[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!		August 16, 1997		volume 2, number 8
----------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 1997		Falcon Networking  		ISSN 1203-5696

                  "Half a million readers and growing!"


OPINIONS:

  From the Editor
  Chris' Rant

 
DEPARTMENTS:

  the Beta File
  Answers from e-Zine!
  News from the OS/2 World
  OS/2 Gaming News
  Chris' Graphics Powertips
  Web Site Design with OS/2
  the REXX Files
  How Do I?
  Networking with OS/2


FOCUS: OS/2 GRAPHICS SOFTWARE

-Bitmap Apps-
ColorWorks & Impos/2 Updates
Embellish v2.01
Photo>Graphics Pro v2.0
SX Paint & WebAK
Vector vs. Bitmap: the Difference

-Vector Apps-
Introduction
LogoArt v1.10
DrawCat v1.0
NeoN 2D Vector
Conclusions

-3D Modelers-
POV-Ray & ForeSpace
NeoN GRAFIX 3D

-Viewers-
PMView, Galleria, & PMJpeg


OTHER REVIEWS:

-Hardware-
CCK Technologies P133 - Rodney Baker
Adesso NUForm Keyboard - Pete Grubbs

-Games-
Widget Workshop for OS/2 - Colin Hildinger
Games Reviews Revisited - Colin Hildinger


READER SURVEY

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

What do you think of Java?
    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
    continues his three part series on the life and times of OS/2.


THE OS/2 DEBATE

Focus: Cross-platform Development - Chris Wenham & 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

CD-ROM Recording with OS/2 - Chris Williams
    There are many reasons why you might want
    to record your own CDs; the question is can you?

The SIA Awards - Joe Dougherty
    For the first time this year the Shareware Industry
    Association included OS/2 products in their annual
    awards voting.  Naturally, OS/2 programs made out
    quite well.  Our reporter brings you the full story.


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

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

Graphics, Graphics, Everywhere

For a long time now, the staff and contributors of OS/2 e-Zine! have been chomping at the bit to do a, "massive blow out graphics comparison issue," (in the words of one editor).  The truth is, over the past year, we've often planned to do just that, but for one reason or another, things always got sidetracked.  But with the recent uproar about SPG ceasing OS/2 development and the resulting demand for comprehensive and accurate graphics application reviews, we knew the time had finally come.  When we realized this, shortly before our last issue went on-line, we made the decision to remove a few graphics program reviews (Embellish and WebAK) from our line up, specifically to save them for this month.  The result is the magazine you are reading now.

As you will probably notice from our table of contents, the Internet's largest OS/2 mag has undergone a massive growth this month -- this issue is almost 50% larger than our regular issues!  When we sat down to make a list of programs for review this month, we quickly realized that with all the OS/2 apps available, we just couldn't do the job in the (already large) number of pages we normally publish.  So we decided to throw the doors open and really cram all the info we could possibly fit into this super sized graphics issue.

And what would a graphics application round up be without a ton of pictures?  While we have always had screen shots of most products we review, this month's monster line up means a monster amount of screen shots too.  Don't worry though, as usual, our graphics wizards have pulled every trick possible to shrink those GIFs to the smallest file sizes without sacrificing picture quality.

You'll also probably notice that since we are focusing on graphics applications this month, we decided to create a whole new look for our pages too.  Some of you have been telling us for many months that it was time for this and when our readers speak, we listen!  But, as always, OS/2 e-Zine! is a work in progress, so if you have suggestions for more (or better) changes, please (feedback@os2ezine.com) let us know!

Also, while we have overhauled our look, you'll notice some important things have remained the same.  Most importantly, we still pay attention to overall page loading times.  Unlike some web sites, you still won't find our pages bogged down with graphics so numerous or large that you could read "War and Peace" while waiting for them to load.  And things are still cleanly laid out with a minimum of flashing lights and dancing icons.  After all, you're here for the content, right?

And those of you who are really observant will note that our resident comical and artistic genius, Christopher B. Wright, not to be outdone, has given his highly acclaimed "Help Desk" comic strip a great new look too.  That's right, the Internet's funniest on-line cartoon -- exclusive to OS/2 e-Zine!, of course -- has gotten even better.  Have a look, but grab a hanky, because you'll laugh 'til you cry. <g>

-----

As you may remember, last month I suggested we regularly single out one company or person who has shown dedication to OS/2 and send them our thanks.

We received a ton of e-mail with suggestions for developers to thank in the past month, but one of the most common suggestions was (http://www.southsoft.com/) SouthSoft, Inc..  As most of you already know, Robert Novitskey and Evan Goldring, the founders of SouthSoft, are the driving force behind one of the most popular e-mail clients for OS/2 home users, PMMail.  If you feel, as we do, that SouthSoft has been a valuable and loyal supporter of the OS/2 community, why not use our form to say, "thank you"?

(By the way, we also received many suggestions that we thank Knightware Software Products, makers of MR/2 ICE, and InnoVal Systems Solutions, makers of Post Road Mailer.  We're taking this project one company at a time, but please, feel free to send your letters of thanks to these other companies as well if you feel they deserve them!)

To thank Robert and Evan, just use the form found at http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n8/editor.htm.  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).

-----

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/) Indelible Blue
Indelible Blue, a mail order company, provides OS/2 software and hardware solutions to customers worldwide.

(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

This GUI Stinks

The modern WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointers) user interface stinks and I'll tell you why.  It's counterproductive, annoying, frustrating and wasteful in so many ways and the tragedy is that it didn't have to be so.  Most of the problems can be fixed just by taking a different philosophy when designing user interfaces in both software and hardware.

Let's take dialog boxes for instance.  Error and alert dialogs should be thrown on the ground and stomped on, especially modal dialogs (ones that won't let you use any other window of the application until you've acknowledged it).  I first noticed my annoyance with them while using Netscape and trying to load a page from a server that was temporarily unreachable.  Up pops an error dialog that has to be acknowledged.  All it tells me is that the server doesn't have a DNS entry, or is temporarily unreachable, or whatever.  It's major, big-time annoying when boxes like these fly up and disrupt my flow.  I don't care if the page can't be loaded right now, I'll try again later, in the meantime I wanna click on another link!

Instead of error dialogs, how about an error log? Stick it in a small drop-down window somewhere.  If I'm concerned with the error I can select it from this log later and see a detailed report, otherwise I could care less.  The user is smart enough to realize something went wrong and will usually be happy enough to go do something else.  Flag recent errors with red dots if it helps, but just get rid of these annoying dialogs.  

Now fire up a major application like a word processor or a browser or a paint program.  Look just under the menu bar and you'll probably see a row of buttons with little pictures on them.  Okay, number one: what the heck do those pictures mean?  The ancient Egyptians used hieroglyphics, not Westerners like us.  An icon is good for identifying a program if it's easy to work in a company or product logo.  But in a modern word-processor there can be hundreds of these silly little nubbits, smaller than a program icon and even less descriptive.  How am I supposed to memorize all this?

The failure of the icon toolbar is reflected by the need to have 'flyover help bubbles' to tell you what they mean.  What is the point?  Give the user words to use instead, like Netscape and some other programs allow.  Even better, have these commands in a list that runs down the side and starts to scroll when the mouse gets near the top or bottom.  Even better still; start moving frequently used commands nearer the top of the list so they can be found faster.

My second gripe is this: look just below your monitor, see that wide piece of plastic?  It's got literally hundreds of pushable buttons on it.  (That's right, it's your keyboard!)  Remember when developers used those buttons, instead of relying just on your mouse and on-screen icons?

I look at the default layout for StarWriter and I see that all the graphical buttons and other widgets take up almost two thirds of my screen estate.  Hello?  I know you can remove these palettes but why were they there in the first place?  Okay, they make the program look sexy, but I think a screenful of my document looks even sexier.

And some programs don't let you get rid of the button bar.  This is bad.  Especially when the programmers make ugly icons.

I really wish some of the money that has gone into developing and redeveloping the button-bar could have instead helped really advance keyboard technology (and no I don't mean the recent renaissance of ergonomic keyboards).  Lets stick a cheap LCD strip above the function keys, re-definable via software so it can display what each key does, then start getting rid of those damn buttonbars and free up a bit of screen space.

The mouse pointer idea is also dumb.  We have two hands, five fingers on each hand, but the idea behind the mouse pointer effectively gives you just one finger with which to control the computer.  There are whole programs out there that can only be controlled by the mouse (and I'm not just talking about draw/paint programs) not to mention the vast majority of the OS/2 interface itself.  No wonder some people still worship the command-line; you're actually making use of the ten best tools God gave you.

So let's break a few moulds here; How about using two mouse pointers?  How about using ten?  I can use one to move a window out of the way, the other to drag an icon previously covered by that window to the shredder, then move the window back again -- all in one smooth operation.

Let's invent a glove-mouse that lets you use all five fingers as pointing/selecting devices, or a touch-sensitive screen that can track multiple points (and get someone in the chemical labs to invent a smear-proof coating for monitors; I hate greasy fingerprints).

And then there are the windows.  Do you ever stop to guess how much time you spend moving, resizing, nudging, tweaking, maximizing, minimizing, restoring and shuffling all those windows?  One folder overlaps the icons in another, so you move it a bit, and then you have to nudge another before you can copy a file.  The floating color palette is overlapping the canvas, so you move it, then you move the tool palette, then you move the color palette again because the tool palette is now covering that.  And on and on and on.  Bah!  Spend ten minutes and I can tweak all of these windows into a usable configuration, but I don't get those ten minutes back!

If an application must have a tool palette then dock it somewhere and give me room to work on those wide .TIF files.

There's hope

We all saw how awful graphical user interfaces could be when we played around with Windows 3.x.  The stupid application-centric program manager with its homogenous group icons.  Jungles of nested dialogs.  The horrid File Manager and its primitive file associations.  MORICONS.DLL (ugh!).  By comparison OS/2's Workplace Shell is many light-years ahead, but it still shares many of the same problems as Windows 95, MacOS 7-point-something and most other GUIs.

I do see improvement though.  (http://www.southsoft.com/) SouthSide Software's PMMail is what gave me the idea of eschewing error and alert dialogs for a simple log instead.  And I'm sorry to say, but the sliding toolbars in Microsoft's Internet Explorer are a fantastic way of tucking multiple tool palettes out of the way when they aren't needed (yeah, that keeps the life of the buttonbar going a bit longer, but I'd still like to see more use of those other 'button palettes' that have been sitting under our fingers for years earlier).

Newsreaders that follow the Free Agent style of layout have got a good hold on the window-fiddling problem.  How about seeing that applied to other applications?  Or maybe the whole OS itself?

Thumbs up to Microsoft again (and Lotus too) for putting plain-English interpreters into their office suites.  Thumbs down to Microsoft for the dancing paperclip and for only making it an elaborate search-engine for the help file.  Stick the command line in the same place a browser's "Location:" field goes and let me type stuff like "Save this file and print it, then close and open june-budget."  I want to do simple batch programming in English so I can really take advantage of my OS's background multitasking power.

The first operating system that offers this kind of interface improvements will be the first one to seriously tempt me away from OS/2... that is unless it is OS/2 that gets 'em first.

               * * *

(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.

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

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!

               * * * 

First this month is a new application created to make it easier to deal with file/directory attributes.  Aptly named Attribute Manager, the program provides you with a way to modify normal attributes (read-only, system, hidden and archive attributes), extended attributes (.SUBJECT, .COMMENT and .KEYPHRASE) and date/time stamps, all in one package.

Attribute Manager has a variety of user-friendly features, including drag-and-drop support, bubble help and right-mouse button pop-up menus.  The program makes it easy to import into Extended Attributes from basically any text file (for example, taking the contents of a 4DOS/4OS/2 descript.ion file and converting it to a .SUBJECT EA).  The author, (alexcan@tin.it) Alessandro Cantatore, says more features (like reports and file search capability) are in the works for upcoming versions.

Having just reached beta v0.7.23, Attribute Manager may be downloaded from (ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/util/diskutil/attmn07.zip) Hobbes for testing -- this version is valid until December 31st 1997, by which time an update should be available.  Once it reaches GA, the program will probably be distributed as shareware.

               * * * 

Do you have a Motorola BitSurfr Pro (BSP) terminal adapter and want to use it with OS/2?  If so, then (tombell@america.com) Tom Bell has written a little program which might interest you.  Irish Setter is a VX-REXX application which allows one to check and set various settings of the BitSurfr Pro, including switch type, directory numbers and SPIDs.  All settings can be saved in a user-defined file for recall, allowing the program to be used with multiple BSP adapters.

Anyone who has a BitSurfr Pro and wishes to try Irish Setter out may download the program from (ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/network/tcpip/irishv2.zip) Hobbes or (tombell@america.com) contact Tom directly for an e-mailed copy.  Tom intends for Irish Setter to remain freeware, and wants users to realize: "...this program was written to suit my needs, if someone finds it helpful, then good.  This is not written as a 'killer app'; its limitations are many, but its purpose is clear."

               * * * 

Those with a TV tuner card who have ever used it under OS/2 with (http://www.wdi.co.uk/os2tv/os2tv.html) WarpTV know that while WarpTV allows you to capture screen 'snapshots', it only allows you to do this manually.  Many people would like to be able to have their TV card take unattended shots, for time-lapse photography, for example.

Well, that's where WebCam/2 comes in.  This nifty little program will allow you to have pictures taken through your video input adapter without you having to be there.  The pictures are stored on a local disk, so with the combination of a local web server, WebCam/2 and a self-refreshing HTML file, your video capture card can turn out images much like those of the (http://home.netscape.com/fishcam/fishcam.html) Netscape Fishcam page.

Currently WebCam/2 takes only BMP images, but work is in progress to add JPEG support to make web integration that much easier.  (Warp 4 can have JPEG support added through a multimedia CODEC, but to make WebCam/2 compatible with Warp 3 as well, the author is looking into decent JPEG compression libraries.)

Author Jrgen Dittmer has tested the program with his own video capture card, a FAST Movie Machine II, and he is looking for beta testers to find out how it works on other OS/2-supported cards.  Hauppage TV cards, for example, are popular OS/2-compatible adapters, and Jrgen has no information as to how WebCam/2 runs with these yet.

If you have such a card, or a Movie Machine II, or any OS/2-compatible capture card and would like to test WebCam/2, you can (ftp://wave.gkss.de/os2/WebCam/) download the latest version from Jrgen's FTP server and try it out.  More information about the program can be found at the (http://wave.gkss.de/webcam.html) WebCam/2 home page.

There's no word yet on the pricing of the product once it reaches its final stages, but since the author says he doesn't have much time on his hands, WebCam/2 is likely to be in beta for a while.  If you have a video capture card and would like to try this gem out, download the beta and snap away.

               * * * 

For those who play any MPEG layer 3 files (MP3s) under OS/2, The SDG (Software Developer's Guild) has released the second beta (the first was only for internal SDG use) of WarpAMP, a PM-based MP3 player.  WarpAMP is an OS/2 port of Tomislav Uzelac's AMP MP3 player for Linux (various other ports have been made to DOS, Windows and the Mac), and includes a basic stereo-like GUI, drag-and-drop support and playlists.

SDG intends for more features to be included in the next version, as some things were left out when the code migrated from the beta 1 to the PM-based beta 2a.  Some things to look forward to: MMPM support (at the moment DART is required), working fast-forward and rewind capability, notebook settings controls, CPU priority improvements and more.

You can download WarpAMP PM beta 2a from (http://www.os2ss.com/archives/hobbes/os2/apps/mmedia/sound/players/wamp_b2a.zip) the OS/2 Supersite, and direct any questions, comments or bug reports to SDG's (warpamp@mr-data.dyndns.com?subject=WarpAMP) WarpAMP team.  SDG is an organization which works to promote OS/2 through the release of shareware and freeware applications in areas where they see OS/2 as lacking; hence a PM MP3 player.  Given that WarpAMP PM was developed from freeware source code (AMP), I would expect it to remain freeware upon release.  If the authors add as many features as they're planning, they might up it to shareware, but its price should still be low.

               * * * 

(http://www.stealthmail.com/) Stealth Communications has developed a POP/SMTP server package for OS/2 and is looking for beta testers to help put it through its paces.  Rather than actually downloading and installing it on your system, though, all you do is sign up with Stealth and receive a free POP e-mail account (good for life!).  You can send and receive e-mail from your Stealthmail account just as you can with your regular e-mail account, by configuring your favorite e-mail software with stealthmail.com's addresses.  Optionally, you also access your e-mail fully through the WWW!  If you've ever seen (http://www.hotmail.com/) Hotmail's web-based e-mail management, Stealthmail is trying to do the same sort of thing based on OS/2's stability and superior multitasking capabilities.

Functionality is still being added to the web interface, so some parts of it don't work yet, but until they do work, all features can be accessed normally with a regular e-mail program -- just enter account information given to you when you register for your Stealthmail account.

Once all kinks and bugs are worked out of the software on Stealth's end it will be released as a commercial product (price TBA) for those who need POP/SMTP solutions on their own LANs.  (Once the commercial product is released, the free POP accounts Stealthmail now offers will still be available.)  The commercial version will include such features as the full web-based implementation, a PM administrative program, a web-based administrative program, multithreading, virtual domains, and more, all written in solid from-the-ground-up OS/2 code.

