  After some experimentation I could quickly scan an image with Applause and paste it into ColorWorks, though.

3. As mentioned, one of the menus (gamma) in the scanner interface had no label.

4. No Preview scan.  I was disappointed at first that there was no preview scan.  However, there are rulers on the scanner table and it is easy to take a look and then scan the proper sized image without a preview.  In fact, now that I'm used to thinking before I scan, I find the lack of a preview allows for faster scanning.

Wrap Up

Overall, the ES-1000C met my expectations.  It is a good scanner and it is really nice to be scanning under OS/2.  I would recommend the Epson/Applause/TWAIN bundle to others interested in getting a scanner for their OS/2 system.  The support from Leon at Solution Technology was first class and when I called J3, I spoke directly with the owner of the company.  This is something that you just don't get every day and it was great.  Both companies were working really hard make me a happy customer and it was a refreshing change from the norm.  I commend EPSON for supporting OS/2 and bundling their scanners with OS/2 software.

In the future I would like to see some added functionality from the TWAIN Software though.  I would be willing to pay extra for a "professional" version with the following features:

1. "out of the box" compatibility with all OS/2 imaging applications.
2. Preview scan with the ability to select several images to scan from the preview.
3. Ability to set maximum black, white with detail, and adjust midrange tones from a preview scan.  (This is a feature available in some very expensive scanning programs that I have used on the Macintosh platform.  It allows you to take better advantage of scanners that scan more than 24 bit color since you can output a better image by controlling the export process from 36-bit or 30-bit color to the final 24-bit image.)

Other Misc. Tips:

o  I'm really bad about leaving fingerprints on things so I got a pair of white cotton gloves to wear when handling photographs and using the scanner.  You might want to as well.

o  I use Kensington Screen Cleaner and special lint free wipes to clean the scanner table and my monitor.  You can get the Kensington stuff at your local "office supply megastore".  If you can't find it write to (info@kensington.com) info@kensington.com.

o  I use (ftp://software.watson.ibm.com/pub/os2/ews/colrpt.zip) Color Point to see exactly what colors I'm looking at.  Monitors are impossible to calibrate so put your trust in the RGB values and you can't go wrong.  Color Point is always running when I scan and edit images.  It is invaluable... It's also IBM-EWS so the price is right!

Rating:

4 out of 5 (Good buy!)

-----

* ES-1000C & STI Twain Bundle
by (http://www.epson.com/) EPSON & (http://www.gate.net/~stidev/) Solution Technology
available at (http://www.os2store.com/hardware/epsonbundle.html) J3 Computer Technologies
MSRP: US$569.00

-----

Jon Winters is the owner and operator of (http://www.obscurasite.com/) Obscura!  With the help of a few good friends he is up to all kinds of mischief on the web.

***********************************

PlusPak: B.U.G.S.	- by Colin L. Hildinger

-----

Bill's Unbelievable Ghastly Spaceships is a game that I expected to be shareware -- but which was picked up by Stardock to be part of their PlusPak series (which can be purchased on-line from (http://www.stardock.com/) Stardock's web page, (http://www.bmtmicro.com/catalog/bugs.html) BMT Micro, and various other channels presumably).  The game has many similarities to Galaga, but is far from a straight clone of the classic arcade game.  It is well polished and plays well, and since there are 50 levels for each difficulty (and I still haven't quite managed to beat it on the easiest level), you are assured of hours of gameplay.

Gameplay

As I mentioned, PlusPak: B.U.G.S. plays much like the game Galaga, a classic shoot 'em up game.  Your adversaries, the "Bugs", come at you from different directions in different patterns on each level.  Each kind of bug behaves differently, and bugs of the same type will even behave slightly differently on different levels.

One interesting twist in this game is that instead of being locked into an area at the bottom of the screen, you can move your spaceship anywhere.  This is useful for avoiding bugs that dive down to the bottom of the screen or scroll from the bottom of the screen to the top.

Another unique twist is the ability to shoot the bombs that the bugs drop to protect yourself.  While this in itself is not unique, the behavior of the bombs is.  As you progress further into the game, the bombs will start to take longer to completely vaporize.  This means that you can't shoot them right before they hit you on the later levels.  While I don't make shooting bombs my main defense strategy (avoidance is more prudent), it did catch me off guard the first time a bomb continued to streak into me after I'd shot it.  Nice touch.

As you shoot bugs, occasionally you'll get one of several types of "power ups."  One type of power-up enables your ship with shields.  Each shield will last six seconds or through a certain amount of damage.  This is also a nice touch, since these shields have to be used strategically.

Another type of power-up gives you 10 rapid firing shots, and another arms your ship with missiles which will follow the closest bug and destroy him on contact.  These power-ups appear wherever the bug carrying them was killed, so sometimes it can be hard to get to them before they disappear (which happens after a delay) without getting destroyed yourself -- especially when you're playing on the "elite" difficulty level.

The Big Cheese

Every ten levels you meet a "boss" bug.  These bugs have multiple attacks and are quite difficult to defeat on the elite level.  One of my favorite things about this game is the way unique features were worked in to classic concepts: each boss bug has a little power meter in the center of his "face".  As you hit the bug, the power meter goes down, but it will recover over time.  This is a really well thought out feature.  (An interesting addition would be the ability to destroy the arms of the boss bugs though.)

Graphics and Sound

The graphics for the game are well done in every way.  In fact, you might recognize some of the graphics in the dialogues from the old MicroLearn Game Pack, Volume II (reviewed in (http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n3/mlgp2.html) OS/2 e-Zine! vol. 1, no. 3).  This is because Ingo Guenther, the artist for the MicroLearn games, also did the art for B.U.G.S.

B.U.G.S. is full of great little graphics details.  For example, as you get power-ups, your ship even changes its appearance to reflect the new capabilities (like getting missiles will cause your ship to grow missile launchers).  The scrolling backgrounds are also nicely done as are the bugs themselves.

The sounds are done using Stardock's sound engine which was developed for Entrepreneur (the "soon to be released" killer game from that company).  It uses DART and allows easy mixing of digital sounds.  This can be noticed when the "game over" .wav file sometimes plays at the same time as the "high score" .wav file.  Of course a DART capable sound card is a must to use sound.

Finally, the game requires DIVE, and I recommend EnDIVE if you're going to stretch the screen to its maximum size (although Matrox's EnDIVE apparently doesn't work right, my Trident 9680's EnDIVE support seems to work just fine).

Difficulty

I recommend starting off at Rookie level.  This will let you get used to the first few levels and controls of the game.  If the game is still too hard, you can select a faster computer model in the options menu, which will slow things down.  Or, you can scale the game to twice the normal window size to slow things down.  Finally, by increasing the difficulty level (Rookie, Veteran, or Elite) you make the game considerably more challenging.

While you get more power-ups on the higher difficulty levels, you often can't even get to them without getting killed because of the barrage of enemy fire.  Elite mode should be a challenge for anyone.  But if you're still too good, try setting the game to randomize the levels.  This means that you won't know which pattern of bugs to expect next, which makes the game significantly more difficult.

At the other end of the spectrum, for the ultimate challenge, set the game to 486 mode and the window to its smallest possible size.  On my Pentium 166, this made the game nearly impossible.

Of course, while all these things are fun for making the game harder or easier, I'd prefer a pure speed setting and an algorithm within the game to keep it running at the same speed no matter what window size I selected.  You could then say, "I beat B.U.G.S. set on Elite difficulty with the speed set to fast," and people would know that they were playing at the same difficulty as you.  For people on slower systems, the developers could just grey out any selections that were beyond the system's capability.

It would also be nice if the game would appear, using the entire screen height when you start the game.  For people forced to run in 640x480 resolution, the default size is a little too large to fit the window and its title bar entirely on the screen.