If you like the thought of having a free e-mail account that's running on OS/2 software, give Stealthmail a try and the people at Stealth Communications should get just the real-world testing they need.  The commercial version of the software is expected out sometime in September, so if you're a sysadmin who likes the way Stealthmail performs, be sure to tell the developers you're interested in it.

               * * * 

Finally this month, (http://www.mindport.net/~szarka/brazerko/watergate/) Waterline Software Development, makers of the Watergate message processing system for FTN and UUCP networks, have released a new beta of the product, and this update includes an OS/2 version.  What does Watergate do that you should be interested in?  Well, perhaps its web page can say it better than I can:

"If you've stumbled into this page in search of information on the late President Nixon, we're sorry to disappoint you.  This Watergate is a message processing system designed to handle netmail and echomail in FidoNet Technology (FTN) format and Internet email and Usenet news in UUCP format.  It can also be used to process news batches produced by satellite systems, NNTP batches, and the like.  (See Alternatives to UUCP below.) This means that not only can Watergate function as a powerful mail processor for Internet/Usenet or FTN networks, it can also be used as a gateway between the two formats!"

In other words, if you have anything to do with server solutions on either a FidoNet network or a normal Internet network, you might be able to use Watergate.  If you'd like to try it out, you can download it from (http://www.mindport.net/~szarka/brazerko/watergate/wg093.zip) Watergate's home page or from any of the FTP sites listed on the home page.

Watergate is shareware and registration is US$27.  Any bug reports should be e-mailed to Watergate programmer (ramon@wsd.wline.se) Ramon van Der Winkel or posted to the newsgroup alt.bbs.watergate, while other questions or comments can be directed to the Watergate mailing list.  To subscribe to the list, send an e-mail to (listserver@wsd.wline.se) listserver@wsd.wline.se with the command 'CONNECT WATERGATE' in the body.

               * * *

(dill@os2ezine.com) Ryan Dill is a student in Computer Science at Acadia University in Wolfville, NS and 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!

Welcome back to "Answers from e-Zine!, your source for answers to all your OS/2 questions!  Each month we bring you tips, tricks, questions and answers from our readers and contributors.  If you've got a question or tip you would like to share with us, (feedback@os2ezine.com) send it in!

-----

Q -- Is there a way to see how much storage space the Warp CD player uses for storage of CD titles and play lists?  And if so, is there any way to edit that file to remove CD titles that I do not currently have?

A -- Sure.  The file \MMOS2\CDP.INI holds all the information for the CD Player; it's a normal OS/2 binary INI file, so any INI editor should work.  (UniMaint from (http://www.softouch.com/) SofTouch includes one, and there are a number of shareware ones available on (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/) hobbes.)  The application looks to be the "CD volume ID"; keys are numbers 1 - the number of tracks (value = track title), "IMMCDDiscTitle" (value = CD title), "IMMCDDiscProgram" (binary byte string containing the track playing order, not null-terminated), "IMMCDDiscResumePosition" (optional, I don't know how to interpret the value).

Of course if this seems to be a little too much for you, you could just rename or delete CDP.INI and retype all the information.  Of course, the time you'd spend retyping all the CD titles could be spent learning how to use an INI editor which might come in handy in the future.

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

-----

Q -- We received two different Zip drive questions this month:

I have installed the Iomega ATAPI Zip drive on my Warp 3.0 system.  The OS2V2344.exe file available from the Iomega FTP site does not mention this installation in the documentation.  The drive works if I dual boot to DOS or boot from a floppy session but without drivers, I can't use it in OS/2.

What can you tell me about the IBM file system drivers to allow me to use a SCSI Jazz or Zip drive?  How do they work?  (i.e. not the cumbersome Iomega driver way with mounting and unmounting and all that.)

A -- Well the short answer to both questions is that there is a great (http://www.txdirect.net/users/teej/remmedia.htm) FAQ on using removable media under OS/2 available on the web.

Unfortunately, there is currently no support for ATAPI Zip drives, so they're to be avoided if you need one that functions under OS/2.  There will be ATAPI support in the future, but how near that future is is not certain.

As for mounting and unmounting, that is unfortunately a fact of life using HPFS.  You must unmount a drive to flush the buffers when changing disks.  You shouldn't, however, have to mount when using IBM's NEWDASD driver.

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

-----

Tip -- Many people have complained since the release of Warp 4 about the lack of a means for the user to change the default multimedia associations.  Probably the most annoying one is the association for image files.  Thanks to (http://www.practice.xo.com/) Practice Corporation, we now have a means changing the default association for images.  There is a small program available from their web page called primgfix that allows you to change this behavior.

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

-----

Q -- What files can I remove from OS/2 Warp 4 if I only want to
do dialup networking and do NOT want to do any LAN networking?

A -- Well, this isn't an uncommon question.  It's probably best answered in by Brian Proffit as he did in PC Magazine on pg. 376, of vol. 16, no. 6 (March 25, 1997).  Luckily for you, it's also available from (http://www8.zdnet.com/pcmag/pclabs/solution/oe1606a.htm) PC Magazine On-line.

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

-----

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.  Grassroots support, off-the-record news and updates -- stuff that other sources may have missed -- you name it, we've got it!

               * * * 

You may remember that last month I mentioned the upcoming "Soundoff With Netscape" event scheduled for late July.  OS/2 users present had a chance to ask Dan Libby and Mike Kaply, of the Netscape Communicator development team, various questions.  A few cool tidbits were learned:

Communicator will include FTP resume capability.  Ever had an aborted FTP transfer with Netscape and had to download a 7-megabyte file all over again from the beginning, cursing as you did so?  FTP resume lets you pick up the download where you left off.  A number of FTP clients (even older ones like NcFtp for OS/2) have had this feature for a while, and it's good to know Communicator is finally going to have it as well.

Perhaps most importantly, according to Mike Kaply (the head of the Communicator for OS/2 project team) a beta of Communicator for OS/2 could be out sometime near the end of August.  (That's right, folks, this month!)  The team is also shooting for a third quarter release date, so the final version of OS/2 Communicator is planned to be out near the end of September or the beginning of October.  (These dates are definitely not set in stone, but provide a good idea of how far along the product is on the road to GA.)  Watch both (http://www.internet.ibm.com/browsers/netscape/warp/) Netscape's official OS/2 page and its (http://people.netscape.com/danda/) unofficial OS/2 page near the end of the month for the latest updates.

               * * * 

There have been a lot of updates to the IBM (http://service.software.ibm.com/os2ddpak/html/index.htm) OS/2 Device Driver Pack Online recently, especially in the areas of display adapters.  Two companies in particular that I've seen mentioned in the newsgroups are (http://service.software.ibm.com/os2ddpak/html/displaya/tsenglab/index.htm) Tseng Labs with their ET6000 and (http://service.software.ibm.com/os2ddpak/html/displaya/matrox/index.htm) Matrox with its DB-style cards (Millennium DB, Millennium II DB, Mystique DB and Mystique 220 DB).  I'd definitely advise all OS/2 users to check out the OS/2 DDPak now if you haven't bothered for a while, especially if some of your hardware occasionally gives you problems.  You could be missing a driver update which'll save you a lot of grief.

               * * * 

For a while it looked as if (http://www.creaf.com/) Creative Labs had abandoned the OS/2 market altogether, after announcing its (http://www-nt-ok.creaf.com/wwwnew/tech/faqs/os2sup.html) discontinuation of further OS/2 support and development.  Then a few weeks ago, rumors began to surface that Creative had turned around and was preparing to release OS/2 drivers for its AWE64 sound cards.  All around the world, Sound Blaster users kept their fingers crossed.  A prerelease of the drivers has since found its way into the public eye, and can be downloaded from Colin Hildinger's (http://www.ionet.net/~colin/awe32.html) AWE32, SB32 and SB16 on OS/2 page.

So the drivers (or at least a prerelease, which means the full ones are in development) are here, right?  Sort of.  They are OS/2 drivers which allow you to use your AWE64 under OS/2 as an AWE64 (as opposed to the previous method of having to use it as an SB16), but there's more to the story:

The AWE64 is basically just a souped-up version of the AWE32 -- most of its extra functionality is provided through software rather than hardware.  The software which adds this functionality is apparently not being ported to OS/2, so the extra potential the AWE64 has over the '32 becomes moot for Warpers.

Fine, but there's one more thing: the dates on the prerelease of these 'new' drivers are January 1997.  More than six months ago!  In other words, Creative Labs has been sitting on these drivers all this time, not even letting on that they existed.  That's just irritating.

If Creative had released these drivers originally, rather than shoving them in a secret closet for six months, they may have slightly appeased many of the OS/2 users who were angry at them with the dropping of OS/2 support earlier in the year.  Now, that's just not going to happen.

Of course, there's always a chance that the prerelease package in question has been superseded by a brand-spanking-new set of real AWE64 drivers which Creative is just putting the finishing touches on before making them public...

I'll believe it when I see it...

               * * * 

OS/2 users are beginning to get rather...  *ahem*...  creative when it comes to artwork.  First there was the faux Communicator for OS/2 screen shot a few weeks ago.  Now two new shots have surfaced -- the first is of something which appears to be an internal beta version of Microsoft Internet Explorer... for OS/2.  (Yes, I know, it sounds unlikely to me too.  <g>)

The second is of something many OS/2 users (myself included) have been wishing IBM would develop ASAP -- an emulator for running Windows 95 programs under OS/2!  Both screen shots can be seen in a number of places by now, but the original spot is (http://www-student.lboro.ac.uk/~mcrsc/images.html) Rick Castle's web page.  Rick had the screen shots sent to him anonymously on the 8th, and put them up for public view and discussion.

The majority of the public who's seen the shots feel they're fake.  The quality of the shots is good, so whoever did them must have devoted some time to them, but each shot has a enough niggling things wrong with them that it becomes difficult to believe their validity.  Rick has posted an update on the same page which lists a few of the things people have found fishy about the shots.

               * * * 

OS/2 is not often known for being 'pretty' like Windows 95 and the Macintosh are, so whenever someone comes out with an application which gives Warp that sort of "ooooh!" look, lots of OS/2 users are interested.  Well, prepare to be interested again, Warpers.

There's a new program out called CandyBarZ which adds to your Desktop experience by allowing your PM windows to have gradient-filled titlebars.  "What's gradient?" you ask?  Basically, it's shading.  The color of the title bar will shade from one color into another, much like it does in some of Microsoft's '97 series programs (Word 97, etc.)  CandyBarZ shades the title bar from top to bottom, while Microsoft does it from left to right, but the principle is the same.

However you do it, gradients look good.  Like other popular Desktop enhancements and add-ons, such as PlusPak: Themes! and X-it, CandyBarZ brings something to the look of Warp that many of us will appreciate.  If you want to try it out, download (http://www.os2ss.com/archives/hobbes/os2/util/wps/cbarz101.zip) CandyBarZ 1.01 (ZIP, 114k) from the OS/2 Supersite, install, and away you go -- instant eye-candy!

               * * * 

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.

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

OS/2 Gaming News	- by Colin L. Hildinger

It's time once again to check out the latest news that affects OS/2 gaming and gamers.  Each month we scour the 'net and hound ISVs to provide you with a digest of all the events and updates in the OS/2 gaming market, complete with helpful links.  Enjoy!

Combat 2000

In the spirit or Defender 2000 and Tempest 2000 from Atari (both are killer Jaguar games), (http://www.ezlink.com/~sophisto/) Holohaus Software is creating Combat 2000.  If you ever had an Atari 2600 you know what it's about -- kill or be killed, it's just that simple.

Entrepreneur Demo Released

If you're not a part of the Entrepreneur beta test, you can download a demo from (http://www.stardock.com/) Stardock which will allow you to play games against other people on the Internet via STARDOCK.NET.  STARDOCK.NET lets Entrepreneur players get together and start games over the Internet.  This is similar to the interface that comes with Diablo for creating games and shows that Stardock is serious about getting into the big leagues with Entrepreneur.  If you are a beta tester, make sure you have the latest version from Stardock's web page.

MAME for OS/2

OS/2 will be getting a port of another really cool emulator.  MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) plays lots of classic arcade games.  Look for it soon.

OS/2 Battleship Game v1.0 with Source Code

Whether you're an aspiring VAC++ programmer or just want to play some Battleship, this little program might be worth checking out.  Unfortunately, it only seems to be available via CompuServe (from the OS/2 Developers 1 and VACPP forums), but I'm sure someone will upload it to Hobbes soon.

PlusPak: B.U.G.S. Demo

Following up last month's release, Jeppe Cramon has created a demo version of PlusPak: B.U.G.S.  It's available from (http://www.stardock.com/) Stardock's web page, so if you haven't got PlusPak: B.U.G.S. yet, check it out.

Solar Systems Releases Stellar Frontiers Version .7 to Testers

Work is progressing nicely on Stellar Frontiers.  Instead of calling it beta 7, they've called it version .7, but I guess that's a sign that they're getting close to release.  This game is looking like it will be a great network game.  It's being written by (http://www.solarsystems.com/) Solar Systems and published by (http://www.stardock.com) Stardock.

As always, for the absolute latest news, always check the (http://www.ionet.net/~colin/games.html) Ultimate OS/2 Gaming Page, and if you know something that you think I don't, (colin@os2ezine.com) let me know!

               * * *

(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' Graphics Powertips	- by Chris Wenham

Magnifying lens trick

Tip applies to Photo>Graphics Pro 2.0

You'll see in this issue's Photo>Graphics Pro review I had been playing around with the new lens tool to get something that looked similar to what they've been doing over at the newly face-lifted (http://www.austin.ibm.com/pspinfo/os2.html) IBM OS/2 Warp Home page.  Photo>Graphics makes this dead easy.

First we need to put a hollow circle down on a canvas.  From the Power bar make sure you're in Create mode, select the Roller region and the Solid Color tool.   Move the mouse over and click once to stick a circle down there.  Now flip into Edit mode and make sure the circle is the selected object.  You might want to re-size this circle to fit how you want; just grab the corners of the bounding rectangle and start dragging.

Then from the 'Tool' section of the Action bar you'll need to set the color to black.  From the 'Region' section, click on the button next to the Region Type and make sure 'Stroke' is checked.  The moment you do this you'll notice your circle has grown huge and Photo>Graphics has started rendering again.  While you've still got the Path info box open though, set the line width to about 5.5 and the softness to 0.2.  You've just finished making the frame.

IBM's designers have used a slight blue tint in their images, which can be achieved here by layering a solid blue-colored circle in the middle of the lens and giving it a transparency value of about 75% or so. Tip: Create the solid circle by using the roller region again.  It lets you pick the center more accurately and the aspect ratio has already been locked for you.  If you've drawn cross-hairs already like I have, use the little 'X's to help you line things up when re-sizing.  Notice that there's also a 'channel' between the start of the lens effect and its black frame.

Before we stick the lens effect on, we'll also need a highlight to show off the reflection and curve of the glass.  You can create this easily by using an Ellipse Fade region with a Solid Fill of white.  Make it elongated, then go to the Object Settings of the Action bar and give it an angle of plus-or-minus 45 degrees, depending on which corner of the circle you're going to place it in.  Now move it up into that corner and place it somewhere on the edge of the transparent blue circle.

Finally, the last step, we create another solid circle with the Lens Tool effect applied.  We can do this quickly by selecting the blue transparent circle we've already drawn and duplicating it.  Right click on the object and select Object Management.Duplicate Object.  Next, go to the Action Bar and change the duplicated object from solid color to the Lens effect and reduce the transparency back down to zero.  Voila!

User Tips

Last month you'll notice I had a problem with jagged edges in Photo>Graphics, even though it's supposed to have decent anti-aliasing (and it does, but the effects layered on top spoiled that).  If you look at the above final image you'll see that I've pretty much nailed the problem, however there's been more than one solution found.  

One reader, (bivancic@inventio.si) Bojan IVANCIC, had this to say:

"I used Ellipse Fade setting fade to 97 or 99 and 'jaggyness' disappeared.  The image is also saved with anti-aliasing mark."

The sample he included with the message looksgorgeous.  Thanks, Bojan!

Another reader, Michael Widmann, as well as TrueSpectra themselves, suggest placing a blur with a radius of 1 over the top of the image before rendering.  

But the best solution I've found, and which I used in the above image, is simply to render the image about 3 or 4 times bigger than the intended size, then reduce it later in a program like Galleria to its proper size.  This is forcing Photo>Graphics to squeeze more detail into what will ultimately be the same space.

               * * *

(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.

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

Web Site Design with OS/2	- by Tejaswi Kasturi

The Software

Good software is the key for any successful web site design.  Above all, software for testing the design of a site before deploying it to the general public is paramount for creating a site which people want to use and return to.  In this issue I will talk about software which I have found useful in testing my designs and why each has its place.

The Browsers

Using several different browsers is necessary in order to verify that your site does not "break" on a large portion of users' machines.  On my intranet designs, I needed only to use those browsers which were internally mandated by the company.  However, things become more complex when catering to the entire population of the Internet.

Above all, know your audience.  If creating a web site for high schools, do not expect that users will be running cutting edge hardware or software, and hence make the designs light and easy to read on many different machines, operating systems, and browser combinations.  Ideally, design your site to take advantage of the features of the latest browsers, but also to "gracefully degrade" to work on lesser browsers.  (Unfortunately, this is not always possible, but you should still try to ensure that all the information on a site is accessible from lesser browsers, even if it looks poor.)

Here are a few of the browsers which I regularly test on:

(http://www.netscape.com/) Netscape Navigator v2.02, v3.0, and v4.0

Since Navigator is the world standard for browsers, it makes sense to test your designs on it.  Note that almost all users have upgraded at least to Navigator 2.0 (and most have moved to 3.0), so do not bother testing on 1.x level browsers, unless you have a specific reason.  I generally test on 16-bit and 32-bit Windows (for all versions of Navigator), Unix (for Navigator v2.02 and v3.0), and OS/2 (for Navigator v2.02).  Although I would also like to test on the Macintosh, I currently do not have the resources to do so, although I make every attempt to when I can.

(http://www.microsoft.com/ie/) Microsoft Internet Explorer v3.0

Since almost all IE users are on v3.0 of the browser and running 32-bit Windows, I do not generally test with other versions.  IE3 has taken a significant chunk of the browser market from Netscape, lately, however, it is not 100% compatible with Navigator, so be careful and make sure to test your site thoroughly with this browser, lest you offend a large portion of the marketplace.

(http://lynx.browser.org/) Lynx

Many Unix users, as well as physically challenged individuals, rely on this quick and easy text-mode browser for web access.  Unfortunately, larger and larger portions of the Web are becoming completely shut off to these users as designers do not think to design for them.  I make sure that all the text information on my sites is accessible to these users, unless I know that the site will not be visited by such individuals (such as a site on an intranet).  I tend to use Lynx on Unix or (http://www.cris.com/~Djd/products.html) on OS/2.

Other browsers, which make up a small fraction of the market, may also be useful to test on.  However, if you test your sites on the browsers listed above, it is almost assured that your sites will be accessible to these other users.  Note that you will need to use operating systems other than OS/2 to do a significant amount of your testing, since most of the world runs on other platforms.  However, most of my day-to-day testing for Web sites is done with Netscape 2.02 for OS/2, using the other browsers only occasionally to verify that my designs work as intended.

Server Software

In order to effectively test your site, you should create a test server which mirrors your target server in as many respects as possible.  For example, my (http://www.4m.pair.com/) 4th Millennium Consulting Group web site is hosted on a FreeBSD machine running Apache 1.1, so I created a test machine (with far lesser hardware, of course), which also runs FreeBSD and Apache.  Although not everything on the test server works exactly as it does on the production server, the relevant things do, which is what counts.  In case you are creating your own production server based on OS/2, here is a list of the server software which I have tested in the past:

(http:/www.apache.org/) Apache

A completely free Web server which has taken the crown as the most used Web server in the world (with approximately 37% market share).  Apache is generally lighter and less feature-ridden in its base incarnation than commercial servers, but since it comes with source code and an interface to write plug-in modules, it has been hacked to do everything.  Apache does not use threads, since it is designed to be portable across a wide range of operating systems, many of which do not support multithreading.  Instead, it creates separate full-weight processes to carry on multiple conversations at once with many different clients.  It is a good solid server for simple web serving under OS/2.

(http://www.software.ibm.com/is/sw-servers/Internet/) IBM Internet Connection Server (ICS)

A weighty Web server which offers more features than almost any other server on any platform.  The non-secure version of the server is free, and available on several platforms, including OS/2, Windows NT, Windows 95, and some Unix variants.  With support for (http://www.javasoft.com/) Java servlets, (http://www.ibm.com/) IBM's backing of (http://www.sun.com/) Sun's write-once, run-anywhere language is in full force.  It also allows easy configurability through a Web based interface which the system administrator can access from anywhere.  Although ICS is technically an excellent server, in the past it has suffered from complaints of slowness and memory consumption.  IBM claims that the newest version has fixed most of these problems.  If you need the features and the robustness of the server, and have the hardware to handle it, this server may be for you.

(http://www.w3.org/Jigsaw/) Jigsaw

A server built entirely in Java, the W3 Consortium's Jigsaw is more of a technology demonstration than a fully usable system.  Because Java's networking is so excellent, Jigsaw does not suffer in speed over its compiled competitors, and is both light and efficient in serving Web pages.  Unfortunately it is quite difficult to set up and suffers from being in perpetual alpha testing.  The W3 Consortium is more of a research and standards body, than a commercial company, and so has created Jigsaw as a pointer to what could be done with server technology.  As such, it comes through marvelously.  But for a day-to-day server however, find something else.

Other servers abound, including (http://www.javasoft.com/) Java Web Server from Javasoft, (http://www.pr.uoguelph.ca/cpayne/planet.htm) PlanetWide from
Payne-Mennie Computing Services, and (http://www.compusource.co.za/powerweb/) PowerWeb Secure Server from Compusource.  However, I have not tested these other servers and hence can not attest to their strengths and weaknesses.

For a good description of the various Web servers available for OS/2, see the (http://w3.ag.uiuc.edu/DLM/HTTPDforOS2.html) HTTP Server Systems available for OS/2 on the WWW.

Conclusion

This month I have gone through the major pieces of software needed for web site testing with OS/2.  Next time I'll look at software used in actually building the site.  Although this may seem backwards to many people ("How can you test something which you haven't developed yet!?!"), I am going in order of importance.  There are many different ways of designing and developing Web sites, with no clear-cut winner, and hence it becomes a matter of personal opinion which is best.  However, there is a clear-cut best path to be used for testing your sites before deploying them, and that is what I have described here.

Until next time, do your part to make the Web a happy shiny place with no broken pages or links!  Adios.

               * * *

(tej@4m.pair.com) Tejaswi Kasturi is a Founding Partner in charge of web site/intranet design and system administration at (http://www.4m.pair.com/) 4th Millennium Consulting Group, an Internet strategy consulting and web site/intranet design firm.  In his spare time, Tej uses OS/2 Warp 4 to maintain the (http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/~kasturi/os2.html) OS/2 Internet Resources site, an OS/2 e-Zine! Site of the Week.

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

the REXX Files	- by Dr. Dirk Terrell

Last month we began looking at the string-handling capabilities of REXX and the example program scanned CONFIG.SYS for a specified string.  Let's continue with that theme this month by modifying the program to replace the specified string with another one.  Let's name the REXX file REPLCF.CMD.

First we'll have to modify the input of the program because we now need to specify two strings -- the target string and the string with which we want to replace the target string.  There are several ways to accomplish this.  Let's assume that if two strings are passed to the program, the first is the target and the second is the replacement.  For example:

REPLCFG Windows OS/2

should replace all instances of Windows with OS/2.  But what if the target and/or replacement string are phrases rather than words? In that case, we have to have a way of letting the program know where the target ends and where the replacement begins.  There are all sorts of ways to do this, but arguably the most intuitive way would be to enclose each one in quotes, so let's do it that way.  So, the command:

REPLCFG "Windows crashes too often." "OS/2 is stable."

should replace all instances of "Windows crashes too often." with "OS/2 is stable." (minus the quotes).

To execute the above specification, first we read in the command line parameters using PARSE ARG as usual:

PARSE ARG Input_Parameters

Now we need to find out how many parameters have been passed to the program.  If fewer than two parameters were passed, we should print an error message and exit.  If two parameters were passed, then we should assume that the first is the target and the second is the replacement.  If more than two are passed, then we should use the quotes to separate the target and the replacement.  The WORDS function will return the number of words in a string (i.e., the number of space delimited strings).  Since we have multiple possibilities, let's use SELECT to handle the decision structure.  The following code handles the input:

/* Scan config.sys for a string and replace it with another one */

Parse Arg Input_Parameters
Test=Words(Input_Parameters)
Select
   when Test<2 then do
      say ""
      say "You must enter a target and a replacement string."
      say ""
      exit
   end /* do */
   when test>2 then Do
      Parse Var Input_Parameters '"' Target '"' '"' Replacement '"'
   end /* do */
otherwise /* If it falls through to here, we must have 2 input strings */
      Parse Var Input_Parameters Target Replacement
end  /* select */

You may wonder about all those quotes in the PARSE statement when the input strings are phrases.  They are double quotes (") inside single quotes (').  In REXX either single or double quotes can be used around strings, and since we are using double quotes in the input, we parse for them and use single quotes to surround them in the program.  If we wanted to use single quotes for input, we would just switch them around in the program.  We could even get really fancy and allow the user to use either type of quotation mark.  I'll leave that as an exercise you can try.

Now that we have the input, we scan the CONFIG.SYS file for the target string (using the safe method of copying it to CONFIG.TST like we did last month).  As we did last month, let's make the search case-insensitive since entries in CONFIG.SYS are generally not case sensitive.  To do this we use UPPERCASE to convert all the strings to uppercase before comparing them.  Let's take the loop we used last month and modify it a bit.  Here is the old code:

/* 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")

Where we need to do some additional work is in the If Found ... section, so let's write new code to paste there.

If we find the target string in a particular line, we need to replace it with the replacement string.  If the target string isn't in the line, we should just leave the line as it is.

Let's call the new file CONFIG.NEW.  Remember that REXX will append text to a file if the file already exists, so we must be sure to delete CONFIG.NEW before we start writing to it.  Use POS to search each line for the target string.  Recall that POS returns the position of the first occurrence of the target string.  We will have to make sure that we replace multiple occurrences of the target string if they exist too.  To accomplish this, we will use POS within a WHILE loop to make sure we get all of the occurrences of the target string.  Within that loop, we will split the input line at the first occurrence of the target string, and insert the replacement string in place of the target string.  Here is the code:

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 ""
      Say "Found target in line" Current_Line_Number 
      Say a_line
      Call Replace
      Say "The above line was replaced by:"
      Say a_line
   end /* do */
   /* Now we write out a_line to CONFIG.NEW */
   rc=Lineout("CONFIG.NEW",a_line)
end /* do */

and the Replace routine is

Replace:
/* Replaces all occurrences of the target string in a_line */
Do While Found<>0
   /* Get the part of the string up to the target */
   First_Part=SubStr(a_line,1,Found-1)
   /* 
      Now get the part after the target, the beginning of
      the part of the string after the target is located
      at POS(target,a_line) plus LENGTH(target)
   */
   Last_Location=Found+Target_Length
   Last_Part=SubStr(a_line,Last_Location)
   /* Now put the replacement string in between them */
   a_line=First_Part||Replacement||Last_Part
   /* Now look for the target string again to make sure we get all of them */
   Test_Line=Translate(a_line)
   Found=Pos(Target_Uppercase,Test_Line)
end /* do */
Return

When you run it, the program prints out which lines had the target string, the line before the replacement, and the line after the replacement.  The new file is named CONFIG.NEW.  You can check the results and if everything is the way you want it, you could copy this file to CONFIG.SYS.

This kind of program would be useful if you moved all your stuff to a different drive letter or if you changed the name of a directory that appears in many places in your CONFIG.SYS file.  Of course, you could just use EPM or some other text editor to do it.  But what if you needed to replace the string in hundreds of HTML files?  A few modifications to this month's sample program (below) would do the trick, and be much easier than doing it manually with a text editor.

               * * *

(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.

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

/* Scan config.sys for a string and replace it with another one */

call RxFuncAdd 'SysLoadFuncs', 'RexxUtil', 'SysLoadFuncs'
call SysLoadFuncs

Parse Arg Input_Parameters
Test=Words(Input_Parameters)
Select
   when Test<2 then Do
      Say ""
      Say "You must enter a target and a replacement string."
      Say ""
      Exit
   end /* do */
   when Test>2 then Do
      Parse Var Input_Parameters '"' Target '"' '"' Replacement '"'
   end /* do */
   otherwise /* If it falls through to here, we must have 2 input strings */
      Parse Var Input_Parameters Target Replacement .
end  /* select */

Say "TARGET:" Target
Say "REPLACEMENT:" Replacement

Target_Length=Length(Target)
Target_Uppercase=Translate(Target)

/* 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 */
rc=SysFileDelete("CONFIG.NEW")
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 ""
      Say "Found target in line" Current_Line_Number 
      Say a_line
      Call Replace
      Say "The above line was replaced by:"
      Say a_line
   end /* do */
   /* Now we write out a_line to CONFIG.NEW */
   rc=Lineout("CONFIG.NEW",a_line)
end /* do */
rc=Stream("CONFIG.TST","C","Close")
rc=Stream("CONFIG.NEW","C","Close")
Exit

Replace:
/* Replaces all occurences of the target string in a_line */
Do While Found<>0
   /* Get the part of the string up to the target */
   First_Part=SubStr(a_line,1,Found-1)
   /* 
      Now get the part after the target, the beginning of
      the part of the string after the target is located
      at POS(target,a_line) plus LENGTH(target)
   */
   Last_Location=Found+Target_Length
   Last_Part=SubStr(a_line,Last_Location)
   /* Now put the replacement string in between them */
   a_line=First_Part||Replacement||Last_Part
   /* Now look for the target string again to make sure we get all of them */
   Test_Line=Translate(a_line)
   Found=Pos(Target_Uppercase,Test_Line)
end /* do */
Return

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

How Do I?	- by Eric Slaats

Hello, hello.  I'm writing this column before the deadline for once.  When OS/2 e-Zine! hits the street (or, the web, rather), I'll be lying somewhere on a Dutch beach enjoying the sun (hopefully) and having a vacation without a computer near.  My wife and young kids won't allow me a number of things on vacation, amongst which are a portable computer, a guitar, books on computer stuff and books on mechanics.  This will mean cold turkey for a couple of weeks, but don't worry, I'm sure I can sneak in some literature about Java and some other stuff disguised as a copy of a new Clive Custler novel <g>.  No guitar is a bigger problem.  But then, since the other two of my band members are away with their families also, I guess it won't hurt that much.

Last month I gave a quick intro on dialog editors and, more importantly, how to use the WS_GROUP flag.  I mentioned last month that this isn't a well known feature.  To stress my point, take a look at PMMail, for example.  Try to enter a new address in the address book and then try to advance to the next line with the cursor down key.  You'll see what I mean.  The examples of this behaviour are legion.  (I hope the article last month will do some good.)

What we did last month isn't going to make dialogs work though.  It's just like Delphi,  Visual Cafe and other visual programming tools; to draw windows is easy.  (But don't underestimate this, a good looking interface really is a big deal.)  There isn't any programming involved.  To make a dialog do something, programming is definitely needed.

This month we'll delve into the way dialog programs are constructed.  This means we've got to take a look at the general architecture, just like we did with frame windows.  And we'll take a look at what happens when a dialog is called with the WinLoadDlg or WinDlgBox API's.  Finally, we'll see that it's even possible to create an application that consists entirely of dialogs.  (The attractive thing about this is that we don't have to do all the frame stuff.)  But more about that later.  First things first.

Last month we learned some essential stuff about dialogs.  We learned two ways to start them, but also that a dialog has a window procedure of its own.  We also saw that the default handling for this window procedure wasn't the same as for normal window procedures.  The default call for dialogs is WinDefDlgProc.  Here, I repeat my warning of last month: don't use WinDefDlgProc in dialogs; it may function sometimes, but can cause strange and erratic behaviour.  And it's a bug that's very hard to find!

In what ways is a dialog window procedure different from a normal window procedure?  Well, for us simple programmers there's only one bit that is really interesting.  A dialog doesn't get the WM_CREATE message like a normal frame window does when it gets created.  A dialog will receive a WM_INITDLG message on creation.  Let's take a look at an important part of that message first, the mp2 parameter.

The second message parameter of WM_INITDLG contains a pointer (pcreate) to a user defined data area.  What is this pointer and how do we use it?  In fact, it isn't exactly a pointer, it's a long integer.  Since a "long" and a pointer in OS/2 are both 32-bit numbers, they can be interchanged (be careful though).  The value received in mp2 is set when calling WinLoadDlg or WinDlgBox.

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

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

In the above samples, the creation parameter is filled with a zero, but this is the place where the pointer is filled in.  You can pass any long in here and it will come out as mp2 in the WM_INITDLG message.  In most cases the information passed is used to initialize the dialog.  Anyway, that's what WM_INITDLG is all about.  (We'll delve into more initialization stuff next month).

However, if we want to use the information the pointer in mp2 is pointing to in handling the messages sent to the dialog, we run into a problem.  The mp2 pointer is only valid during the WM_INITDLG call.  In other messages, mp2 has another meaning!  Well, no problem, let's simply save this info in a temporary variable.

This can be done.  Simply create a long (or more appropriate a PVOID) variable and assign mp2 in WM_INITDLG.

This leads to another problem, though.  The Dialog Window Procedure is left after a message call is handled.  So the variable will be destroyed and has a random value the next time the dialog is entered for, say, a WM_COMMAND message.

This phenomenon can be viewed in this month's sample (http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n8/sample10.zip).  In the sample a string is created in the frame window procedure.  A pointer to this string is passed to the dialog.  In the WM_INITDLG, the contents of this string are written into ENTRYFIELD1 and a copy is made in the PVOID variable, mp2Pointer2.  If OK is pressed, a WM_COMMAND message is sent to the dialog and the dialog will try to write the contents of the data mp2Pointer2 is pointing to in ENTRYFIELD2.  You'll notice that this displays rubbish.

To handle this problem we can use a static variable.  A static variable can be viewed as a global variable in the meaning that it keeps its value and isn't destroyed when the procedure terminates.  It only has a local scope though.  So the next time a procedure is entered, the static variable still has its value.  We can observe this in ENTRYFIELD3 where the contents of the static variable are written to.  If you try this, you'll find that this keeps the value intact.