Feature Wish List

The only thing lacking in the prerelease version I tested (and the release version I received afterward) was joystick support, and my right hand sorely misses it -- quite literally.  A few hours of B.U.G.S. and my arrow hand feels like it's going to fall off.

I was assured by the authors that joystick support would be added in the 1.01 version, and with the response the team gave me on the few "bugs" I found, I'd say that this version can be expected soon.  The guys at Cramon Utilities cranked this game out in no time at all and I have to say I expect nothing but good things from them in the future.  (Hopefully we'll see a B.U.G.S. II or something similar soon.)

I'd also like to see more complex levels similar to the ones near the end of the game, but since the engine has been developed, I suspect that a sequel certainly isn't out of the question.

Finally, one of the coolest parts of the original Galaga was the "capture/rescue" feature which gave players a pair of ships to work with.  (It's a little complicated to explain if you've never seen Galaga.  If you have, you know what I mean; if you haven't, trust me, it was an excellent feature.)  Something like this could be cool.

Conclusions

While there is room for improvement, I found PlusPak: B.U.G.S to be quite fun.  Everything is well polished, and the authors were quite responsive when I made suggestions or found any minor bugs.  I look forward to more good things from the guys at Cramon Utilities.

-----

* PlusPak: B.U.G.S.
by (http://www.gbar.dtu.dk/~c948129/) Cramon Utilities
published by (http://www.stardock.com/products/plus/plus.html#BUGS) Stardock Systems
MSRP: US$24.95

-----

(http://www.ionet.net/~colin/) Colin Hildinger is an Aerospace Engineering senior at (http://www.okstate.edu/) Oklahoma State University and has been using OS/2 for the last 3 years.  In addition to being the Games Editor for OS/2 e-Zine!, he maintains (http://www.ionet.net/~colin/games.html) The Ultimate OS/2 Gaming Page and the (http://www.ionet.net/~colin/awe32.html) AWE32 and OS/2 Page in his "spare" time.

***********************************

MasterGear/2	- by Inteller Vaz

-----

A long time ago, somewhere between the NES and the Genesis, there was a work of art known as the Sega Master System.  It was technically superior to the NES, but never really caught on because of the lack of titles for it and what is now known today as "the bandwagon effect".  (Sound familiar?)  If you've been around console gaming for quite a while, then I'm sure you have heard of the legendary Phantasy Star.  Yep, the SMS started that.  Now, thanks to Darrell Spice and SpiceWare, we can enjoy Phantasy Star, plus many other high quality games on MasterGear/2.

MasterGear/2 is a derivative of MasterGear for DOS.  MG/2 improves on the DOS version by adding the DIVE and MMPM that we are all familiar with, plus the stability of OS/2.  MG/2 plays copied ROMs that rarely exceed 400k.

Installation

This is the easy part, you pick up MG/2 from (http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Pines/2281/mastergear.html) SpiceWare's web site, and unzip it to a drive.  Directory structures are already set up.  Now the hard part is finding ROMs.

First of all, ROMs aren't exactly legal.  Most disclaimers state that you can only download a ROM if you own that particular game.  Of course, this is not a problem for those of us who own all the cool games anyway, and you probably don't need to worry about Sega knocking on your door hunting for ten year old games any time soon.  Besides, if you're really worried you can probably find most of these games for $1 each at a pawn shop somewhere.

The Games

SpiceWare provides links to sites which have links to ROMs, although these sites can be busy or unavailable at times.  The actual games play in their true resolution.  That is, SMS games will play at 164x80. This is really nice since it takes up very little Desktop real estate and it keeps games from looking too blocky, unlike the originals.   So the size of the window is like looking at a Game Gear screen.

Yes, MasterGear/2 does play Game Gear games too, although they will play in an even smaller window, just like their GG counterparts.  You can, of course, scale the window to any size you wish.

Games that have a save feature create save files.  SegaScope games are not supported and the same goes for Light Phaser and Sports Pad games.   Unless someone can figure out a way to rig up and use these peripherals on a PC, chances are these kinds of games won't be supported.

Performance

As far as performance goes, it is passable for a version 1.x product.  I have to give a lot of slack when someone gives me something free, as is the case with MG/2.  My system is not what you would call state of the art (Nx586 100Mhz -- a screamer for its time), but the status monitor built into MG/2 states that I usually attain 94-98% of the frame rate of the original game.  Sound comes across realllllly slowwww, but Darrell Spice has included some command line options that allow you to increase the buffer and frequency which can speed things up.

However, to be safe, I would suggest having at least a Pentium 133 since MMPM and DIVE seem to be CPU hogs.  Future versions will  likely thread better, allowing for better performance.

Expect Improvements

My personal hope is that DART will be implemented.  Indeed, the next version promises to have the command line switches integrated into the PM interface, as well as support for dual language ROMS.  SMS fans know what I'm referring to and true diehards will appreciate these upcoming features the most.  With dual language ROMS you can play Japanese and European games like they would have read on their respective consoles.  Expect the next release to show up sometime later this month or early August.

Conclusions

All in all this is a great diamond in the rough.  Once performance gets better, it will be the best emulator of its kind.  It opens up a plethora of games that OS/2 users like myself greatly need.  If you like the good old fashion games from your childhood (or at least mine), this is the perfect toy for you.  Even if you have never heard of or played the SMS, go grab MG/2 and see what all the ruckus is about.

-----

* MasterGear for OS/2
by (http://www.freeflight.com/fms/MG/) Marat Fayzullin
a (http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Pines/2281/) SpiceWare Conversion
Registration: Free

-----

Inteller Vaz is the fearless leader of the Bandwidth Bandits, destroyer of bandwagons, the one from (http://comp.uark.edu/~ivaz/) The Other Side.  If he's not whipping you in Quake/2, go find him on IRC.

***********************************
Doom for OS/2	- by Colin L. Hildinger

-----

Last month's tip about running the Doom for OS/2 beta stirred up quite a bit of interest from our readers, so I decided that this month I'd give it a more detailed treatment, as well as update some of the information on the Ultimate OS/2 Gaming Page about Doom for OS/2.

Once upon a time, in an IBM far, far away...

If I remember correctly, the Doom for OS/2 story starts in 1994 with the upcoming release of OS/2 Warp.  Doom was still a fairly young game and it was a big hit.  IBM was planning their OS/2 Warp consumer campaign and was expanding OS/2's multimedia and gaming capabilities.  They commissioned Jim Thomas to port Doom to the OS/2 platform.

At the time when the port was begun, DART didn't exist and DIVE was an incomplete and buggy shadow of what it is today, so Jim started his work using the GPI.  Needless to say, the frame rate left little to be desired in these early versions, but Jim was on track.  Adding DIVE support wasn't really that hard and as Jim progressed, the game began to take advantage of more and more of OS/2's new capabilities.

IBM Make a Huge Mistake?  Never.

I believe the first public showing of Doom for OS/2 came at Spring COMDEX in 1994, and it was one of IBM's many mistakes in OS/2's history.  I wasn't there, but I remember friends coming back and telling me about it.  At this time, the first public Warp beta was still not released, but everyone expected to see the "performance beta" soon.  The fact that IBM was porting a game as cool as Doom to OS/2 made OS/2 the topic of conversation at Creative Labs.  While many took the "Why would you want to play it in a window?" attitude, they knew that Windows 3.1 didn't have a prayer of doing Doom in a Window, so they were a little in awe.  Everyone was trying to find a copy on the Internet and no one was having much luck.

After a few months people began to talk about WinDoom.  WinG was being developed and WinDoom would be the first thing to really take advantage of it.  Microsoft wanted to make it easier for game developers to write games for Windows.  Everyone knew that Windows 3.1 was a joke as a gaming platform and up until then, Microsoft hadn't cared.  But after the public saw Doom for OS/2, they realized that they were going to get beaten badly if they didn't do something quickly.

By Fall COMDEX, IBM's mistake in showing their hand had come full circle.  Id was still showing Doom for OS/2 at their booth, but IBM certainly wasn't.  A guy at IBM's booth actually said to me, "You wouldn't BELIEVE how many people have been asking about that!" when I asked if they were showing it.  Of course I would believe, it was really cool, something IBM just couldn't grasp.

In the meantime, WinDoom was being played on dozens of Windows 95 beta boxes all over the floor.  Windows 95 (most people were still calling it Chicago) wasn't capable of doing much at this point, so having one cool looking application that didn't crash the system repetitively made them look good.

IBM had had another brilliant idea, had played their card too early, and was once again getting beaten by the Microsoft hype machine.  In reality, WinG was a far cry from DIVE, and Microsoft wouldn't release DirectX 1.0 for another year.  IBM still had the advantage, but instead of pressing it, they tucked tail and ran from a company only a fraction of their size.

Doom for OS/2 would never be officially released, only leaked as a beta with no networking code. The Entertainment Developers' Toolkit would never be completed and released, and IBM would stop supporting technologies aimed at the "kitchentop" market.  In the mean time, ever person who had a copy of one of the Windows 95 beta CD's had a copy of WinDoom.

Enough of the Doom and Gloom

Of course it's not nearly as bad as it sounds for us users.  While IBM made some terrible mistakes that cost OS/2 in the consumer market, a person involved in the project leaked a beta of Doom for OS/2 that is quite playable.  (Please don't ask me for this person's name.  It certainly isn't his fault what happened and he's moved on to other things now, though he still works on OS/2 projects within IBM.)

This was the first game to take advantage of DIVE, FSDIVE, and DART.  The only thing really missing from the game is networking support and for that, most people are playing Quake these days anyway.  Of course, the original vision for the Doom for OS/2 networking would have allowed it to work over any network protocol instead of just IPX (and later Kali simulated IPX) as the original Doom did.

"OK," you say, "enough babbling about history, let's get on to Doom for OS/2.  What do I need?"  The last beta of Doom for OS/2 will actually play Doom and Doom II .wad files.  So what you need is the beta and a .wad file.  I've created (http://www.ionet.net/~colin/dmos219s.zip) a new archive with the most recent shareware Doom .wad file from id's FTP site.  This will get rid of the annoying errors some have experienced about the demo being for a different version of Doom.  It also contains a patched version of the executable that doesn't have the expiration date that the original executable did.  You can, of course, use any of the thousands of Doom and Doom II .wad files available on the Internet, as well as the .wad files from the registered game.

After you've unzipped the game into a directory, you may want to try FSDIVE.  PLEASE NOTE: FSDIVE will cause problems on some systems, so I recommend backing up your MMOS2 files before installing it.  I've never experienced problems with it, but I've had reports from some people who have.  At least back up your DIVE.DLL and MMPM2.INI files before tinkering with FSDIVE.  If you don't know what FSDIVE is, it's an abandoned effort by IBM to create a set of full screen libraries that would allow a developer to write games that would work in both full screen and windowed modes using DIVE.  Since it never made it out of beta, it doesn't work with all cards.  If it does work with your card, you should be able to use <ctrl>-<home> to switch between full screen and windowed modes.

Finally, you'll need DART support.  Warp 4 includes DART support in the basic install, but Warp 3 does not.  I recommend updating to FixPak 26 and installing DART support.  The easiest way I know of to add DART to a Warp 3 system is to install the Netscape Plug-in Pack from IBM.  I believe this will add all the necessary files to your system.

Once you have everything set up you should be able to play Doom to your heart's content.  For the most part it works pretty well.  On slower machines you may have a tough time playing it in a maximized window.  Some things just work better in full screen mode.  Part of the result of the cancellation of the Doom for OS/2 project was that IBM never managed to create a full screen graphics library for OS/2, so all full screen games are something of a hack...  But that's a subject for another day.

In Conclusion

I'm really not sure what possessed IBM the day they cancelled this project.  They seem to have a habit of killing projects about 90% of the way through the development cycle.  At this point, Doom is an old game, on the verge of deserving the name "classic," but it is quite a fun game as well.  If you get the urge to play Doom and are annoyed by the fact that sound doesn't work properly for Doom in OS/2 VDM sessions, have a taste of where IBM could have led OS/2 if they'd only had the backbone to see things through.

-----

* Ultimate Doom
by (http://www.idsoftware.com/) id Software
MSRP: US$25

* Doom II
by (http://www.idsoftware.com/) id Software
MSRP: US$40 (CD only)

* Doom for OS/2
by (http://www.ibm.com/) IBM and SoftPort (formerly WinWare)
Registration: Free upgrade for Doom owners


-----

(http://www.ionet.net/~colin/) Colin Hildinger is an Aerospace Engineering senior at (http://www.okstate.edu/) Oklahoma State University and has been using OS/2 for the last 3 years.  In addition to being the Games Editor for OS/2 e-Zine!, he maintains (http://www.ionet.net/~colin/games.html) The Ultimate OS/2 Gaming Page and the (http://www.ionet.net/~colin/awe32.html) AWE32 and OS/2 Page in his "spare" time.

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June '97 Reader Survey Results

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The ability to run Windows 3.x software in a WIN-OS/2 session has long been praised and lamented by OS/2 users and industry analysts.  We wanted to find out exactly how much our readers want and use this capability, so last month we asked, "Do you use WIN-OS/2?"

What did we learn about our readers' love-hate relationship with Windows?  Read on and find out!

Answers to our survey were accepted from June 16th until July 13th and any duplicate, incomplete or mangled submissions were discarded.  We had a total of 2,315 readers send us valid replies to our questionnaire last month and the results were as follows:

Do you have WIN-OS/2 support installed?

This was the question our readers were most able to agree on -- a whopping 92.6% of you installed WIN-OS/2 support with your copy of OS/2.  This seems reasonable given the fact that we learned in an earlier survey ((http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n4/survey1.htm) vol. 2, no. 4) that 76.8% of our readers use Warp 4 which comes with WIN-OS/2 support.  If it's free, why not install it, right?

Do you use WIN-OS/2 support?

The answers to our second question were a little further from unanimous but a clear majority of readers still told us they do use WIN-OS/2 support -- but less than 1/3 of the time.  Significant numbers use their WIN-OS/2 support between 1/3 and 2/3 of the time but very few (4.7%) use WIN-OS/2 more than 2/3 of the time.

Interestingly, while only 7.2% of readers reported in question one that they did not install WIN-OS/2 support, almost twice that number (320 or 13.8%) told us they do not use WIN-OS/2 support.  Presumably these people either leave the support installed "just in case" or just can't be bothered to de-install.

Do you want or need Windows 3.x support in future versions of OS/2?

After we found out what our readers were doing with WIN-OS/2, we asked what they wanted to be doing with it.  A not surprising 1,418 (61.3%) people told us that they definitely want Win32s support in future versions of OS/2 but at greater levels than currently available (i.e. greater than v1.25).  This would allow running newer Win3.x apps in WIN-OS/2 sessions.

Only 376 (16.2%) of our readers wanted Win3.x support in future versions of Warp but were satisfied with the current levels.  Almost that many (16.1%) didn't want any Win3.x in future versions at all.

Do you want or need Windows 95 support in future versions of OS/2?

Finally, we found that Win95 support in OS/2 is something most readers want.  1,423 (61.5%) replied yes to this question.  A surprising number (271 or 11.7%) of readers were not sure, however, whether they wanted Win95 support or not.