Well, that's it for this month.  I've got to get busy packing for vacation.  Have a good holiday.

               * * *

(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.

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

Networking with OS/2	- by Brian L. Juergensmeyer

First off, I'd like to thank everyone for the feedback on last month's column.  We were hoping that the information would be timely and well-received, and it appears that we were right.  Among the feedback last month, I received some corrections and further information (reprinted below) from Chris Williams and from Brian Futrell, both of whom are a bit more familiar with connecting Warp to Windows than I am.

Now, let's get on with this month's column.

TCP/IP

While the OS/2 community tends to have a large number of people that could be considered 'power-users' or 'hackers', IBM has not, unfortunately, placed a tutorial on TCP/IP in the box with any version of OS/2 shipped thus far.  To try to help those of you who want to tinker, over the next several months, I plan to go over the TCP/IP settings and programs available in OS/2 Warp.

Last month we discussed some minor variations due to the networking interface changes between Warp 3 and Warp 4.  This should not be an issue with either of the next few articles, as the dialup TCP/IP networking interface in Warp 4 seems almost identical to the Warp 3 version.  So the information given here should apply equally to both versions.

This month, we're going to discuss the 'Dial Other Internet Providers' applet and the settings therein.  Along the way, I'll very briefly get into what TCP/IP is, what it isn't, and just exactly what those settings do (and why they do it).

DOIP--Whazzat?

In OS/2 Warp (both versions), there is an application known as 'Dial Other Internet Providers', aka DOIP.  It is installed from the BonusPak in the original (non-connect) version of Warp, and through the Networking Install in Warp Connect (including Warp 4).

This applet really only serves as an information repository and interface for the command line SL/IP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) and PPP (Point to Point Protocol) executables which are also provided with Warp.  (Yes, this means you can establish an Internet connection via modem without using this graphical front end.)  DOIP saves information about your server and the nature of the connection you wish to make.

Configuring Internet Parameters

If you wish to create a new dialup Internet account, or modify an existing one, you simply click the appropriate button ("Add Entry" or "Modify Entry") in the main DOIP window.  A four page settings notebook is displayed.  The first page of this notebook contains information that is relatively easy to fill in properly, such as a nickname, username and password for the account.

There are only two things worthy of noting on this page.  First, there is a choice between SL/IP and PPP.  PPP is a newer, improved, and more robust version of SL/IP.  PPP makes provisions for error correction, for instance, which does not occur with SL/IP.  However, there are certain things that PPP can not do.  I've seen thousands of new Internet users ask if they can improve connection speeds by going to PPP rather than SL/IP.  The answer is, no.  Connection speeds are not dependant on the type of protocol being used, and in this day of increasing Internet congestion between routers, are even less dependant on modem speed than on finding a good, clear, unobstructed path from you to the host you are trying to reach.

The second thing (or rather, things) of note here, are the two edit boxes available for your username and password.  If you are using PPP and either CHAP or PAP to connect to the Internet, you can type your username and password in these boxes and have it sent automatically to the server when you log on.  If you need to use a script, you can either leave those two boxes blank and hard code your username and password into your connection script, or you can put your username and password into the edit boxes and access them through the [LOGINID] and [PASSWORD] environment variables.

The top of the second page is quite possibly the most cryptic portion of the entire setup notebook.  Of the four blank spaces there, the first is fairly clear: this is where you would put your Internet address if you have a static IP address (an IP address that never changes).  The problem is, of course, most people who use dialup Internet Service Providers (ISPs) do not have static IPs, but rather have dynamic IPs (meaning they get a different IP address every time they connect).  If your ISP provides you with dynamic IPs, leave this slot blank.  (If you are using SL/IP, this is a "required field" but it will be greyed out if you are using a login script.)

The second field is listed as the destination IP address, the third is the netmask, and the fourth is the MRU (if you are using PPP) or MTU (if you are using SL/IP).  If you attempt to use the context sensitive help for the first two of these three objects, you are given a cryptic sentence or two with the phrase: "This should be provided by your Internet provider," somewhere near the bottom of the help page.  Again, you can safely ignore the first two, but the MRU/MTU is important.

These four numbers separated by periods, perhaps more than any other setting on your PC, control how your Internet link performs and behaves, so it obviously makes sense for you to understand them.  However, to explain what those settings control, I must at the same time give the quick primer on TCP/IP that I mentioned earlier.

As I stated in last month's article, TCP/IP is a, "routed family of protocols."  What this means is this: when you send a request for information (for instance, you wish a foreign server to send a file to you),  three numbers are consulted, the IP address that you are sending the request to, your own IP address, and the subnet mask, or netmask.

The form of Internet address that most of us are familiar with is a series of words like "www.os2ezine.com".  Computers, however, can only deal with the other (numeric) form of Internet address.  It is this numeric form that is used in the sending of information.

I am going to omit an explanation of Boolean logic here and simply recommend the curious reader to just about any basic programming treatise.  However, I would assume that anyone smart enough to use OS/2 will be smart enough to pick up on what is going on after the following demonstration.

So, I am at address 127.0.0.1, with a netmask of 255.255.255.128, and wish to get a cool piece of OS/2 shareware from www.foobar.com which has an address of 127.0.0.127 (which is, in binary: 01111111.0000000.00000000.01111111).

What happens is this: first my computer does a logical 'AND' with my Internet address and the netmask which is also know as the "subnet mask".  This is done by converting the decimal address (such as 127.0.0.1) into binary so that it looks like this: 01111111.00000000.00000000.00000001.  The process is then repeated with the subnet mask (in this example, we will use a subnet mask of 255.255.255.128).  This will yield a subnet mask of 11111111.11111111.11111111.10000000.

When my Internet address is 'AND'ed with my subnet mask like so:

my computer:     01111111.00000000.00000000.00000001
my subnet mask:  11111111.11111111.11111111.10000000

results in:      01111111.00000000.00000000.00000000

I can now say that I belong to subnet 127.0.0.0.  Now, we check which subnet www.foobar.com belongs to:

www.foobar.com   01111111.00000000.00000000.01111111
my subnet mask   11111111.11111111.11111111.10000000

results in:      01111111.00000000.00000000.00000000

which means that foobar.com is on the same subnet that my computer is: 127.0.0.0.  This means that I can send information directly to it without having to send it to the router first.

Now, let's see what would have happened if foobar.com's Internet address had been 127.0.0.128.  First we translate into binary:

www.foobar.com   01111111.00000000.00000000.10000000
my subnet mask   11111111.11111111.11111111.10000000

results in:      01111111.00000000.00000000.10000000

which puts foobar.com in subnet 127.0.0.128.  Since foobar.com and I are no longer on the same subnet, I am no longer able to send information directly to foobar.com.  This means that I must send requests to the router.

There is at least one router on each subnet, and its mission in life is to receive packets and forward them to their appropriate destinations.  In our case, we send our request to our router, and our router consults its internal table of known routes.  If it knows the route to the destination Internet address, it will forward the packet directly to the destination router.  If it does not, our router forwards the request to its own router, which then repeats the process.

Now, to get back to the Destination IP Address mentioned in the second edit box at the top of the second page.  For the record, I disagree with the terminology IBM used for this entry field, as it is slightly misleading to the end user.  The Destination IP Address requested here is the address of the default router for our subnet, not the address of a remote site that we wish to connect to.

Unless you have a static IP address, you need to leave both the Destination IP Address and the Your IP Address fields blank.  The Netmask field can be filled in if you know it and are using SL/IP (the netmask is negotiated as part of a PPP connection automatically, so you don't have to worry about it).

The last major mystery on this page is the MTU/MRU.  This number controls the size of the information packets that are sent from your computer to your Internet provider, and vice versa.  This defaults to 1006 for SL/IP and 1500 for PPP.  This is the packet size in bytes.  The smallest number that can be entered here is 296, which allows 40 bytes for the packaging information and 256 bytes of information itself.

Generally, your Internet provider will have a set value that it uses, but there are times when this number might need to be adjusted by you.  For instance, I live out in the country and have incredibly noisy phone lines.  When I first started using the Internet, I discovered that I could browse the WWW, read Usenet news, use FTP to get files and do just about everything else.  However, I could only receive e-mail.  I could not send it.

The key was my MTU (which is a three letter acronym for Maximum Transmissible Unit): with my noisy phone lines and using a large MTU, the packets that I was sending were so large that getting garbage in the packet somewhere was a virtual certainty.  When the garbled packet was received on the far end, my Internet provider looked at the checksums and noted that they did not match and requested that my computer resend that packet.  When my computer resent the packet, still with my noisy phone lines and using a large MTU, they got garbled again.  I was retransmitting indefinitely, my computer trying desperately to get one packet through, and it was just not working.

When I dropped my MTU from 1500 to 296, I was able to send and receive e-mail, and all was good with the world, as my MTU was now small enough that the majority of the packets were making it through the first time unscathed, and of those that were garbled, they almost always were retransmitted correctly.

The VJ Compression check box tells OS/2 to use a compression algorithm to compress the TCP/IP headers that are sent and received by your computer, thus enabling shorter transmit times and all sorts of other generally good things.  Enable this unless your Internet provider does not support it (most ISPs do).

The Domain Nameserver is the handy little computer that translates human readable names like www.foobar.com into computer readable names like 127.0.0.128.   This address MUST be in dotted decimal (computer readable) format.  After all, who will translate the address for the computer that translates the addresses?

Unless you are on a LAN, you do not need to enter anything in the Your Host Name field.  Your Domain Name is usually the last two parts in your e-mail address.  This is the name set aside by InterNIC or some other Internet regulatory organization for your ISP, for example, "ibm.net".

The rest of the Internet provider setup in 'Dial Other Internet Providers' deals with things that are mostly self obvious.  However, if there is interest, I will touch on them in a later column.

Next month, we'll cover the wonders of netstat and ipconfig.  Until then, 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.

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

Feedback from Last Month

I received a few letters this month pointing out corrections or additional information regarding my column last month.  Here are a few.

First, Chris Williams:

"1) NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NBTCP) has a number of options that are not obvious in Warp 4, but are critical if you need to internetwork properly with a Windows network running NBTCP and if using routers (which is now becoming quite common).  There are actually 3 types of NBTCP nodes, B-Node, P-Node, and H-Node.  I won't get into the differences here, but the default type for Warp 4 is B-Node while for Win95 & NT it's H-Node.  This is OK if you're all on the same network segment, but it's a problem if there is more than one segment.  The problem is with NetBIOS name resolution (a.k.a WINS in the Windows world and RFCs 1000 & 1001 to everyone else).  Again, it would take too long to explain here.  The fix is to configure Warp 4 as an H-Node on the network.

2) NetBEUI is still a common protocol for small networks, but most people are now really moving fast towards NBTCP in "GatesWorld".  This is because you get it automatically if you install the MS TCP/IP stack on a Windows machine.  This isn't the case with Warp 4.  You need to configure it specifically.  Also in Warp 4, if you configure NBTCP, you must have TCP/IP in you stack, but IBM NetBIOS is not required.  Warp 4 also will use DHCP to get its TCP/IP address and other information if a DHCP server is available (even an NT DHCP server).

3) I can confirm that Warp 4 does not require a computer account to participate in a Windows NT domain.  In fact, a Warp 4 workstation winds up looking to NT's Server Manager like a LAN Manager version 5 server!

      - (http://privateI.com/~chrisw/) Chris Williams"

Next, Brian Futrell:

"Also, to log onto an NT server, you must use the "Lan Manager Logon" instead of File and Print Client's logon, specifying the NT domain name in the Domain Name field.  This will allow connection to any shared resources on the server and any machine connected to it (if the connected machines also have the peer-to-peer components installed properly).

      - (bfutrell@ibm.net) Brian Futrell

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

ColorWorks 2.0 and Impos/2 2.0	- by Chris Wenham

Since OS/2 e-Zine! has reviewed both ColorWorks V2 and Impos/2 v2.0 in the past we have included links to their respective reviews here along with a few short 'second thoughts' on each.

ColorWorks 2.0 by SPG, Inc.

Review published in (http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n7/colorwks.html) Vol. 1, No. 7

ColorWorks V2 is still the most powerful of all OS/2 bitmap-graphics applications I've tested, although the gap is being rapidly shortened by the other applications covered in this round up.  It's still the only one with Dynamic In-Memory Image Compression for editing large images on low-memory machines, and it's still the only one with a plug-in developers kit and a number of third-party plug-ins available.  The major problem now, of course, is that the OS/2 version is no longer under development.  Copies of both versions 1+ (which is the same code as V2 with a few features -- such as gradients and effects plug-in support -- disabled) and V2 can still be purchased at various retailers for bargain-bin prices.

Is it worth picking up one of these copies?  Well, if US$30 or so isn't such a big deal to you, then yes.  Both versions are still very capable pieces of software and support can still be obtained from SPG.  You might also get the chance to pick up a copy of 2.0 with its mammoth-sized, coffee-table glossy hardcover manual.  It'll probably end up being a collectors item, as you'll never see anything like it produced again for a software program.

All in all, ColorWorks is an advanced tool that I keep going back to, simply because it's fast and it does many things no other native OS/2 software can do yet.  But the learning curve is steeper than most programs and its user interface is spartan.

Related articles:
(http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n1/colorwks.html) ColorWorks 1.0 by SPG - Vol. 1, No. 1.  
(http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n14/cwscan.htm) STI Twain Plug-in for ColorWorks - Vol. 1, No. 14.
(http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n1/plugins.htm) MD+F Special Effects Plug-ins for ColorWorks 2.0 - Vol. 2, No. 1.
(http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n4/renders.htm) MD+F Renders Plug-ins for ColorWorks 2.0 - Vol. 2, No. 4.

Impos/2 by Compart

Review published in OS/2 e-Zine! (http://www.os2ezine.com/xmas96/impos2.htm) Christmas '96 Special

Perhaps the most embarrassing mistake I made in the original review of Impos/2 by Compart Systems was not emphasizing the REXX scripting power enough.  With Impos/2, the image processing program acts more like a feature of REXX than REXX being a feature of Impos/2.  It loads just like a third-party REXX library, complete with a RxFuncAdd call that starts Impos/2 (if it's not already running).  From that point on, a script can control almost all painting, image processing and file operations of the program.

Because Impos/2 scripts can be started on the command line (rather than picking a menu option, like you do in Photo>Graphics) you can easily pass arguments and incorporate them in other scripts or batch files.  Imagine running an automated process every night that updates your web page!

Another aspect of the user-interface that I missed last time was the ability to move floated sections around on the canvas a pixel at a time using the keyboard arrow keys.  This kind of fine-control is extremely useful when you want to position things precisely, and it is a feature that is high on my wish list for other graphics software too.

Impos/2 is easy enough to master since it acts like most typical paint programs do.  It still serves well for general graphics work and some of the plug-ins that come with the program perform some great effects.  Best of all, it has a decent Gaussian Blur.

               * * *

(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.

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

Embellish v2.01	- by Chris Wenham

Many of you may have never heard of Embellish for OS/2 and those of you who have might wonder how such a "new" application can already be at version 2.01.  The answer to this mystery is, of course, that Embellish is not a new application at all.  Embellish v2.01 for OS/2 and Windows 95 is the second generation of graphics software to come from Dadaware.  This product is actually based on its predecessor, JView Pro, which was developed by Dadaware when the company was still called Crunch Products.

Packaging

Having outgrown its shareware roots, Embellish is a full commercial application complete with attractive packaging and a full hard copy manual.  The software itself comes on a CD-ROM which includes both the OS/2 and Windows 95 versions and a stock of royalty free photos in JPEG format suitable for backgrounds, cutting and pasting and various other artistic endeavours.

The manual is an unexciting but functional 105-page booklet that doubles as a reference and tutorial.  The featured screenshots in the manual are all taken from the Windows 95 version, but should offer little worry since screen and dialog layouts are identical in the versions for both platforms.  I did miss the lack of an on-line .inf manual, however, the help files are more than adequate as a replacement.

Installation

Embellish conforms to using the standard IBM installation utility we've all come to know and trust.  (Earlier versions did not use IBM's installation utility.  If the version on the CD-ROM you get is 2.0 you can obtain a free upgrade to 2.01 from Dadaware's (http://www.dadaware.com/download_area/download_area.html) download area on-line.)

User Interface

The user interface for Embellish is not the greatest I've used.  It feels awkward and slow.  Also, persistent dialogs and palettes that you want to keep open will disappear and resurface frequently as you access different parts of the program.  For example, if you have the color palette and text tool open when you attempt to save a file, the palette and text dialog will disappear while you choose a filename, then reappear once the save is complete.  The same goes for using the eyedropper tool, it will cause the color palette to vanish (and, unfortunately due to a bug, it may not reappear without toggling it on and off from the main toolbar).

This vanishing act causes excessive repainting of the screen which, to me, was highly annoying.  I also wished for more compact and space-conservative dialogs than the ones used in this version of the program.

Tool palettes are more elegantly done though, since you can not only change the size of the buttons on each palette to suit your style and monitor resolution, but you can dock them to any side of the Embellish window or set them to be free floating.  By selecting Save Window Positions from the Misc menu you can ensure that they will pop up in the same places automatically the next time you launch the application.