-----

That's it for last month's survey.  Don't forget to fill out our questionnaire this month (it's on the next page) and check back in August for complete results!


 
Complete June '97 Survey Results


Do you have WIN-OS/2 support installed?

Category	Count	Percentage
Yes		2,144	92.6%
No		166	7.2%
Don't Know	5	0.2%

TOTAL		2,315	100%


Do you use WIN-OS/2 support?

Category				Count	Percentage
Yes, but less than 1/3 of the time	1,399	60.4%
Yes, between 1/3 and 2/3 of the time	480	20.7%
Yes, more than 2/3 of the time		108	4.7%
No					320	13.8%
Don't Know				8	0.3%

TOTAL	2,315	99.9%
(Note: the missing 0.1% in the above table is due to rounding errors.)


Do you want or need Windows 3.x support in future versions of OS/2?

Category			Count	Percentage
Yes, greater than Win32s v1.25	1,418	61.3%
Yes, up to Win32s v1.25	376	16.2%
No				373	16.1%
Don't Know			148	6.4%

TOTAL				2,315	100%


Do you want or need Windows 95 support in future versions of OS/2?

Category	Count	Percentage
Yes		1,423	61.5%
No		621	26.8%
Don't Know	271	11.7%

TOTAL		2,315	100%

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OS/2 e-Zine! Reader Survey

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Have you ever wondered what your fellow OS/2 users are doing with their computers and how they're doing it?

Each month, OS/2 e-Zine! takes the pulse of the OS/2 community on a different topic and presents you with the results.

Just fill in the form at http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n7/survey2.htm and check back next month to find out how "normal" you really are!

-----

Do you have an idea that you think would make a good survey question?  Many of our best ideas for surveys come from our readers.  (feedback@os2ezine.com) Send yours in now!

And don't forget to check out the complete results of last month's survey, in this issue!


              This month's topic: What programs do you use?

Just fill in the form at our web site (http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n7/survey2.htm) and check back next month to find out how "normal" you really are!

(Complete results of this month's survey will be printed in our next issue -- August 16th, 1997.)

-----

Do you have an idea that you think would make a good survey question?  Many of our best ideas for surveys come from our readers.  (feedback@os2ezine.com) Send yours in now!

And don't forget to check out the complete results of last month's survey, in this issue!

***********************************

OS/2 Past, Present and Future	- by Brad Wardell

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Each month, OS/2 e-Zine! invites a prominent member of the OS/2 community to share his or her opinions, experiences and stories with our readers.  Few people in the OS/2 community are more 'prominent' than Brad Wardell of Stardock Systems, so we invited him to share the first installment of a series he is authoring on OS/2 and where it is going.

Here is the first chapter: OS/2 Past.  Stay tuned to OS/2 e-Zine! for the next installments of Brad's trilogy!

-----

(Disclaimer:
I work for an OS/2 software company called Stardock Systems, Inc.  We develop and publish 32bit OS/2 software for both corporate OS/2 sites as well as individual OS/2 users.)

            Part I: OS/2 Past

OS/2's fate was largely decided in mid-1991 when IBM made the decision that OS/2 2.0 would have the Workplace Shell as well as "Seamless" Windows.  This decision ensured that OS/2 2.0 would not make it out by summer of 1991 or even the once definitive date of December 31, 1991.  The reason this is important is because in April of 1992, Microsoft shipped Windows 3.1 and closed the door on OS/2's chances of replacing DOS/Windows as the general OS for the world.

Of course, it's easy to say that now.  Who would have thought that back then?  Windows 3.0 was barely being preloaded and it was too unstable as a corporate client to worry too much about.

But it was largely the Workplace Shell that delayed OS/2 and in hindsight, it would have been better to have released it for OS/2 version 3 in 1993 and to have kept the cruddy old Program Manager type setup that was in OS/2 1.3.  Because, had IBM done that, OS/2 would have looked and felt like Windows 3.0 did except it would multitask, not crash, run true 32bit software, run existing Windows programs and it would likely have been out in 1991, nearly a year before Windows 3.1 was.

Picture that.  OS/2 2.0 could have come out as a 32-bit, multithreaded OS that ran DOS (better than DOS), Windows and new OS/2 software.  It would have been stable, worked great on networks, and had good performance.  The only competition would have been the buggy Windows 3.0 which ran on top of DOS.  And the only thing different in this scenario than the OS/2 2.0 we actually had would have been that it wouldn't have had the WPS and it would have come out 9 months earlier -- before Windows 3.1 vapor could cloud the scene.

But as history wrote, OS/2 2.0 was theoretically released on March 31, 1992 (though most OS/2 buffs know that it really wasn't generally available until June).

By then, Windows 3.1 was out and was fairly fast and much more stable than earlier versions.  It was still not as stable as OS/2 was but any early user of OS/2 2.0 could tell you that the Workplace Shell of OS/2 2.0 was pretty flaky too.  Black icons, trap errors (i.e. the register dump kind), and of course everyone was using VGA and no sound whereas Windows 3.1 looked pretty, had SVGA support, and had some sound at least.

In the Fall of 1992, IBM made available the Service Pack for OS/2 2.0 and for some, a beta of Windows 3.1 (WIN-OS/2 3.1) which made life much better for OS/2 2.0 users.  By June of 1993, OS/2 2.1 was released which, as its 'point' upgrade name would imply, largely addressed the problems of OS/2 2.0.

It was with the release of OS/2 2.1 and the availability of MMPM/2 (the multimedia stuff for OS/2) that I began writing OS/2's first major commercial game (I say major because there were commercial Black Jack programs and such that came before Galactic Civilizations).  The amount of attention that Galactic Civilizations received as a beta surprised most people, including IBM.  Suddenly, lights went on at IBM and the belief grew that OS/2 could be made into a general consumer platform.

In hindsight, this was probably a mistake, since IBM wasn't prepared to do what it really took to produce a good consumer product, not to mention the fact that the consumer market isn't nearly as profitable per capita as the corporate product.  A typical example of this is the Usenet newsgroups.  Lots of OS/2 end users hang out there but most OS/2 ISVs make their money from corporate site licensing and service agreements.  If every OS/2 user in Usenet suddenly changed OS's tomorrow, it probably wouldn't affect OS/2 ISVs noticeably (except most of their tech support calls would disappear).

That's not to say that end users on Usenet aren't important, it's just that end users, as a general rule don't generate as much profit as a single IS manager who buys $50,000 in units and might make a couple tech support calls per quarter.  Obviously though, end users matter to shareware authors and companies that produce entertainment software (nearly 15% of Stardock's revenue comes from its entertainment division).

Anyway, back in 1993 or so, OS/2 as a mainstream consumer platform looked like a good idea.  I sure thought it was, but who knew how difficult it would be for IBM to try to create the infrastructure necessary to deal with massive numbers of end users?

But IBM dove into the consumer market head first and the result was OS/2 Warp 3.  As with every release, IBM made a deadline and stuck to it regardless of the consequences.  IBM is not the only company to run into this sort of problem -- giving into public pressure to meet a specific date and releasing something that they thought was ready but which probably needed just a couple more weeks of testing.  The lack of Winbios support, and a config.bak problem tarnished an otherwise wonderful product.

So, Warp 3 went out and got nailed because of installation problems.  Coincidentally, of course, in October of 1994 (when Warp 3 was officially released) Microsoft released the big "Chicago" beta which became Windows 95 later on.  The press, which seems to generally prefer to talk about vapor than substance essentially reprinted Microsoft's Chicago reviewer's guide (while OS/2 users complained that the guide was in Word 6 format which had just come out too).  OS/2 Warp 3 ended up being compared to the unreleased Chicago (i.e. what Chicago would be when it came out which changed from day to day).