A really nice feature of the interface is the use of "Colorwells" or digital inkwells that allow you to drag-n-drop colors to and from other colorwells.  Double click on any colorwell and you can set the color more precisely by using the color wheel and up to four different color models.  A palette of 15 colorwells, free-floating or dockable to any side of the main window, can be used to keep frequently used colors handy.

Objects vs. Layers

Embellish has one advanced feature, the ability to treat everything drawn to the canvas as an independently movable object.  A stroke of a brush is an object, move it anywhere you like after it has been painted and even after other strokes have been painted.  Or move it up and down in the Z-order, whatever you want.

This feature is not as advanced as the similar style of managing objects in Photo>Graphics, though.  For example; you can't re-size objects without exaggerating any pixels, and you can't create an object that applies a certain effect (such as blur or emboss) as it is moved around.

The Embellish scheme also differs from the Layers metaphor you'll find in Adobe PhotoShop, where each layer is like a film of clear plastic to be painted on.  With Embellish you can't merge the color channels of separate objects together.

You do have the advantage of easy positioning though, something that isn't available with PhotoShop's layer metaphor.  Place text on an image and you can fine-tune the positioning later if you're not happy with it.

Tools and Materials

Drawing Shapes with Embellish is usually a two-step process and involves drawing the boundaries of the shape on the canvas first (such as the corners of a rectangle or ellipse) and then selecting 'Apply Shape' from a pop-up menu accessed by clicking the right mouse button.  Some tools, such as the freehand pencil, chalk and airbrush are instantaneous though.

What I found handy about the two-step drawing process for shapes such as text, polygons, rectangles, etc. was that you could first fine-tune the placement and size of the object and then apply it to the canvas.  Also, you can re-create the shape after applying once and paint it again elsewhere, perhaps with a different color or 'Material' (discussed below).

The first use I had for this was creating drop-shadows for text -- set the color to gray, pick "Apply Shape, Recreate" from the popup menu, change the color, shift the text up and to the left a few pixels, then pick "Apply Shape" again.

"Materials" are the colors, textures and effects Embellish can draw with.  The concept is not unlike the one in ColorWorks, but doesn't extend as far and is not as flexible.  Materials available are: Adjust Color, Black and White conversion, Blur/Sharpen, Solid Color, Emboss, Erase, Gradient, Grayscale conversion, Replace Color, User Pattern, Shadow and Smudge.  So, for example, you could select "Airbrush" as the tool and "Blur" as the Material, then instead of spraying color to the canvas you're spraying an invisible effect that blurs.

A really sticky problem with the tools though, was the lack of any mouse-position statistics when drawing or placing shapes.  This makes it very hard to do precise object placement.  Secondly, Embellish does not let you 'nudge' an object a pixel at a time using the keyboard -- a feature I missed from Impos/2.  Finally, I noticed there wasn't a bezier curve tool which is also an oversight.

Anti-Aliasing

The anti-aliasing in Embellish, applicable to all of the drawing tools (at least those where it makes sense), is superb.  It's clean and crisp even on very small fonts when using it with the text tool.  Circles and diagonal lines look really good in Embellish, without the jaggy edges you see in other programs.  This makes Embellish excellent for graphics destined to go on a web page.

It would be nice if the anti-aliasing data was stored in a separate alpha-channel for each object though, which would allow for moving objects across different colored backgrounds without gaining a 'fringe' of pixels around the edges (alpha channels are used to store transparency information).  (Try drawing black text on an orange background, then move the text object over a blue background.  You'll see an orange 'fringe' around the letters.)

Effects

Embellish comes with all your standard filters such as blurs, embosses and more (not to be confused with similar filters in the Materials set), plus it features a nice collection of special effects.  Such special effects include (but are not limited to:) Acid, Blocks, Double-vision, Fisheye, Oil Painting, Swirl and Waves.  These are the kind of effects that are usually supplied by plug-ins with any other software.

With Embellish, special effects can be applied to either the base image, selected objects in the image, or combinations of the two.  You can also choose to create a new object that opaquely covers the underlying base image and objects with the result of the effect.  The difference is shown in these two images, where the Swirl effect has been applied: 1) To existing objects.  2) Creating a new object.

You can see that when applied to existing objects without creating a new layer, the swirl effect has tried to swirl the pixels within the confines of each object's shape, as if each object were a separate picture that had to be 'swirled' independently from the rest.  This could be important to note if you're not getting the effects you expected.

Under Embellish, effects and other processes can be dynamically assigned a priority to run at while they are still calculating.  Very rarely would you ever have need for such a feature, but if an effect is going too slowly and you have the CPU cycles to spare, you can boost it a little to get the job done sooner.  Be careful not to boost it all the way up to the ambiguous setting of "high" though, since this can often leave your system about as responsive as a deaf cow mired in a few feet of syrup.

Web Features

Embellish has just started to acquire a set of web-oriented features such as the ability to create clickable Image Maps, remap the colors of your image to Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer 216-color palettes, and save to transparent .GIF files.  Embellish 2.02 features a .GIF animator tool, but this was still in beta at the time of writing.

Problems

The file open and save dialogs, while not standard OS/2 dialogs, have many useful features including a 'favorite directory' list with which you can rapidly get into deeply nested folders with a right-click of the mouse.  Deeply nested as long as the total path doesn't take up more than 32 characters that is, making it somewhat useless if the folder is you want to reach is very deep.  This 32-character limit is also found in the Image Map tool when entering URL's.

And, as mentioned above, the lack of a bezier curve tool is an unfortunate omission, as is the lack of position information or fine movement abilities for moving objects by small increments.

Summary

Embellish could use a cleaner user interface.  An object manager palette similar to the layers palette you'll find in PhotoShop would be really welcome for example.  But Embellish is low in price and does a lot for your money.  Plus, its object oriented way of assembling pictures makes it really easy to rearrange things on a canvas until you've got what you want.  It's definitely worth looking into.

               * * *

Embellish v2.01
by (http://www.dadaware.com/) Dadaware
download the demo from (ftp://ftp.dadaware.com/dadaware/embo201.zip) Dadaware's FTP site (ZIP, 2M)
MSRP: US$69.99

(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.

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

Photo>Graphics Pro v2.0	- by Chris Wenham

Photo>Graphics Pro v2.0 is an evolutionary step in the line of Photo>Graphics products introduced by TrueSpectra last year.  It introduces TWAIN scanning, REXX scripting, a new Lens tool and Curve region, the ability to save in-line images with a .GDO (Photo>Graphics project file), plus a number of other smaller additions.

As always, TrueSpectra continues to chart a course away from both traditional bitmap/raster graphics applications and vector/draw based applications.  For those unfamiliar with the Photo>Graphics concept, it serves to blend the best ideas from both bitmap and vector graphics applications together (see my detailed explanation of the differences between the two below).

Photo>Grapics gives you the object-based freedom of a vector application, allowing you to re-size and reposition objects on a canvas even long after they've been placed, but also gives you access to many powerful tools inherited from the bitmap kingdom, such as blurs, sharpens, embosses and lens-effects.  These effects can be used as the "filling" for any shape that you draw, meaning you could draw a heart or a star or a circle that blurs whatever is underneath it.  The shape itself is invisible, but it has been loaded with an effect that changes the appearance of anything seen through it.

To illustrate this point I created a picture of a working magnifying glass, that is; it's a picture, but it's still a working model with the magnified view through the lens changing as you move it around on the screen with the mouse.  This is a somewhat Escheresque concept, but is actually simple to do in Photo>Graphics Pro.  The frame and handle for the magnifying glass were drawn first, then a circle with the "Lens Tool" effect was drawn where the magnifying glass's lens would go.  The objects were then grouped together, so the whole thing could be moved around the canvas as one.

Packaging

Photo>Graphics Pro comes in a very slick shrink-wrap package (designed with the help of Photo>Graphics itself), complete with a separate user's manual and tutorial booklet.  The product installs from a CD-ROM that has both Photo>Graphics Pro, Solution Technology's TWAIN for OS/2, OpenDoc 1.1 and a Photo>Graphics OpenDoc part.  A basic install of all necessary components will only take up about 5 megs.  You can opt to copy tutorial and sample files over from the CD ROM too, which will increase disk space requirements by quite a bit.  (Leaving them on the CD is usually better.)

The user's manual is an adequate 77-page soft-cover booklet.  I didn't find much wrong with it except for a few screenshots of dialog boxes which did not appear the same in the actual program.  The tutorial booklet, however, is highly useful and teaches many techniques for getting the most out of the program.

User Interface

Photo>Graphics has always had a very clean, sharp and simple interface that's easy to learn and master.  The only problem you may find with it is giving up some old habits you may have picked up while using other programs.  For example, with Embellish, moving an object is done with the left mouse button, but the same operation is performed with the right mouse button with Photo>Graphics Pro.  I found myself messing that up frequently when I first began to use the program.

Another mildly annoying mistake is to select a new region or tool button, in anticipation of drawing a new object, while Edit mode is still in operation -- thus accidentally changing the properties of whatever object was still selected on the screen.

Beginners' mistakes aside, Photo>Graphics Pro impressed me with the elegance of its interface.  Settings dialogs for tools and regions are momentary, disappearing once you're finished with them.  Need them to stick around?  Use the mouse to 'tear off' any dialog, be it a color picker or transparency control or whatever, and it will remain on the screen linked to its own object.  If you have two or more objects overlapping each other and you want to adjust their opacity you can 'tear off' a transparency control box for each object and fiddle away at your whim.  The controls will remain linked to their respective objects no matter which one is currently selected.

Each object you draw can also be named, these names being used in the titlebar of each 'torn off' control to help you identify which belongs to which.  This naming scheme is also used to help the user tell when he has selected the right object in a complex drawing.  However, I would like to have seen a drop down list of all objects somewhere so I could jump to the one I want by name.

Drawing...  Vector or Bitmap?

With Photo>Graphics Pro an object is defined by what region (shape) it is, and what tool (color or effect) is applied.  

Just like in a traditional vector-based draw program you can group objects together (and name them) and manipulate them as if they were a single object.  Unlike most draw programs, you can also get busy with such regions as the Roller, which allow you to paint to the canvas as if you were wielding a paint roller.  With a few swishes of the mouse you can liberally cover the screen with color and Photo>Graphics Pro will calculate the outline of whatever amorphous amoeba you create.

Another tool you won't find in the average vector-draw program is the Custom Region, which acts much like an 8-bit mask does in bitmap paint software.  Upon drawing the bounding rectangle for the Custom region, a miniature Photo>Graphics Pro workspace pops up in the corner of the screen.  Into that workspace you can draw with any of the regular regions, effects and tools as you please.  The sum of the image you draw here is broken down into grayscale levels and used to determine the opacity of the Custom region on the main canvas, giving the user amazing flexibility.  Into the Custom Region's workspace you can also insert bitmaps, color or grayscale, thus making it possible to use something like a scanned image of a company logo as a shape.

In this example you can visually see how both the Custom Region and the Custom Tool work.  A Custom Region has been used to define the wavy 'e-Zine!' text, drawn simply by putting some Headline Text in the Custom Region's mini-workspace and layering a wave tool over the top.  This allowed me to duplicate the object and make a shadow, as well as prevent the wave tool from being applied to the background triangle.  The Custom Tool was used to define the multicolored filling for the 'OS/2' text -- created by using ramp regions filled with a solid color, rotated to an angle, duplicated and stacked together.

However, drawing hollow circles or rectangles is not that easy.  For circles you must first click with the Roller region to put a filled circle on the canvas, turn on stroke mode and adjust the pen width.  A three step process with a bit of fiddling involved before you get the right line width.  It would be handy to have a shortcut for this kind of thing.

Output

Photo>Graphics Pro is capable of outputting to a wide variety of formats and devices, including high quality color printers and bitmaps.  The program works in a resolution independent format, meaning that regardless of how big the objects are on the screen, you can output to only a few inches tall or a whole page or larger -- as big as your output device can handle.  The output settings dialog allows you to specify the output size in inches, points, centimeters or pixels, as well as any DPI level you want.

You can also switch on such effects as Anti-Aliasing and smoothing of bitmaps before saving a composition in rendered form to the disk, allowing for smoother looking graphics to post on web pages.  However, I found that even with these features switched on, it was still too easy to get ugly jagged edges on curves, especially if you employed the use of any warping tools in your picture such as the Lens or Wave tools.

Use the lens tool to magnify an anti-aliased curve and it will just exaggerate the pixels effect.  I think it would have looked better if Photo>Graphics Pro had calculated the wave/lens effect first, then ran the anti-aliasing over that.

When outputting to GIF files, Photo>Graphics Pro is more than adequately adapted to web use, with options for setting a transparency color and reducing to the Netscape color palette.

Performance

The ColorWave graphics engine that Photo>Graphics Pro is built upon renders quite fast even on my 486.  It functions on an idle thread, meaning the user interface always gets priority.  Move or adjust an object and the rendering in progress is immediately aborted to start again, all with little or no 'lag time' before you can see the dotted marquee move.  The ColorWave engine is also running in real-time all the time, so as you move or re-size an object you can see how it will look before you've even released the mouse button.

I found that there will occasionally be moments when Photo>Graphics Pro will hang, waiting for some disk operation to complete or rendering to be done, then resume a few seconds later.  I most often experience this when trying to change the text of a Headline Text region.

Photo>Graphics Pro will also get progressively slower when more and more objects are added to a composition.  To help, TrueSpectra suggests turning off the smoothing of bitmaps while creating the image, turning it back on again when ready to output.

Publishing

Photo>Graphics Pro shines as a tool for quickly creating good looking posters, flyers, book covers and more.  It's not really adapted for creating booklets or brochures though, since it doesn't handle multiple pages and can't import text (other than cut-n-paste).  It would have been excellent for making tri-fold brochures too, but it doesn't come with any templates for making that job simple.  It may be possible to work around this by using the Photo>Graphics OpenDoc part in something like the included OpenDoc Page Layout container that comes with Warp 4.  

The practicality of using Photo>Graphics Pro for professional publishing needs is evidenced by the program's own packaging.  The images created were all done with Photo>Graphics, then assembled and the packaging/manuals were finished with Quark.

As for Web publishing you can get fairly decent results if you set the output values to be measured in pixels instead of inches or centimeters.  That way you can get a better idea of how big your images will be when rendered, since inches, centimeters and points don't really mean anything on the web.  I was still unsatisfied with the amount of control the program gave me when dealing with exact pixel dimensions; there wasn't an easy way to adjust the zoom levels so I could see the image at exactly the same size as the rendered version.

For an example of a "real life" use though, it should be noted that OS/2 e-Zine!'s Help Desk comic strip is also produced with Photo>Graphics.

Scripting

Photo>Graphics Pro's most notable "power user" feature is the inclusion of Rexx scripting, allowing the user to write a script that can create and manipulate objects on the screen, set output dimensions and save rendered images.  At the moment, however, such things as executing scripts outside of Photo>Graphics Pro (as you can do with Impos/2) or accepting command line arguments are not supported.

But the usefulness of Rexx is limited only by your imagination.  Although there isn't a way to pass arguments to a Rexx script under Photo>Graphics Pro the traditional way (by command line), you could still have the script read text regions placed outside the pink line that defines the limits of the rendered page, and thus pass arguments this way.  The power given to the programmer would allow, for example, the automation of making animated sequences; a simple script could be programmed to move an object across a page in 10 steps, saving a rendered view of each step to be assembled later by a program such as WebAK (Photo>Graphics Pro does not have any .GIF animation facilities built in).

A number of sample Rexx scripts are included with the program, including one that can generate a calendar for any month of any year and another that will even generate a Mandelbrot set (if you're very patient).

In short, Photo>Graphics Pro combined with Rexx could be dynamite in the right hands, but is probably useless if you don't know how to program.

Summary

Photo>Graphics Pro really shines for creating good looking images easily and quickly, there really is no other tool like it for experimentation.  Its way of combining regions (shapes) with tools (colors and effects) into objects that can be moved around just like in a draw program means that you don't have to rigidly confine yourself to the "order of execution" method that bitmap programs will hold you to.  If you goof up the colors of an object buried at the very bottom of your composition it doesn't take a big deal to go back and change it.

But it's not terribly well suited for detailed work and its range of effects and filters pales when compared to the likes of Embellish or SX Paint.  There's no easy equivalent of a clone tool for example, nor is there a floodfill region.

Is it worth it?  The manufacturer suggested retail price of US$249.95 (with a 'street' price of around US$124.99) will probably put it out of range of most home users who'd be better off with the non-'Pro' edition that retails for US$129.00 (with a 'street' price of about US$59.00).  But if the Rexx scripting, Lens tool, Curve region and, even more importantly, TWAIN scanning support appeals to you then yes, Photo>Graphics Pro is definitely worth adding to your collection of tools.

               * * *

Photo>Graphics Pro v2.0
by (http://www.truespectra.com/) TrueSpectra Inc. 
MSRP: US$249.95

(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.

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

SX Paint and WebAK	- by Chris Wenham

SX Paint briefly made an appearance last year as a "Proof of Technology" demo on the Modular Dreams web site.  After SPG's June 30th announcement that development of ColorWorks for OS/2 had been stopped, Modular Dreams (or MD+F for short) decided the time was ripe to finally bring a full working version to market.  Since the product is not yet fully up to scratch though, MD+F is bundling it for free with its existing web graphics package; WebAK (Short for Web Animation Kit).

WebAK, on the other hand, features no painting capabilities and is geared towards creating GIF animations for use in web pages.  It also incorporates the fascinating background pattern generators inherited from MD+F's "Renders" plug-ins for ColorWorks V2 (Incidentally, they're also the same as the "Background Tile" pattern generators found in ColorWorks: Web 3 for Windows).

SX Paint is, of course, the most interesting of the two.  Modular Dreams has replicated all of the functionality of WebAK into SX Paint, meaning that one could safely install SX Paint alone and not worry about missing features from WebAK.  SX Paint also inherits some of the catalog browsing abilities of MD+F's third product, M3, which is an image cataloging database.

What makes SX Paint exciting though is that it shows a lot of the pioneering "breaking the mould" spirit that we saw in ColorWorks.  For example, any effect can be painted to the canvas with any tool just like you could do with ColorWorks.  But SX Paint also takes a more visual approach to the job of linking effects together -- letting you drag-n-drop target and source images to each effect panel before finally drawing.

This review will cover WebAK first and the features unique to SX Paint last.

WebAK

WebAK comes in an OS/2 and a Windows 95 version, both of which are included on the same set of diskettes.  As its full name, Web Animation Kit, implies, it is primarily a tool for creating GIF animations destined for the Web, although it does have some powerful image filtering and background pattern generators too.  A GIF animation is like a regular GIF file, except that it stores multiple frames and information on how to 'play' those frames.

Installation and Documentation

WebAK does not have a glamorous installation utility.  It comes on five 1.44K floppy disks and requires the user to run two Rexx programs before the software is fully copied over to the hard drive.  Then one must set up a program object on the Desktop manually, since the Rexx script will not create one for you.  Uninstalling the product would involve deleting the directory it copied itself into, then deleting the program object.

Documentation is a 58 page booklet that explains all the concepts you need to know about using WebAK, especially its ubiquitous use of something called an Image View Canvas (discussed later).  It is recommended that you read through the first portion of the manual before starting to use the product, since working with WebAK is probably not what you're used to.  There are places where I wished the documentation had been more clear.

User Interface

The WebAK user interface is much more user friendly than the installation program was, thankfully.  Upon starting, you're first greeted with a pleasant welcome dialog that gives you access to the most frequently used functions of the program -- Image Editor, Resurrect, GIF Animator, Close and Exit.  This welcome dialog can be configured to dismiss itself automatically once the program has finished loading itself completely into memory.

WebAK's toolbars can be tugged out of their normal position and 'docked' at several locations around the screen, such as under the menu bar, next to the status bar, anchored to either side or free floating.  Just grab one with the mouse and start dragging around.  The status bar is also thicker than you might usually find elsewhere and is home to two of the Image View Canvases you'll find used a lot throughout the program.  These two "IVCs", in particular, show thumbnails of the currently selected image and its Alpha Channel.

The next most conspicuous screen element is a task list, which is a small window docked in the bottom left corner.  It usually just shows short internal processes that are going on deep within the bowels of the program and rarely displays anything relevant to the user, nor does it seem to interfere.

Image View Canvases

Before delving in, let me first cover a few terms.  An Editor Window is a window in WebAK that you can edit images in by applying effects and filters, etc.  It's just like the canvases you'd find in regular paint programs like Embellish or ColorWorks.

An Image View Canvas is a thumbnail representation of an image in memory, which can be one already loaded in an Editor Window or one hanging "in limbo" until you decide to do something with it.  These Image View Canvases (or IVCs for short) are a little bit like the Colorwells found in Embellish and are receptive to drag-n-drop operations between other IVCs in much the same way.  They also have context-sensitive menus accessed with a right-click of the mouse, giving you functions to clone (copy), shadow (link), close, delete and more.  They're used everywhere, from displaying each frame in an animation, as preview windows for effects, and even arranged on handy palettes for temporarily storing a bunch of loose images.  They're the most object-oriented aspect of WebAK and SX Paint, and to really get the most out of either program you need to learn how they work.

Dragging and dropping to and from an IVC is performed the same way it would be with the Workplace Shell.  Copy an image (Ctrl key down) and you'll have two identical copies now in memory, taking up twice as much RAM.  Shadow or Link the image (Shift+Ctrl keys down) and you'll be creating two views of the same image in memory -- changes applied to one will be reflected in another.

This is important to note, since when shadowing/linking an image you can often take powerful advantage of the interface's ability to update itself instantly.  One tool provided is a window that tiles whatever image is dropped into it, so you can see how it would look as a web page background and fix any seams.  Link the source IVC with an open Editor Window and as you make changes to the image they will be reflected in the tiled view almost in real time.

This method also allows one to combine effects.  Link the target of one filter, say a blur, with the source of another, say an emboss, and you've just created a combination blur-and-emboss effect.  This is similar to the effects stacking and combining that could be done with ColorWorks.  The representation of this effect is more visual though, and you have greater control on the order in which each stage is applied.  The downfall is that it takes up a lot more screen estate to have all these effects and filter dialogs laying around.

Suffice to say, you'll either hate this method or love it, but it does add considerably to the learning curve of the program.  WebAK attempts to make it a little easier to get started without having to learn the whole concept of Image View Canvases first though.  If you select a filter and click on "Apply" it will assume you want to apply the effect in the currently active Editor window, without having to do any dragging-n-dropping beforehand.

The GIF Animator

GIF files can be loaded into WebAK by two different means, either through the standard File.Load procedure which will put it into a single window ready to have filters and effects applied to it, or through the GIF animator tool which acts a bit like a separate program bolted onto the WebAK frame.  You can't load an animated GIF file through the regular File.Load method and expect to edit its separate frames.  What you can do, however, is copy a frame into an Editor Window, edit it, then drag-n-drop it back into the animation.  I was unable to edit frames in place though, since telling WebAK to create a shadow of a frame opened an Editor Window for me, but did not reflect any changes in the GIF animator until I'd drag-n-dropped the edited frame back in.

WebAK is possibly the most powerful tool for creating GIF animations on OS/2 though, since it supports changing almost any aspect of the animation from the offsets of each frame to the disposal method.  WebAK even supports a few disposal methods that Netscape does not.

Once the animation is assembled, you (with your mighty T1 line hooked to the company Ethernet) might want to check on how those poor peons with their 14.4's and their 28.8's might be seeing your grand creation as it trickles in.  No problem, there's a Download Frames Tester which can be set to simulate several different popular bit rates.  Unfortunately, this tool won't actually show you the animation slowed down, it'll just give you a graph of projected arrival time for each frame.

The space for entering animation filenames is also limited to 32 characters and doesn't give you access to a standard file browser; you have to type it in manually.

Pattern Generator and Other Goodies

If you don't do much in the way of animations for your web pages, you may still consider picking up WebAK for its background pattern generator.  Actually, I wouldn't recommend most of the patterns available as backgrounds since they're much too strong and hard on the eye.  But far be it for me to suggest that you can't find something to do with them.

The patterns generated are the same as the ones in the MD+F ColorWorks Renders plug-in already (http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n4/renders.htm) reviewed in OS/2 e-Zine!.  (All except for the Fire, Waves and Magnetic Waves patterns, which couldn't be included due to a bug in the OpenClass libraries used in the product.)

If you need to create an image map for a web page then look no further than the tool included here.  It's more than capable of the job, letting you define regions as rectangles, circles or polygons, then generating code for either client-side or server-side image maps.

Collapsed environments and Scripting

WebAK provides a unique method for storing your work environment to disk and restoring it later exactly as you had left it off.  Editor Windows, Image Holders, GIF animator windows and all their settings, positions and sizes are stored to a file.  This can be a time saver when you don't want to go through the chore of opening windows left and right when you come in for work in the morning and have to pick up where you left off the previous evening.  It can also be used for trading setups with your associates, especially when these files can be traded freely between the OS/2 and Win95 versions of WebAK.

And then there's the WebAK Scripting language; a proprietary, object oriented, C++ style language that can be used to automate and control almost every aspect of the program.  I sort of wished for old fashioned Rexx scripting, but this language is easy enough to learn and is actually quite powerful.  Modular Dreams has an (http://www.modulardreams.com/webak_a3.html) example on their web site of an animation that was put together by one of these scripts.

SX Paint

At the time of this review, SX Paint was very much a moving target.  As I mentioned in the introduction, it is being bundled with WebAK for free until Modular Dreams Inc. considers it ready for prime time, at which point you can expect to see it sold separately on CD-ROM.  At the moment, however, it comes on a single floppy disk with the WebAK set, reusing many of the WebAK disks for its files, but installing itself in a separate directory on your hard drive, not sharing files with an existing installation of WebAK.

Features and limitations of the current version of SX Paint, 1.5 at the time of this review, shouldn't be considered set in stone until the 'ready for prime time' version ships.  It is, however, a shipping product and not a Beta, even though it has been updated at least once a week since its first bundling.

ColorWorks Similarities

Users of ColorWorks will probably be the first to get comfortable with SX Paint, since it borrows much of SPG's concepts.  You can flip into mask mode and paint around the object you wish to float, for example.  You can also load ColorWorks texture files into the Alpha Channel of an image or a brush, and to a lesser degree there is some SMP support -- though not as deep as what you'll find in ColorWorks.  And you can paint combined effects to the canvas with any of the drawing tools (anti-aliased too, which I might add looks considerably better than ColorWorks' anti-aliasing).

Drawing

SX Paint utilizes a floating tool palette that gives you fast access to most of the frequently used features.  There's one-button-access to such things as flipping an image horizontally, vertically, and rotating by 90 degrees clockwise or counterclockwise.  There's also an abundance of shape tools for drawing pies, wedges, chords and more in addition to just the regular circle, rectangle, freehand and text.  There is no bezier curve function, however.

I discovered a problem with adding emphasis to text drawn with SX Paint.  Specifying italics will not make SX Paint use the proper italicised version of the font, instead it will simulate italics by slanting the text -- something that would make any professional typographer have a heart attack.  Not only that, but the emphasis checkboxes and point-size setting in the standard OS/2 font selection dialog is ignored.  You have to set these again in SX Paint's text-entry dialog.

Extremely handy, though, and a refreshing break from ColorWorks, is the access to all mask functions on the same tool palette.  Not only can you toggle in and out of mask mode but you also have a button for inverting the current mask, saving as a protection mask, floating the mask and merging the mask with the canvas.

Some things are confusing though.  It was by accident that I discovered you could still paint to the canvas while a mask is floated.  If you're not in mask mode when you click on the magic wand button, you'll probably be baffled when the tool does absolutely nothing at all.  

Of Special Effects

SX Paint has some very cool "Black Box" like special effects that can be applied to floated images.  These include a Cutout and Drop-Shadow effect (something that once took me an entire Graphics Tips column to explain), Glow, Surround and Noise Mask.  All of these are nicely configurable and will quickly add a cool, if not just a bit clich touch to your web page graphics.  What I found pleasantly interesting is that once floating, a mask is defined with an 8-bit transparency channel.  Run the Glow effect for example, then move the floated image around, and you'll see the underlying image showing through the faint edges of the glow.

Other effects worth mentioning are those once found in the MD+F Effects Plug-in pack for ColorWorks, also (http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n1/plugins.htm) previously reviewed in OS/2 e-Zine!.

Performance

...is questionable, at least on an 80mhz 486.  Various dialogs are slow to come up, the time between applying text or shapes to a canvas, and when it actually shows, can be a wait of a few seconds.  Moving floated images around a canvas is a full-image-drag deal too, no fast marquee outlines here.  I expect this might look terrific on a high-end Pentium but if you're not so blessed it can be a real drag (no pun intended).  MD+F says they will be addressing this in the future though.

SX Paint is also memory hungry.  With the frequent use of IVCs everywhere there can be multiple full-size copies of images stored in RAM in addition to the regular working set.  The thumbnail browser incorporated from another MD+F product, M3, likes to drink a lot of RAM too.

There's some relief to the RAM problem though.  SX Paint is able to compress the Undo buffers in memory, limit the number of Undos available, and even let you specify in megabytes what the maximum amount of RAM to use for Undo is.  SX Paint cannot compress the main image in RAM like ColorWorks does though.

Summary

This has been a very difficult review to write, perhaps the hardest I've done.  Why?  Two reasons.  The first is that SX Paint is crammed with features worth talking about.  Either I write until my fingers explode or I leave something out!  The second is the current lack of documentation for anything but WebAK and the high learning curve associated with the product.  I'm still coming to grips with the finer aspects of the (sometimes aggravating) Image View Canvases.  This program is definitely an acquired taste and really not suited for the casual dabbler.  You either sit down and commit yourself to spending a few hours learning it, or you're only going to get a fraction of what it's capable of delivering.

But if you were really dying to get an OS/2 version of ColorWorks 3 and left bitterly disappointed last month, here are a few consolations: 1) Not much has changed with the painting functions of ColorWorks from 2.0 to 3.  The bulk of its new features comes in the way of gadgets for the web, much of which you'll also find in WebAK.  2) SX Paint is as apparent an heir to the throne of ColorWorks as I've ever seen.  You can consider it in the same class as ColorWorks: the hard to learn but mightily powerful painting tool.  And as pointed out above, it's also adopting many of the features that ColorWorks used to have.

I'm optimistic for SX Paint, it only remains to be seen what Modular Dreams decides to do with it.

As for WebAK, this tool is simple enough that a casual user can start using it right away with few problems.  Animations, image maps, good looking background patterns and basic retouching filters are all there.  It's a great utility and worth the price.  Bundle the two together and you've got a bargain.

               * * *

SX Paint and WebAK
by (http://www.modulardreams.com/) Modular Dreams, Inc.
MSRP: US$69.99

(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.

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

Vector Drawing Applications for OS/2	- by Christopher B. Wright

A few issues ago, I reviewed a prerelease demonstration of NeoN 2D Vector ("(http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n4/neon.htm) Shoot out at the OK Corel").  In that article, I mentioned that vector drawing applications were finally starting to break out into the market -- but at that time, all we really had was Freelance Graphics, which is more specifically a presentations package.  The other programs -- including NeoN 2D Vector -- had not yet been released (NeoN 2D Vector was available in Germany, but the software I was reviewing was in English and had not yet been released).

Well, much has changed since then.

Not two days after my review, someone told me via e-mail that LogoArt had been officially released -- much to my surprise.  The folks at WorkLab had been keeping very, very quiet about the progress of their product (the beta hadn't changed rev levels in a while) and I was honestly starting to believe they'd abandoned the project.  Well, I'm happy to eat crow about this.  Not only has LogoArt been released, it's been updated twice!  In "LogoArt for OS/2", I'll be showing you what LogoArt can (and can't) do for you.

My previous review of NeoN 2D Vector was of a work in progress, and over the past few months it has progressed a great deal.  While the updated version hasn't been released yet, it is very close -- so close that Indelible Blue is taking orders for it.  I had access to the latest version of the prerelease, and in "NeoN 2D Vector Revisited" I will be giving you a tour of what's been changed and updated since my last review.

Also, a new program has very recently hit the scene.  It's called "DrawCat", and I've been evaluating the demo to put it through its paces.

Finally this month, I compare the three programs with each other in the "Final Observations" column.

-----

Review Criteria

In evaluating these programs, I tried to keep a few key points in mind:

1.  Features.  What can it do?  What tools does it have?  The more "Stuff" a program has, the higher I rate it.

2.  Performance.  How fast does it run?  How quickly does it react?  Obviously, the faster and more stable it is, the higher I rate it.

3.  Price.  How cheap is it?  The lower the price, the higher I rate this category.  I also rate price and features together to see what you're getting for what you're paying.

4.  Usability.  This is a somewhat subjective rating, but I feel it's important.  Usability is an indication of:

a. how skillfully the UI was designed,
b. how easy it is to use the features of the program, and
c. how customizable the program is.

Essentially, the more comfortable I am with the program, and the more flexibility I have when it comes to customizing it, the higher I rate it.

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

LogoArt for OS/2 v1.10	- by Christopher B. Wright

LogoArt, a vector drawing application from WORKLab System Solutions, is a good program.  It has the potential to be a great program, but first it needs to overcome a few self-imposed limitations and improve its user interface a bit to make it more flexible to use.  Despite its flaws, it has some great features and is a worthy consideration for anyone thinking of doing simple layouts that combine bit-mapped and vector graphics.

Installation

LogoArt comes on a CD-ROM that contains not only the program, but clip art as well.  Along with the CD-ROM, you get a 3.5" disk (an upgrade to the original code) and a small, 75-page manual.

Installing LogoArt is fairly straightforward.  At one point during the installation, you are asked to insert the upgrade disk in your A: drive, but this is the only deviation from the standard install routine.  After this is finished, you are asked to restart your machine.  LogoArt and KVEC, a command-line bitmap-to-vector conversion utility that is included with the program, are ready to go.

I found during repeated installation tests that the install process would, occasionally, quit without finishing.  This didn't happen often enough for me to determine why, but it happened at the same place -- just before the Desktop folder and icons were created -- each time.  LogoArt appears to function normally despite the premature exit, however.

The latest update for LogoArt, which adds the bitmap-editing capabilities I discuss later in this review, can be downloaded from (http://www.worklab.com/) WORKLab's web site.  This is actually a full version of the program, but it won't install unless it detects an older version of LogoArt already installed on your machine.