By embracing the end user market, IBM created the biggest technical support nightmare that the IBM company may have ever seen.  The #1 tech support report for OS/2 Warp 3 was not how to get TCP/IP stacks going or how to link Novell up with OS/2 clients, or how to make sure DB/2 would work on the new version.  No, it was now, "How do you get DOOM 2 to run on OS/2 with sound?"  IBM has a highly paid, highly trained technical support staff that was meant to deal with Fortune 500 companies who had paid millions of dollars for software and hardware from IBM.  They just weren't prepared to deal with a bunch of people trying to run video games and the support costs from this really hurt PSP at the time.  This probably has a lot to do with why PSP today goes out of its way to discourage "kitchentop" users -- they don't want to support every new user that wants to play some video game on OS/2.

So IBM ended up having tens of thousands of phone calls pouring in over trivial issues while the product sold at the local CompUSA for $89.95 with a good $30 of it going to third parties (mostly Microsoft) in royalties and another $10 eaten up in manufacturing costs.  With Warp 3, IBM tried to fight the good fight basically by not trying to make a profit on it but instead trying to get market share.  Critics of IBM always say that IBM didn't try hard enough with OS/2 Warp 3.  I say they did and they were successful, for a while.

However, IBM's marketing program was ineptly done to an extent (and indeed in a Winter 1996 meeting with IBM's ad agency I questioned them about what they were thinking with those terrible TV ads).  Still, OS/2 was indeed taking off and certainly making Microsoft nervous.  In the Winter of 1995, Bill Gates is said to have remarked in frustration, "How can we compete with something that seems to have unlimited funds thrown at it?"  (This was reprinted in the trade magazines at the time).  It was IBM's next move though that got PSP and OS/2 into serious trouble: OS/2 for the PowerPC.

Around this time IBM was getting pretty giddy; while Windows 95 wasn't out yet, IBM was spending huge amounts of money on marketing and courting partners.  An IBM business partner can gauge how important they are to IBM by the number of duffle bags they get in a given year.  1994/1995 was a big duffle bag year if you were an OS/2 ISV or partner.  It really looked, despite a few bumps in its initial release, that OS/2 Warp could capture a good 15% to 20% of the general OS market.  IBM was courting hardware vendors as well as software vendors to work with IBM.  (We'll talk about how many of these "partners" blatantly took advantage of IBM's good faith later.)

The PowerPC version was also born of this vision of seeing OS/2 finally taking off and trying to expand on that success.  Confident that any technical issue could be surmounted, IBM believed that the Workplace OS (as Power OS/2 was called in those days) would run several OS's at the same time.

Many people, at the time, thought IBM might be jumping the gun a bit.  OS/2's success on Intel wasn't exactly cemented yet even though things were looking up.  Nevertheless, IBM worked on the PowerPC version of OS/2 for a couple of years with high amounts of resources really starting to pour in right after the Warp launch so that at Fall Comdex 1994 you could already see OS/2 apps such as Desktop Observatory and Sundial's Relish running on the PowerPC version of OS/2 (as long as you didn't move the mouse).

Unfortunately, popular rumor doesn't always become fact, and the rumor -- that still exists today -- that the x86 chipset is reaching its design limits was, and continues to be, simply not true (any computer engineer can tell you that any chipset can essentially be extended forever if you have enough money, which Intel does).  Someone with influence at IBM convinced the powers that be that Intel couldn't really boost the speed of the x86 process line much more than where the 486 was already.  The mediocre performance of the Pentium 60 made the case stronger.  So IBM believed that they could create a processor for PC's that was several times faster than the Intel chips and do so very cheaply.

When this failed to happen, not only did he PowerPC not take off as a new platform (other than Macs which weren't competing with 680x0 chips at this point), it made OS/2 for the PowerPC useless.  Years of work and energy had been poured and subsequently wasted on OS/2 for the PowerPC.  The final version of it (which does exist) doesn't even have networking support.  This sort of thing tends to really take the wind out of one's sails.

Not only did it take the wind out of many people's sails in PSP, it also angered the other parts of IBM which lost their faith in PSP to deliver products in a timely fashion.  It is my belief that the failure of OS/2 for the PowerPC to be delivered on time helped stop PSP from getting funding from Lou Gerstner.  In his mind, I believe, PSP had blown their chance.  PSP got isolated from the rest of IBM to a degree because of this (in my opinion of course).

Even worse, projects are usually comprised of a handful of truly critical people.  For example, OS/2 SMP was largely done by a single person who later left which is (so I hear) one of the reasons why it took so long for OS/2 SMP to get updated (this is a rumor, keep in mind).  So imagine yourself in their shoes, you just spent one, maybe two years working on the biggest, greatest project of all time to have it be for nothing.  (This was a scenario that would repeat itself later with OpenDoc.)  What ended up happening was that many truly talented people left.  IBM lost a lot of key developers because of this kind of frustration.  The mega-team that delivered miracles in the form of OS/2 2.0 to OS/2 3.0 began to dwindle.

OS/2 for the PowerPC's doom was half PSP's fault for not getting it out on time and half the PowerPC chip group's fault for not delivering on the promise of next generation performance.

When Windows 95 was released, it came up against an OS/2 3.0 that was pretty much unchanged.  Much of the developer resources at IBM that could have been used to put new features into OS/2 had been working on PowerPC for OS/2.  Instead of using money to get more third party support on OS/2 Intel, monetary resources for third parties were spent encouraging ISVs to write to the PowerPC, going to trade shows, etc.

Again, all this is hindsight and at the time, most of IBM's decisions made some sense.  But when Windows 95 came out, contrary to popular belief in the OS/2 camp, it was not a bug-ridden, unstable piece of junk.  It did the job and did it decently well for lots of people.  Not nearly as good as OS/2 but Microsoft, the master of putting the carrot in front of the mule said "Win95 not stable enough?  Not enough multitasking?  No problem, just wait for NT 4.0 which will have that and run Win95 software..."

The answer from IBM was OS/2 Warp 4 which we'll talk about in part 2 of this article: "OS/2 Present!"

-----

(bwardell@stardock.com) Brad Wardell is the founder and President of Stardock Systems, Inc., a leading OS/2 business and entertainment software developer.  He has been using OS/2 since its early days.

Copyright notice

This article is protected under international copyright.  If you wish to reprint this article in part or in full, please contact (bwardell@stardock.com) bwardell@stardock.com for permission.  You may also visit (http://www.stardock.com/) http://www.stardock.com/ to see this article and related articles.

***********************************

The OS/2 Debate	- by Chris Wright and Dr. Dirk Terrell

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With the advent of electronic distribution, modern software developers have recently taken a new approach to software development and sales.  Many companies now offer potential customers the chance to participate in alpha and beta test programs -- for a modest fee.  Typically this allows users to shape the final product and, in some cases, to receive a discounted or even free version of the finished product for their efforts.

This month, Chris Wright and Dr. Dirk Terrell discuss the pros and cons of this practice and how it affects the OS/2 market.

-----

Chris:  Charging users for beta test programs can be a positive thing -- if done right.

Unfortunately, free beta tests can become a logistical nightmare for the developer.  If the beta is free and popular, suddenly beta testing has turned into technical support, and you're spending more time responding to well meaning beta testers and less time actually fixing bugs.

Charging beta testers, while it reduces the pool of people who are willing to participate, increases the level of people who participate actively and constructively.  After all, paying money for something tends to make people want to make sure they get their money's worth, right?

Dirk:  As a software developer myself, I am opposed to having people pay to work for me.  Beta testers serve a very beneficial purpose to a developer -- to try to uncover as many problems as possible before the product is made available to customers.  It is my responsibility to make sure that the product is as error-free as possible, and that means thorough testing.