Documentation

LogoArt's manual is adequate for people who are already familiar with vector graphics programs, but beginners may find it a little too brief in some areas.  Also, there were a few errors in the documentation which lead me to believe that it was written based on an unreleased version of the code.

For example, in Section 3.2.1 ("Settings"), the manual says that to make the Crosshair visible on screen, go to the "View" menu and select "Crosshair".  The problem is, there is no setting called "Crosshair" in the "View" menu.  Likewise, it says that to alter the appearance of the background, select the "Grid Style" option in the "View" menu and set it to "Checks".  Unfortunately, the "Checks" option is not one of your available choices.

The manual does include a tutorial which shows users how to create a butterfly, and this will help beginners grasp the basics of the various line types, including bezier curves and fillets.  But looking for specific information is something of a challenge, even when using the index in the back, because the information you read isn't always completely accurate.

Features and Use

One of the most frustrating things about LogoArt is that it seems to couple each really great idea with a cumbersome implementation.

For example, all of the basic drawing elements of LogoArt are readily accessible on the main screen without having to deal with roll-up palettes, nested menus, or settings folders.  Unfortunately, what you see is what you get -- it is completely uncustomizable.  You can't add buttons, move the button strips around, or even arrange the current buttons more to your liking.  Unfortunately, this causes a screen real-estate problem when you're working on a smaller monitor or at lower resolutions.

I'd like the buttons to be sized a little smaller, too.  They're bigger than they need to be, which takes up screen space that would be better used as space for drawings.  Great idea: All basic controls on main screen.  Cumbersome implementation: All basic controls are unchangeable.

Layers

LogoArt allows you to work in layers, keeping some parts of your work on different "levels" of the graphic.  The layers bar allows you to specify the characteristics of each layer in the graphic.  Unfortunately, the layers bar disappears as soon as you click on something else.

The program's design allows creation of both single-line and area text, but you can't enter text directly onto the graphic area -- you must instead use a text area that appears as a toolbar on the screen.

LogoArt allows you to create highly complex shapes using splines and polylines.  The visual cues LogoArt uses to identify a foci on a spline differs from most vector graphics programs, and I find the difference refreshing and easier to use in some cases.  But sometimes it can be difficult to figure out exactly what focus to move when there are a lot of curves in the graphic.

LogoArt's method of modifying fonts and colors is different from any other program I've seen.  LogoArt actually calls up versions of the OS/2 Font Palette and the OS/2 Mixed Color Palette so you can drag and drop the colors or fonts onto your project.  Because the font palette only accepts 8 different font styles, and because the Mixed Color Palette only displays 256 colors, however, this may limit many people.

Despite LogoArt's awkward moments, however, it has a lot of features that will surprise you.  For example, if you import a digital image (like a .gif) into a spline, the spline will act as a cropping tool.  How did you import a .gif into a picture?  Just drag it from any folder onto the open application.  This drag-and-drop functionality can make importing digital graphics a lot easier than dealing with nests of dialog boxes.

Once you've imported your bit-mapped graphic, you can perform some rudimentary photo-editing techniques, as well as apply various masks and effects.  While these features can't match a package like Impos/2, Embellish or Photo>Graphics, they are useful if you're working with both bit-mapped and vector graphics in a primarily vector graphics environment.


KVEC

One of the most powerful features that comes with LogoArt isn't actually part of the program, but is a command-line utility called KVEC.  KVEC is a tool that allows you to convert bit-mapped graphics into scalable vector art.  KVEC works very well, but in order to fully exploit its features you need to be willing to type out long command strings from an OS/2 command-line.  With KVEC, I was able to take an early "Help Desk" comic strip and convert it into a smudgy but recognizable vector graphic.

KVEC, by the way, needs to be registered separately from LogoArt.  The first time you use it, it will generate a text file with the information you need to register the application.

Weaknesses

While LogoArt has some compelling features, it also lacks some features that I sorely missed.

1.  Object Guides.  Many vector graphics programs have little guides that you can drag out of the rulers and use to line up whatever objects you're working with at the time.  LogoArt does not have this; I'd like to see it in a future version.

2.  LogoArt is also poorly suited to technical drawings because there is no way to set a scale to your canvas in anything but inches or millimeters.

3.  LogoArt currently forces you to keep your graphics on one "page" or "canvas".  I'd like to see support for multiple pages added in future releases.

Final Evaluation

As I said above, LogoArt is a good program, and if you don't mind the strangeness of some of the UI choices you'll find it a very capable, useful tool for a graphics design package.  However, the oddities need to be kept in mind or you'll find yourself getting frustrated.  LogoArt is a good program for inexperienced end-users who want to cut their teeth at vector graphics design, and its more powerful features make it attractive to more experienced users as well.  However, I think more experienced users will find LogoArt incomplete for more involved work, though I expect this will be less of a problem the more the program matures.

All in all, I recommend the program to anyone who wants a good, one-page layout and design program, especially if you're new to these types of apps.  On the other hand, if you do detailed work, you might be happier with NeoN 2D vector, or even Photo>Graphics Pro, StarImpress, or Freelance 96.

               * * *

LogoArt for OS/2 v1.10
by (http://www.worklab.com/) WORKLab System Solutions
download the demo from (http://www.worklab.com/Logoart/register.html) WORKLab's web site
MSRP: US$69.00

(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.

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

DrawCat for OS/2 v1.0	- by Christopher B. Wright

DrawCat for OS/2, a new vector drawing application that has just recently been released as shareware, is not on the same playing field as NeoN 2D Vector and LogoArt.  However, while it is smaller in scope and in features, it is also substantially cheaper to buy -- $20 US -- which makes it a viable choice if your needs are basic and you find the extras cumbersome.

Feature Set

DrawCat's feature set is very, very spartan.  It has only the most basic of drawing tools -- ellipse, rectangle, straight line, and polyline -- and a blank canvas for drawing.  There are no bezier curves supported in this package, nor is there a free-form pen tool, so the options you have when creating shapes are somewhat limited.  However, DrawCat does have a few nifty tools that can make it useful as a flowcharting program.

One of these tools is the circle dialog box.  The circle dialog box allows you to create parts of an ellipse or circle, and gives you the opportunity to choose how you want it to be "cut".

Another of these useful tools is the area type dialog box.  This lets you create an object based on some common (and some less common) geometrical shapes.  Using these tools with the area attributes dialog box and the line attributes dialog box, DrawCat has the potential to be a decent flowcharting program some day.

At the moment it's a bit too tricky to position the shape, line and text elements in a flowchart of any serious size, but the author has made a good start here -- and I think DrawCat could some day fill a niche that hasn't been filled yet in OS/2.

Doing anything of any great size is, at the moment, a bit too cumbersome with DrawCat.  While it has group and ungroup functions to help keep objects where they're supposed to be when they're all lined up, getting them to be positioned "just so" can be difficult.  For example, I found it almost impossible to select and move text that was sitting on top of a polygon.  The polygon would always be the object that was selected.  Eventually, I would wind up moving the polygon somewhere else, selecting the text and moving it on top of the polygon until it was the way I wanted it, then grouping it to keep it from changing.

Conclusion

At this point in time, DrawCat is not suitable for any "heavy duty" graphics work.  It was obviously intended as a very basic program, but what it does, it does reasonably well.  If you're looking for the basics and aren't interested in high-end features (with a much higher price to match), DrawCat will probably work just fine for you.

As an aside, I think DrawCat has the potential to fill a much needed niche in the OS/2 software world if some of its tools are developed further and it is positioned specifically as a flowcharting program.  The author has already set up an environment where the user can create different geometrical shapes and can choose various lines and line endings.  If the way in which objects are selected and modified is smoothed out a bit, and a few more flowcharting tools are introduced (automatically connecting boxes, for example, or boxes with text inside them) DrawCat could move from a basic shareware vector drawing application to something much more.

Addendum

In the last week I have received some more information regarding this program that needs updating.  In the main body of this review, I stated that DrawCat had no bezier tools.  I was mistaken.  In fact, the line and polyline tools are handled as bezier tools internally.  All you have to do is to draw your line and then click on it once, and bezier handles will appear.

The merging of regular polyline and bezier functionality into the same tool surprised me -- I didn't find it, because I didn't expect to find it.  While this is mentioned in the documentation, there is no stand-alone category for bezier (it's covered under the polyline entries) so I was fooled into not digging deeper into the documentation.  (Even technical writers need to remember to always read the documentation.)

DrawCat is still not competitive with LogoArt or NeoN 2D Vector, but its ability to handle bezier lines rounds it out and makes it a very good entry-level application.

               * * *

DrawCat for OS/2 v1.0
by (http://www.bright.net/~belly/) Belly Entertainment
download from (http://www.bright.net/~belly/drawcat1.zip) Belly Entertainment's web site (ZIP, 707k)
Registration: US$20.00

(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.

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

NeoN 2D Vector for OS/2 (revisited)	- by Christopher B. Wright

Note: If you haven't yet, I suggest reading (http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n4/neon.htm) my first review of NeoN 2D Vector to put this one in perspective.

The last time I reviewed this program, it hadn't yet been released in the US.  At the time of this writing, it still isn't available in the US -- but we're getting closer.  So much closer, in fact, that Indelible Blue has already started taking orders for it.

When I reviewed the demonstration version of NeoN 2D, I was told that it would be revised again before it would be released in the US.  Some of these revisions will address some complaints I had about the older version, some revisions will add more functionality to the product.  I was able to take a look at the latest beta, so I thought I'd fill you in.

What has changed

When I first reviewed the program, I reported that I had "mixed feelings" about the way NeoN 2D was laid out.  A lot of my problems with the UI were addressed in this release, most notably the way the UI didn't optimize its workspace -- in other words, it suffered from "toolbar clutter."

The first thing I noticed about the new UI is that you can specify what language you want the program to use, which seems to indicate that the German and English programs have been essentially merged together.  Once you change the setting from English to German or vice versa and restart the program, it will display whichever language you selected.

The second thing I noticed is that the programmer for NeoN 2D gave the toolbars more customizability than they used to have.  For example, you can right-click on a toolbar and it will move to another border.

The UI has been optimized to ensure that it's not wasting as much space as it used to.  The object information area at the bottom of the program window has been reduced so you can fit more of your drawing on your screen.  Also, the 8 buttons on the left-hand side of the screen default to the "small" size, saving more space on your screen.

A wealth of tools

As before, NeoN 2D Vector still has one of the most complete sets of vector line art toolkits I've seen.  The four configurable toolbars offer a lot of ways to modify your drawing.  And, unlike the previous version of the program, they can now be dragged outside of the program window.

NeoN 2D Vector also has one of the largest numbers of compatible file formats I've ever seen.  It can work with Adobe Illustrator, Encapsulated Postscript, Arabesque, and a slew of file formats I've never even heard of.  And its bitmap compatibility is equally impressive.  If you're doing graphics work for many customers who use a wide range of file types, this is the program to own.

Unfortunately, NeoN 2D still cannot read CorelDraw files.  I'm told, however, that this is due to the difficulty in getting the file specifications for the .CDR format, not due to a lack of interest on COMPO Software's part.

What's new

But it is a new feature that most interests me.  NeoN 2D now has support for multiple pages, which sets it apart from every other graphics program for OS/2 on the market today with the exception of Freelance 96 and the StarImpress portion of the StarOffice beta.  With this feature, NeoN 2D is well suited for multi-page "pasteboard" layout jobs -- or it would be save for one minor omission.

Weaknesses

NeoN 2D Vector has only one method of creating text, while most programs have at least two.

NeoN 2D has the ability to create "Headline" or "Banner Text" -- text that continues moving horizontally unless you manually hit the return key.  It does not have "Area" or "Paragraph Text" -- text that is defined by a shape you pre-draw, and that will wrap around when the limits of that space are reached.  This kind of text tool is useful if you're trying to create paragraphs of text that may need to be re-sized depending on how the rest of the project is arranged.

Unfortunately, NeoN 2D can not, at this point, create block paragraphs of text, which puts it at a serious disadvantage if you want to use it for designing covers, posters, etc.  That's a shame, because in every other respect it is very well-suited for this purpose.

Also, the beta I looked at was still missing its help file.  I assume the help file will be included in the released version, since there are areas in the menu reserved for activating it, but without it, it has been somewhat difficult to thoroughly test and evaluate its capabilities.  For example, it's quite possible that somewhere there is a way to create blocks of paragraph text, but I have not been able to find it on my own.  With a working help file, it would be possible to search for that function and how to use it.  Without the file I'm left to nosing around until something comes up -- which doesn't always work.

Final Evaluation

COMPO Software has made some great strides in developing this program, but it's difficult to say for certain how much the beta I saw will be like the released version.  If the final version has the same feature set, I'd give NeoN 2D Vector very high marks -- as long as it has a substantial on-line help area to help people figure out how to use some of its tools.

If you do a lot of detailed vector work, NeoN 2D will be a valuable investment.  Its ability to save to a great number of file formats and the vast number of ways you can modify a line, make it an incredibly versatile and useful tool.  Likewise, the fact that a project can now span multiple pages gives it an edge many other OS/2 programs do not have.  On the other hand, its limited text and typesetting abilities somewhat restrict it as a layout program, so you won't be able to use it for everything.  All in all, however, its strengths outweigh its weaknesses, and I'm happy to recommend it.

               * * *

NeoN 2D Vector
by (http://www.neongrafix.com/) COMPO Software
download the demo from (http://www.neongrafix.com/n2dvdemo.htm) Compo Software
MSRP: US$129.00

(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.

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

Vector Graphics Software - Conclusions	- by Christopher B. Wright

You've read my opinions about all three applications on their own -- now, how do they compare with each other?  In this section, I compare and contrast the various applications and give you my views about which ones come out ahead, and why they do.

DrawCat is the weakest of the three in terms of features, but the strongest in terms of price.  LogoArt and NeoN 2D Vector are roughly evenly matched feature-wise, but each has features the other lacks.

LogoArt is significantly cheaper than NeoN 2D Vector, but depending on what you want to do, it isn't always going to be the best choice.  LogoArt and its KVEC utility work very well on projects that mix bit-mapped and vector graphics, and tolerably well on vector drawing projects of moderate complexity.  When it comes to complicated vector drawings that use many shapes and layers, however, I feel NeoN 2D Vector has the edge, both because it has a more complete tool set for modifying line shapes, and many of its functions are a bit easier to use.  On the other hand, LogoArt is a lot more flexible when handling text -- NeoN 2D Vector has only one way to insert text into a document, and it may not be as flexible as you'd prefer.

Ultimately, however, whether or not a program is "easier to use" is in the eye of the beholder.  Both LogoArt and NeoN 2D Vector have demos available on the respective company's web sites ((http://www.worklab.com/) http://www.worklab.com/ for LogoArt, and (http://www.neongrafix.com/) http://www.neongrafix.com/ for NeoN 2D Vector).  Download them.  Try them both.  Decide which one works most intuitively for you.

If you're not really serious about graphics design, or just want to play around with vector graphics, I suggest DrawCat.  It's inexpensive and has enough of the basic features to give you an idea of what it's like.  If you're serious (or semi-serious) about using vector graphics in your work and you want to incorporate them with bit-mapped graphics, I suggest LogoArt.  If you expect to be creating a lot of complex vector graphics, or will be requiring a program that can create multi-page graphics, or that can import and export to a lot of file formats, then I suggest NeoN 2D Vector.  In truth, either of the latter two programs can probably handle most of your vector graphics needs unless you do a lot of technical drawing -- neither is well suited for that -- but each program has its strengths, and you might find one more convenient than the other depending on what you do.

               * * *

(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.

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

POV / ForeSpace OS/2	- by Dr. Dirk Terrell

The (http://www.povray.org/) Persistence of Vision raytracer, or POV-Ray for short, is a very popular cross-platform raytracing tool that dispels the myth that free software is somehow inferior to commercial software.  Written in portable C code, POV-Ray is available for just about every major platform from DOS to Unix, and the source code is available so that people can port it to any system not officially supported by the POV-Ray team.  Not surprisingly (to this veteran OS/2 user anyway), the POV-Ray team does not (yet) have an "official" OS/2 port, but others have taken the source code and produced (ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/unofficial/compiles-3.0/) OS/2 executables.

POV-Ray is a very powerful tool for producing photorealistic 3D images, and is capable of producing some startling images in the hands of talented artists.  Unfortunately, the program has one hindrance for casual users: it has no graphical interface.

Interfaces

However, there are third party programs that make the creation of input files for POV-Ray much easier for beginners.  One such front end for OS/2 is ForeSpace OS/2 (note that by "front-end" here I mean a modeler for building scenes and not just a graphical front end to executing POV-Ray, of which there are also several for OS/2, such as POVFront).  Without a graphical modeler, you would have to create POV-Ray input files in a text editor and do trial and error traces to get things the way you want them.  As you can imagine, REXX is a very powerful tool when used to create input files and execute POV-Ray.

Objects and Tools

Like all good 3D raytracers, POV-Ray has a selection of basic objects such as spheres, boxes, cones, cylinders, planes, and quadric surfaces (among others).  It also has some very powerful functions for combining objects as unions, intersections, differences, etc. by using Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG).  For example, creating a box with a hemisphere cut out of it is a trivial task with POV-Ray.  One of POV-Ray's most flexible objects is the height field, which enables you to make some very realistic natural scenes such as landscapes by using a 2D image whose colors represent the height of the landscape at each pixel.