Of course, the hard part of putting together a team of testers is to make sure that they will honestly test the product and to make sure that they have a range of skills (the novice user and the experienced programmer will each give you valuable information that the other might never think of).

But with a good sign-up form, it shouldn't be to difficult to select a good team.  And in exchange for their work, I believe the developer should compensate them, maybe a free copy of the release version.  Asking them to pay you to work for you is just plain wrong.

Chris:  But Dirk, then there's the problem of money.  As you no doubt realize, software is expensive to code, mostly because while you're coding it, you're not selling it.  It's often tempting to gloss over the beta test just to get the code out the door so you can start making money off it, and fix the bugs later.

As I see it, a program where you pay to be a beta tester, then get a discount or free version of the release copy, is a valid attempt by software companies to

1. weed out the beta testers to a more manageable level, and
2. allow the beta process to run its full course without going so deep in the red that you can't get out.

In these respects, such a program can be a boon, especially to a small-to-mid-sized software company.  Such programs will give you some return on your investment: a little padding to encourage you to debug your code the right way instead of the easy, unprofessional manner most companies do now.

Dirk:  Well, Chris, it's my opinion that if you can't afford to create a good product and test it thoroughly before releasing it, you probably shouldn't start it to begin with.  The way I see it, if people are kind enough to go through the trouble of doing your testing for you, the last thing you ought to be doing is asking them to finance it!

Chris:  What you say is true, but this only works if you're working on a model where you're the only company in the arena.  If you're competing with other companies, and the majority of those companies are on the "Beta -- we're selling it as Gold Code!" schedule of software development (like Microsoft, Corel, et al.) you need to either a) publish your software on the same schedule they do or b) come up with a way to stay in business while you're doing things the right way.

Many companies can't afford to create a good product because the large companies are willing to settle for mediocre ones.

Now, does OS/2 have the same level of cutthroat competition as other OS markets?  Perhaps not.  But the standard seems to affect us nonetheless...

Dirk:  I refuse to be that cynical or to believe that a paid beta program is the difference between success and failure for a company.  I heard the same kinds of arguments from American automobile manufacturers until their Japanese competitors wiped the floor with them.  Fortunately for them, they realized that if they were to survive, they would have to produce quality products in a timely fashion, and do so at competitive prices.

That is the way it works in any free market and the software business is no exception.  I find it difficult to believe that a paid beta program would really bring in enough money to make or break a company.  If it's large enough to bring in that much money, you're probably spending too much time trying to manage it.

Chris:  I don't see it as cynical, just an honest assessment of how large companies can set up situations where smaller ones have to meet impossible expectations.

But anyway, here's yet ANOTHER reason why I think paid beta programs could be useful:

Suddenly, beta testers become paying customers.  This gives the beta tester more assurance that their desires and observations will be heard, because, well, they have essentially become investors in the product.  The relationship between a vendor and a beta tester changes when money is involved.  By charging for their beta, the company is acknowledging that beta testers have more of a claim to be involved and affect the outcome of a program.

Note that I think such programs are ONLY valid in these circumstances.  If a company is not willing to let the beta testers be more involved in the process, they shouldn't charge for their betas.

Dirk:  Well, I guess I'm too old fashioned to believe that money has to change hands in order to create a sense of seriousness about the testing process.

When you say, "If a company is not willing to let the beta testers be more involved in the process, they shouldn't charge for their betas," I would say that if a company is not willing to let the beta testers be more involved in the process, the company shouldn't be doing a public beta in the first place.  When someone gives me money, I believe they should be getting something in return.  What does the beta tester get in return for their money?  The right to have the company take them seriously?  If money changes hands, I still think it ought to be in the other direction -- the company pays the beta testers for the work that benefits the company!

Chris:  I have nothing against open beta testing -- in fact, from a financial standpoint, I'm all for them.  Open betas and other such anarchic (meaning "free", not "chaotic") activities are what makes the Internet such a great place.  But I think paid beta programs can be a very valuable way for software companies that want to write good code to combat the tendencies of monolithic corporations setting the pace of development simply because they are larger and have more resources.

Also, I see these programs as a way for users to invest in the software.  If a user participates in an paid beta program, he or she should come into it with the idea that he or she is actually contributing to the development of the product, not simply reporting bugs.  A company introducing an paid beta program should consider the participants as members of the development team, since they are footing part of the bill.

If someone is going to go through all the trouble of actually paying for beta code, the company should feel reasonably safe in expecting the user to participate actively in the beta process.  And if someone is going to go through all the trouble of actually paying for beta code, the company damn-well better be willing to go the extra mile to develop a good working relationship with that customer.  A properly set up paid beta program will put the end user deeper into the process of the program's development than a normal beta program.

And, of course, anyone who pays for the program should get compensation once the software is released.  I think that should be a free copy of whatever the products is, but if it isn't, it should at least be discounted to the point where there's no way the company is making a profit (read: at least 75% off, people!)

These programs, if done correctly, can be a positive experience for all involved.  If done incorrectly, they aren't 'paid beta programs'.  They're scams.

Dirk:  I can definitely see the advantage of a paid beta program from the company's point of view.  I wish I could get people to pay to work for me!  But that is wrong, plain and simple.

From my own experience, it is not difficult to put together a good team of beta testers.  By doing a beta with successively larger groups of testers, you can work out most of the bugs that are likely to be of a critical nature.  And once you have the small beta team, testing of later releases of the product should go even more efficiently.

I have never had any problem getting my testers to submit ideas for improvements in products.  I find that they are quite enthusiastic about being involved, and I, in return, take their suggestions quite seriously.  I see no reason why money has to change hands for that relationship to develop in other companies.

-----

Want to join in our debate?  Why not (feedback@os2ezine.com) send us your opinions on paid beta programs, and stay tuned to future issues of OS/2 e-Zine! for more debates on issues close to OS/2 users hearts.

-----

(cwbrenn@ibm.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.

(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.

***********************************

RSA's Contests and OS/2	- by Colin L. Hildinger

-----

If you read the OS/2 news groups or spend time in #OS/2 on IRC, you might have seen people talking about DES and RC5.  They mostly talk about things like various client versions, keyrates, and what team is "ahead."  For anyone not involved in the projects I'm sure these discussions seem not only arcane, but completely irrelevant to the vast majority of OS/2 users.

Hopefully I can clear some of this up with you and maybe get you involved in the largest distributed computing project that I've ever heard of.

RSA Data Security's Contests

(http://www.rsa.com/) RSA Data Security is a company that writes and sells encryption systems.  They have issued a (http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/97challenge/) series of contests, each with a $10,000 prize for anyone who can crack a message encoded with a specific cryptography system.  The contests included a DES encrypted message and a variety of RC5 encrypted messages, encrypted with different length keys.  DES is an encryption standard which uses a 56-bit key length and was developed by IBM for the government in the 1970's.  RC5 is a newer standard with a variable key length developed by RSA.

Several of the prizes have already been claimed.  The 40-bit RC5 message was cracked 3 hours after the contest was issued.  The 48-bit message took 13 days, and DES fell 140 days after the contest was issued.  The 48-bit RC5 and the DES messages were cracked by distributed efforts on the Internet; both were cracked by Pentium class machines using their spare cycles and a client that coordinated with other machines all over the world.

Cryptography?  Who Cares?

Many of you may be wondering why you should have the slightest interest in these contests.  Well, you should if you do any electronic transactions at all.  Many are protected by the same cryptography standards which these groups have shown to be unbelievably weak.  I'm not just talking about Internet transactions, I'm talking about any sensitive data that is passed by computer from one place to another.  If a bunch of people on the Internet can crack DES in a few months with their spare CPU cycles, a dedicated government, company, or other organization could build (and probably already have built) machines that specialize in cracking encoded data that could do the same thing in a few seconds.  I'm not an expert on the subject, but it has been shown that specialized DES chips could be built quite cheaply.

Unfortunately, the US government, in its infinite wisdom, has regulated the export of all "large key" encryption.  They consider 56-bit encoding to be large key.  This means that international companies either use small key encryption or have to buy their encryption software outside of the US.  Hopefully these efforts will show how weak this encryption is and put pressure on the government to open up their export standards.

In fact, this appears to be working, as Netscape and Microsoft have recently gotten permission to export the 128-bit SSL versions of their web browsers.

Distributed Computing is Cool

The method being used by the various teams to crack the messages is what's known as brute force.  This means that they basically try every key until they find one that works (part of the message is provided by RSA so you know when you've found the key).  For the 40-bit encryption, this is about 1.1 trillion keys, for 56-bit encryption, about 72 quadrillion keys, and for 128-bit it's about 3.4E38 keys.

To put it in perspective, a P166 trying 200,000 keys per second could try all the keys in a 40-bit RC5 message in about 64 days.  56-bit would take about 11,500 years, and 128-bit would take about 54,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.  Of course since the key could be anywhere within the keyspace, you could get lucky and find the key for the 128-bit message in only 1,000,000 years or so. <g>

As you can see, a single computer working on its own would take a lifetime to finish.  The solution to this is what's called a coordinated effort using distributed computing.  In other words, the work is broken down and distributed to computers through a network (the Internet) so that each computer can work on a piece of it.

The clients for all the efforts so far work at "idle" priority or very high "nice" levels on Unix systems.  These programs only get CPU time when more important programs aren't actively using it.  OSes with good schedulers like OS/2 will notice little to no performance hit whatsoever while running the clients, since they only use a few hundred kilobytes of memory when they're running.  I run the RC5 client minimized from my Startup folder and don't even realize it's running unless I take the time to look and see how it's doing.

Team Warped and the distributed.net Effort

The group who has taken up the effort to crack the 56-bit RC5 is called the (http://rc5.distributed.net/) "Bovine" effort, but no one but the organizer really understands his fascination with cattle.  I usually refer to it as distributed.net effort as that's the domain name they've registered for it.

Distributed.net has not only committed to the 56-bit RC5 effort, but to furthering distributed computing.  Their upcoming version 3 client/server model will allow them to host multiple projects simultaneously and allow users to "hot swap" projects easily.  At press time they're over 5% of the way through the 56-bit RC5 keyspace and progressing at a rate of 1% every 5 days.  Of course, they could find the key any day, so they plan to begin implementing other projects as soon as possible.  They plan to keep $1,000 of the prize money for themselves (they would earn more if they were paid 50 cents an hour for the time they've already put in), give $1,000 to the person who finds the winning key, and give the other $8,000 to a charity called (http://promo.net/pg/) Project Gutenberg.

After promoting the DES effort, I had the names of quite a few OS/2 users who were participating in the group that won it, called DESCHALL.  I had recruited people to get involved because they had a breakdown by OS in their statistics and I wanted to see OS/2 high in that list.  Also, though, because I thought it would be good publicity if an OS/2 machine found the "magic key."

Distributed.net not only keeps platform stats, but also allows people to form "teams" under an e-mail address.  I created a team called (http://www.ionet.net/~colin/rc5.html) "Team Warped" using my warped@ionet.net e-mail address and started getting people to join.  If we find the key, we plan to use the $1,000 to promote OS/2 (the exact method hasn't been decided yet, but it will be through supporting nonprofit OS/2 groups or events like Warpstock).  After only a few weeks, we are checking more keys every day than any other group, we are in the top 10 in total keys checked, and we hope to continue growing.

Of course, we don't limit ourselves to OS/2 machines, any machines you can use to help Team Warped would be appreciated.  One of our members is even porting the client to the AS/400 platform.

Another group has started up and is offering more of the $10,000 for the person who finds the key, but they don't currently have an OS/2 client, and since we have developed an installed base with the distributed.net effort, we don't intend to splinter our effort by attempting to switch.  Since distributed.net has already checked almost 6% of the keyspace, 6% of the keys that this group checks have already been checked by distributed.net.  As distributed.net continues to grow and progress, this will continue to reduce the effectiveness of the slower, new effort.  Also, since this group is keeping a larger chunk of the $10,000 instead of donating it to a nonprofit organization, distributed.net seems like the best place to be as a socially responsible person.

-----

(http://www.ionet.net/~colin/) Colin Hildinger is an Aerospace Engineering senior at (http://www.okstate.edu/) Oklahoma State University and has been using OS/2 for the last 3 years.  In addition to being the Games Editor for OS/2 e-Zine!, he maintains (http://www.ionet.net/~colin/games.html) The Ultimate OS/2 Gaming Page and the (http://www.ionet.net/~colin/awe32.html) AWE32 and OS/2 Page in his "spare" time.

***********************************

Networking OS/2 Warp and Windows	- by Brian  L. Juergensmeyer

-----

When OS/2 Warp version 4 was first released to the general public, IBM said that it was targeting OS/2 Warp at the "connected consumer".   However, during the one widespread public beta of OS/2 Warp version 4, there were many complaints that the integration of the network installation routine into the operating system installation was very roughly done.  There was also a feeling that the documentation that told users which parts of the network installation would be required for a given networking setup was either missing or incomplete.

It is my intention to assist you, the end user who wants to connect as a peer into a Windows for Workgroups or Windows 95 network, in accomplishing just that.

A Primer

First, I'll give a little background on how OS/2 communicates with Windows.  Windows uses a proprietary Microsoft protocol known as NetBEUI to communicate with other Windows PCs on a LAN (or Local Area Network).

There are similarities and differences between NetBEUI and TCP/IP, which is probably the best known networking protocol in existence right now.  The main difference that will concern us is this: unlike TCP/IP, NetBEUI is NOT routable.  This means that a Windows PC can only use NetBEUI to communicate with other PCs that are not on the other side of a router.

Recently, however, Microsoft has written a clever little hack that allows NetBEUI to be routed (at least in a sense).  Since TCP/IP was designed to be very flexible, it is possible to encase a NetBEUI packet inside a TCP/IP packet and send that through a router.  This is known as NetBEUI over TCP/IP (or NBTCP for short).

Jumping In

So, in order to communicate with a Windows PC, we must first install the same protocol on our PC that Windows is using.  Unfortunately, IBM does not come right out and say, "Hey you, here is NetBEUI."  Instead, IBM hides it inside something called, "File and Print Services", which Warp offers to install for you during the GUI portion of the install procedure.  If you do not install "File and Print Services" during the original installation, you can install them later though; the "Selective Install for Networking" is in the Install/Remove folder inside the "System Setup" folder.

You will need to check the box marked "File and Print Client" and click the "Next" button.  This will bring up a tree view with "File and Print Sharing Services" and "Network Adapters and Protocol Services" (along with other choices, if you are installing other protocols, such as TCP/IP simultaneously) as choices.

First, you need to click on the "File and Print Sharing Services".  This will bring up several important choices on the right-hand side of the window and you will be able to choose the name that your workstation will have on the network.  You may also enter your "domain name" if you are logging on to or validating through a domain (a topic for next month?  hmmm...).  At this point, if you are unsure if you need to enter a domain name, ask your system administrator.

Next, click on "Network Adapters for File and Print Sharing".  This is where you will select the network card in your PC through which you will be communicating with the network.

Click on "User ID and Password".  This is where you will enter your network username and password.  (I am unsure if this will create an account for your computer on a Windows NT domain or not.  I will attempt to find out before next month and let you all know though.)

Finally, click on "Network Adapters and Protocol Services".  Here is where you will install the LAN drivers for the network card itself.  Note that if you have a Plug-n-Play Network Interface Card (or NIC), Warp 4 will happily find it and use it in its native Plug-n-Play state.

After your adapter is selected and installed, click "Next" at the bottom of the installation window.  There will be much whirring of drives and clicking of CD-ROMs.  You will then be asked to shut down and reboot so that the new changes can take effect.

Does It Work?

When your system comes back up, you will note no difference on the surface, but you will be able to use the "Connections" icon on your desktop to browse the local network.  You will also be able to select individual shares on the network and assign them virtual drive letters.  You should note: there is no set "log on" or "log off" procedure with Warp as there is with either Windows 95 or Windows NT.  Warp will only ask you to log on to the network if and when you need to do so.

A security note for systems administrators out there that may be reading this: One of the serious shortcomings in the OS/2 Warp 4 interface is that there is no obvious way of logging a user off the system when he or she is done using it.  There is a "Log Off" icon tucked away in the "File and Print Client" folder in the "Connections" folder but this is hardly intuitive.  Or, if you look closely, once you install file and print sharing, Warp will add a "Log Off" menu choice about midway down your desktop pop-up menu that may also be used to log a user off of the system.  My suggestion is to create a shadow on the Desktop of the "Log Off" icon from the "File and Print Client" folder.

That's All There Is To It!

In closing, this is not the best documented installation that I have ever seen, but this system is capable of logging on to just about any server on the market today.  It is truly the open, interoperable system that Microsoft keeps striving for but never achieving.  For a very long time, I was the only person where I work that was able to browse both a Pathworks version 5 network and a Windows network simultaneously -- through the magic of Warp 4.

Happy Warping!!

-----

(brianj@kansas.net) Brian L. Juergensmeyer is a programmer at the VA hospital in Topeka, Kansas.   He annoys his IS manager by trying get him to convert from NT/WfW 3.11 to Warp Connect/Warp Server.

***********************************

June's Top Selling Applications from Indelible Blue

-----

Note: This list represents only the monthly sales figures of Indelible Blue, Inc.  Please read our disclaimer below for more information.

	
This Month	Last Month	Product			Developer

1		1		Hobbes CD-ROM	Walnut Creek
2		3		BackMaster		MSR Development
3		5		FaxWorks Pro v3	Keller Group Inc.
4		4		ColorWorks V2		SPG
5		6		IBM AntiVirus		IBM
6 (tie)		7		Partition Magic		PowerQuest
6 (tie)		9		Performance Plus	Clear & Simple
7		--		Deskman/2		DevTech
8		2		BackAgain/2 Pro	Computer Data Strategies
9		7		SmartSuite 96		Lotus
10		--		Links for OS/2		Stardock Systems
11		--		DB/2			IBM
12		11		Embellish		Dadaware
13		--		Process Commander	Stardock Systems
14		--		SofTouch Suite		SofTouch Systems
15		13		UniMaint		SofTouch Systems

-----

Compiled by (http://www.indelible-blue.com/ib/) Indelible Blue, Inc. - Your Single Source for OS/2 Solutions.

***********************************

June's Top Selling Applications from J3

-----

Note: This list represents only the monthly sales figures of J3 Computer Technologies.  Please read our disclaimer below for more information.


This Month	Last Month	Product					Developer
1		2		Word Pro & Freelance Graphics	Lotus
2		6		Book: Getting to Know OS/2 Warp 4
3		5		Seagate Backup for OS/2		Seagate
4		--		Bitstream 500 Font CD			Bitstream
5		--		MD+F WebAK				Modular Dreams, Inc.
6		3		LinkWiz				PCX
7		10		F-Prot Professional Antivirus		Command Software
8		7		FaxWorks Pro v3 UG			Keller Group Inc.
9		4		Partition Magic v3 Personal Ed.		PowerQuest
10		9		Hobbes CD				Walnut Creek

-----

Compiled by (http://www.os2store.com/) J3 Computer Technologies - Serving the Global OS/2 Community, large and small!

***********************************

June's Top Selling Applications from BMT Micro

-----

Note: This list represents only the monthly registration figures of BMT Micro, Inc.  Please read our disclaimer below for more information.


This Month	Last Month	Product				Developer
1		1		PMMail				SouthSide Software
2		2		InJoy				F/X Communications
3		3		PMView			Peter Nielsen
4		5		XFile				CodeSmith Software
5		6		iLink/2			BMT Micro
6 (tie)		4		ZOC				EmTec Innovative Software
6 (tie)		--		Screen				SaverSiegfried Hanish
7		--		SIO				The Software Division
8		10		FC/2				Brian Havard
9		8		FTP Browser			Jason Rushton
10		7		MR/2 ICE Internet Email	Knightware Software Co.

-----

This list is compiled by (http://www.bmtmicro.com/) BMT Micro -- Your Source for Over 100 Quality Shareware Applications.

***********************************

Top Sellers Lists Disclaimer

-----

Our "top sellers lists" represent sales figures compiled for OS/2 e-Zine! by BMT Micro, Inc., Indelible Blue, Inc. and J3 Computer Technologies.  Falcon Networking does not verify these lists and makes no guarantee of their authenticity.  All inquiries regarding products appearing or not appearing on these lists should be directed to the relevant retailer.

The publication of these lists is not meant to indicate an endorsement by Falcon Networking of any of these companies or of the products featured on the lists.

Readers should note that the rankings indicated in each of these lists represent only the sales of each individual retailer.  They do not, necessarily, represent sales across the entire OS/2 industry.

There are many different sales channels in the OS/2 industry and different software vendors rely heavily on some while other vendors rely more heavily on others.  Also, not all retailers carry all existing OS/2 products.  Readers should take these facts into consideration when interpreting the "top sellers lists".

The BMT Micro "top sellers list" represents only the top selling OS/2 shareware applications available through BMT Micro, Inc.  The BMT Micro CD is excluded from the figures to avoid distorting the results.

The Indelible Blue "top sellers list" represents only the top selling OS/2 applications sold by Indelible Blue, Inc.  OS/2 Warp and OS/2 Warp Connect are not included in these rankings.

The J3 Computer Technologies "top sellers list" represents only the top selling OS/2 applications sold by J3 Computer Technologies.

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Corporate Sponsors of OS/2 e-Zine!

(http://www.bmtmicro.com/) BMT Micro
Your complete source for over 175 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/os2ezine) 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.

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(http://www.kellergroup.com/) Keller Group Inc.
Developers of FaxWorks for OS/2 and PMfax, the fax and voice solution for OS/2, with versions for stand-alone, LAN and Internet Faxing.

(http://nick.secant.com/mr2ice.htm) MR/2 ICE Internet Email Client
Delivering the electronic mail features of the future, today.  A product of Knightware Software Company.

(http://www.mensys.nl/indexuk.html) Mensys
The one place to go in Europe for all OS/2 Warp software.

(http://www.OberonSoftware.com/) Oberon Software, Inc.
Home of TE/2, TE/2 Pro and other fine OS/2 programs.  Specializing in telecommunications, Java apps and the Internet.

(http://www.pcs-soft.com/) Perez Computing Services
Defend against desktop freezes with Ctrl-Alt-Del Commander and create online documents/help with the IPF Editor.

(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.softouch.com/) SofTouch Systems, Inc.
Home of the bestselling set of disk and desktop maintenance products for 
OS/2: GammaTech Utilities, UniMaint, and FileStar/2!  ---- Your System's Safe and Sound with SofTouch Around

(http://www.stardock.com/) Stardock Systems
Providing quality software for the home and office.

(http://www.sundialsystems.com/) Sundial Systems Corporation
Productivity applications:  Relish - time management; Mesa 2 - spreadsheet; Clearlook - word processor; DBExpert - database.

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Copyright 1997   -   Falcon Networking
ISSN 1203-5696