POV-Ray also has some more advanced types of objects such as tori, bezier patches, blobs, smooth triangles, text, fractals, superquadrics, surfaces of revolution, prisms, polygons, lathes and fractals.  In  short, just about any shape you can imagine can be modelled with POV-Ray.

Of course, the shape of an object is, if you will, only part of the picture.  The texture of an object (its color and other surface properties such as roughness, reflectivity, etc.) plays a crucial role in the realism of a rendered scene.  And POV-Ray gives you just about every conceivable control of textures.  You can control, among other things, color, transparency and index of refraction, reflectivity, and normal (bumpiness, wrinkles, waves, etc.).

The latest version of POV-Ray (Version 3) added a long-awaited texture called a halo.  A halo texture enables you to simulate the interaction of small particles with light.  Some examples of this would be a room with lots of dust floating around or a nebula in space.

Light sources are obviously important in raytracing and POV-Ray supplies several types: point sources, spotlights, planar (area) lights and cylindrical lights.  You can also control whether a light casts shadows.  Shadowless lights (or ambient lights) are useful when you need to fill in some dark areas of an image but you don't want it to look like there is a light source present.  You can even make a light source that looks like another object, convenient for things like light bulbs.

ForeSpace OS/2

So, POV-Ray is very powerful raytracing engine, although its command line interface will unfortunately cause most people to dismiss it.  These days people don't want to use text editors and batch files to accomplish tasks.  Fortunately, people have created modelers for POV-Ray that eliminate a lot of the drudgery of using POV-Ray.  (http://www.comcen.com.au/~damien/) ForeSpace OS/2, by (damien@comcen.com.au) Sean Ryan, is a modeler that enables you to graphically create and edit objects and their textures, and composite them into scenes that can be rendered with POV-Ray.  I frequently use ForeSpace OS/2 to lay out a scene, and then manually edit the POV-Ray input file that it creates to put the final touches on it.

Although ForeSpace OS/2 is still in the development stage, it is already very useful in its current state.  You can add objects to a scene and edit their properties (size, shape, etc.) as well as edit textures for the objects.  But since the product is in development, you may run into problems as the development continues, such as old scene files being incompatible with new versions of the program.

ForeSpace OS/2 has been around for a while, but development progressed slowly as the development environment was changed to the VisualAge compiler.  Recently, though, progress has been made, and ForeSpace OS/2 is turning into a very nice tool (although it is still incomplete).  I encourage you to take a look at it, and if you like it, give the author some feedback and support.  Projects like this thrive or die on the feedback from users.

Conclusions

If you are looking for a professional, commercial quality 3D modeler for OS/2, then NeoN GRAFIX 3D is for you.  If you are on a more constrained budget or perhaps just want to play around, take a look at POV-Ray for OS/2 and ForeSpace OS/2.  They lack the polish and some of the features of NeoN GRAFIX 3D, but they are free to use and powerful enough to do just about anything you can imagine.  Some of the work I've done with POV-Ray can be found on my (http://www.gnv.com/Personal/DirkTerrell/dtart.htm) personal page if you'd like to see what can be accomplished on an OS/2 machine.

               * * *

POV-Ray
by the (http://www.povray.org/) POV Development Team
download from the (ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/povray/unofficial/compiles-3.0/pov3_os2.zip) POV-Ray web site (ZIP, 1.5M)
Registration: FREE

ForeSpace OS/2
by (http://www.comcen.com.au/~damien/) Sean Ryan
download from (http://www.comcen.com.au/~damien/fs042b.zip) Sean's web site (ZIP, 1.3k)
Registration: FREE

(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.

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

NeoN GRAFIX 3D	- by Dr. Dirk Terrell

If you're looking for a professional quality 3D modeling and animation program, NeoN 3D by COMPO Software is by far the most complete solution for OS/2 users.  Consisting of two parts, an object editor and a scene editor, NeoN GRAFIX 3D offers powerful capabilities with an intuitive interface.

Installation

Installation of the program went off without any problems.  The full version of NeoN GRAFIX 3D uses a dongle that plugs into the parallel port as copy protection.  After installing the program, you must reboot in order for the dongle's device driver to be loaded.  A full install requires about 51 megabytes of disk space, but most of that is taken up by optional sample files and bitmap textures.  The program executables require only about 2 megabytes.

Use and Features

NeoN GRAFIX 3D has two separate executables for creating images or animations.  The object editor is used to create and edit 3D objects, while the scene editor is used to arrange objects in scenes that can be rendered as still images or as animations.  This separation of tasks has definite advantages, such as making it easy to reuse objects across scenes, but it does require extra steps if you are in the scene editor and want to change an object's properties (such as texture or color).  However, the object editor can be called from within the scene editor and it loads very quickly.

The object editor consists of several parts.  You can construct 3D objects by combining simple shapes, or by extruding or spinning 2D curves.  The simple shapes are the cube (although the name is somewhat misleading because the three dimensions of the cube can be different, yielding rectangular boxes), chessboard (checkerboard), sphere, and torus.  Although they can be created easily with the other tools, conspicuously absent shapes are the cone and the cylinder.

Objects with axial symmetry can be created very easily with the spin tool with which you define the cross section of the object using lines or curves.  The spin tool is very easy to use and when creating smooth curves, gives instant feedback on changes.  It gives full control over spline options and the resolution of the spin (smaller numbers give polygon-like shapes, larger ones give smoother objects).  The extrude tool is similar (they share the same dialog in the program), except that the curve is moved linearly rather than rotated.

With complex objects, it is often useful to group objects together as a single unit.  NeoN GRAFIX 3D calls these groupings "meshes" and provides functions to manipulate them.

The surface of an object can have all sorts of characteristics.  For example, a sphere could be a colored beach ball, a shiny ball bearing, or a transparent glass ball.  The object editor's material editor controls these properties.  Materials can be very simple, consisting of a single color, or very complex using bitmaps to control colors and/or shading and simulate surfaces like stone or wood.  And if you can't get exactly what you want with these functions, you can always place a bitmap directly onto an object (creating a 3D Earth for example).

The material editor is very nice, but does have some shortcomings.  As you make changes to the various properties, you can see the effect that your changes have by clicking on a small image in the material editor.  I would prefer to see the image updated automatically as material properties were changed, rather than having to click the image each time.  Another change that would be beneficial would be to change the slider bars for some properties to spin boxes so that numerical values could be seen and entered.  [Note (added after review originally published): Robert Engberson at COMPO Software has pointed out that by holding down the Ctrl key and left clicking on a slider, a numerical entry field will pop up, enabling you to type in a value for the slider.]

Once the objects are built, the scene editor is used to composite the objects into a scene that can be rendered.  The scene editor and the object editor are very similar in appearance and operation, offering views of the various Cartesian planes (X,Y,Z) as well as 3D views.  In the scene editor, objects are easily selected and moved, rotated, and resized.  A mouse click can change the origin of rotation quickly, a feature I find extremely useful.

Light sources can also be easily placed and modified.  NeoN GRAFIX 3D supports point sources, spotlights (with full control of spot radius and fall off), and planar sources.  One handy feature is that any object can be a light source or a camera.  It is often convenient for the camera to also be a light source and this is very easy to do.

Animation

Even if it only rendered single images, NeoN GRAFIX 3D would be worth its price, but it also has some extremely powerful animation capabilities.  Scenes can be animated by creating individual frames or by moving objects in a variety of ways.  Objects can rotate, revolve around others, or move along curves.  Additionally, object motions can be linked hierarchically, making it possible to have one object move around a second one and have that second one follow it as it moves around a third one.  The individual frames of the animation can be output in TARGA or BMP formats, and they can be interlaced for animations that will be played on video tape (both the 30 Hz NTSC and the 25 Hz PAL standards).  Just for fun, I whipped up this (http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n8/neon3d3.gif) sample animation in GIF format with NeoN GRAFIX 3D and MainActor.

Various Versions

A demo version of NeoN GRAFIX 3D (http://www.neongrafix.com/n3d_demo.htm) is available.  With the demo, you can try out all of the program's features, but you can not save anything you create.  Two versions of the program are sold: the "light" version (NeoN GRAFIX 3D SE) and the full version.  The SE version has many of the features of the full version, but morphing, elastic deformation, and time splines are disabled and resolution limits are enforced for images (640x480 pixels) and animations (320x200 pixels).  For many users though, these limitations may be very minor.  If your goal is producing images for web pages, for example, Neon GRAFIX 3D SE will be a valuable component of your graphics toolbox.  The full version is a bit more expensive, and has none of the limitations of the SE version.

Performance

If you experiment with the demo version, you will find that NeoN GRAFIX 3D is very fast.  It's obvious that the programmers spent some time addressing the issue of efficiency by combining the generally faster Z-buffer algorithm with the raytracing approach.  Areas in the scene that don't involve mirroring, transparency, or shadows are rendered with the Z-buffer method, speeding up the calculations.  I ran Neon GRAFIX 3D on my old 50 MHz 486 with 20 megs of RAM, and the performance was quite respectable.  On my 200 MHz Pentium Pro, the performance was, well, blistering.

On the down side, one complaint I have about NeoN GRAFIX 3D is that it will not allow you to use long filenames. That is a limitation that shouldn't exist for an OS/2 product, especially not one of this caliber

Documentation

Neon GRAFIX 3D comes with a nice manual that thoroughly explains the program's plethora of features.  Throughout the manual are hints and examples that make it easy to get up to speed with the program.  A nice touch is an appendix that details the format of the output scene and object files.  Users with some programming experience might find that very useful.

Conclusions

Whether you are a beginner looking to spice up your web pages or a graphics professional who needs to create high quality 3D animation videos, NeoN GRAFIX 3D is the program of choice.  Like all good programs, it is intuitive and easy to use for beginners, and powerful enough underneath for professionals who need to control the tiniest details of the program's operation.

The products are competitively priced.  The SE version has a suggested retail price of US$69 US, and is worth every penny of it in my opinion.  Once quite expensive, the full version has recently been priced more competitively at US$249 US.  No matter what your 3D graphics needs, or your budget, there is a version of NeoN GRAFIX 3D that will serve you well.

               * * *

NeoN GRAFIX 3D
by (http://www.neongrafix.com/) COMPO Software
download the demo from (http://www.neongrafix.com/n3d_demo.htm) COMPO Software
MSRP: US$249.00

(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.

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

Viewing Graphics on OS/2	- by Ryan Dill

Given that this issue of e-Zine! focuses largely on graphics creation and editing, we felt we should try to inform readers of the best graphics viewing applications for OS/2 as well.  True, any graphics design program worthy of the name has the ability to view a large number of picture formats, but if all you want to do is look at an image, the extra overhead in a full graphics application like ColorWorks or Photo>Graphics is probably overkill.

Three of the most well-known OS/2 programs for viewing and minor touch-ups of digital pictures are PMView, Galleria, and PMJpeg.  This article is not intended as a full review of any of the programs (reviews of (http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n1/pmview.html) PMView and (http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n7/pmjpeg.html) PMJpeg have been previously published by e-Zine! ), but instead compares and contrasts the three, giving an overview of the features each has to offer.

For this article, I used the latest versions of each: PMView v1.00, Galleria v2.31 and PMJpeg v1.93.  (Note that the latest shareware version of PMJpeg is still v1.74, soon to be updated to v1.83 -- the registered version of PMJpeg is kept ahead of the shareware as a reward to registered users.)  All programs were tested on a Pentium 120 (40 megs RAM) running Warp 4, with an ATI 3D Expression video card.

Picture Formats

All three programs permit you to view a variety of popular graphics formats, including the common GIF, BMP and JPG.  However, from the (http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n8/formats.htm) full list of formats, it is clear that PMView can deal with more types of graphics than either of the other two contenders, including OS/2 icons, pointer files and even OS/2 boot logos.  True, most people will never have the need to view graphics in many of these formats, (I've never seen a FITS file, for example) but "better safe than sorry" is a phrase that comes to mind.  It's comforting to know that, should you ever need to view graphic X, PMView is the most likely to have support for X out of all three programs.

Slide Show

PMView, PMJpeg and Galleria all have the ability to view multiple images, one after the other, in a format much like a slide projector (hence the term 'slide show').  All allow you to view slide shows in regular or full-screen view, but unfortunately Galleria's version of full-screen doesn't cooperate with Warp 4's WarpCenter.  On my system, the WarpCenter remains on top of full-screen images, even when the WarpCenter's own 'Keep on Top' option is turned off.  PMView and PMJpeg have no such problems, both taking up the entire screen for image display.  PMView's slideshow feature also allows one to both preview the next image, and view the slideshow both forwards and backwards, unlike PMJpeg and Galleria.  (Galleria has buttons to do this while in normal mode, but no such method when in full-screen mode.)

Screen Captures

All three programs also include the ability to 'capture' part of your screen into a picture format of your choice.  (Galleria uses a small separate program called Galleria/CM for performing captures.)  Each allows you to capture anything from the entire Desktop all the way down to the inner contents of a folder or window.  Additionally, all three programs include a delay feature which lets you set enough time for you to set your Desktop up the way you like it.

Galleria/CM also includes a neat feature the other two programs lack -- when capturing a whole application, all of that application's open windows will also be captured.  For example, if you were editing three or four graphics at once in your favorite graphics designer and you wanted a picture of all of them without the rest of the Desktop, all you would have to do is select the application and tell Galleria/CM what to do and, voila!  No cropping necessary.

Editing

Since many people just can't resist tweaking an existing image until it's perfect, PMView, PMJpeg and Galleria all include basic image editing capabilities.  You can rotate or flip an image, brighten or darken it, resize it and manipulate its colors six ways from Sunday.  Unfortunately, PMJpeg has no 'undo' feature to go with its editing capabilities as its competitors do -- the only way to undo a change in color, brightness, etc. is to have a saved copy of the original image to revert to.

More Features

Scanning: Both PMView and Galleria allow one to use a scanner to scan an image right into the application for view and editing.  Galleria supports any HP ScanJet out of the box, and since PMView supports the TWAIN scanning standard, as long as you have OS/2 TWAIN drivers for your scanner, PMView will be able to make use of it no matter what it is.  (Two companies that produce TWAIN drivers for OS/2 are (http://www.gate.net/~stidev/) Solution Technologies in North America, and (http://www.cfm.de/) Computer fr Menschen GmbH in Germany.)

Drag and Drop: Of the three programs, both PMView and PMJpeg are fully drag-and-drop enabled; in other words, you can drag an image file into the open program window and the program will automatically display the image.  Similarly, if you drop an image file onto the program's WPS object, the program will start itself and then display the desired image.  Galleria also supports dragging and dropping an image into an open Galleria window, but it doesn't appear to support dragging and dropping directly on the program's icon, as PMView and PMJpeg do.  This is unfortunate, as it's a convenient feature.

Real-Time Scrolling: If your image is larger than the current screen size, each of these programs will either resize the image or give you scrollbars to pan around it with, depending on how it's currently set up.  However, PMView and Galleria both have a nice feature in this respect which PMJpeg lacks -- when you pan around an image, PMJpeg doesn't update your view of the image until you're finished moving; both PMView and Galleria actually move the image around in real-time, which makes panning easier.

Thumbnails: Both PMView and Galleria allow one to browse all images in a directory at once via small copies of the actual image, called 'thumbnails'.  Thumbnails are an excellent idea as it's extremely easy to see what the image will generally look like without taking the time to load the whole thing.  This is perfect when you're searching for an image you've seen before, but don't want to have to individually load 50 others just to find it.

Right Mouse-button Support: PMView makes good use of both mouse buttons in its operation.  No matter what window (load, save, view, etc.) you're in, a helpful menu is just a right-click away.  This is especially good when viewing images full-screen, as the title bar menus just get in the way when you're trying to devote all your screen space to a particular image.

DDE Toolkit: Galleria includes a limited DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) developer's toolkit for adding image support to your own applications -- if a program you're writing has need of displaying images, the kit included with Galleria provides you with a simple example of a PM client which would use Galleria to do so; full source is included, so it is a good stepping stone for those just introducing graphics support to their programs.

Other Viewers

Note, of course, that these three programs are by no means the only ways to view graphics on OS/2; they've been selected because they offer an excellent mix between simple image display and more complex graphics editing programs.  If quick and dirty image viewing of the most basic formats is all you need, there are various other options, such as (ftp://ftp.practice.xo.com/pub/lb.zip) Practice Corp.'s Lightning Browser or (http://www.gate.net/~stidev/applause.html) Applause.  Browse the graphics directory of (http://www.os2ss.com/archives/hobbes/os2/apps/graphics/) the OS/2 Supersite or (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/search?sh=1&dir=/pub/os2/apps/graphics/&stype=browse) Hobbes to find one to your liking.

Conclusion

As you would expect, pricing for the programs is based on the 'stuff costs' scale -- ie: to get more features, you pay more bucks.  PMJpeg is easily affordable at US$20, and PMView and Galleria are further up the scale, at US$42 and US$59 respectively.  Of the three, my recommendation is PMView -- in addition to being able to view more formats than either of the other two (including various X graphics, for those who use XFree86 under OS/2), PMView's potential to use any TWAIN-supported scanner and its superior slideshow features combine together to make it more polished (yet less expensive) than Galleria, and simply more powerful than PMJpeg.

               * * *

Galleria v2.31
by (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/bitware/) BitWare Australia
download from (http://www.os2ss.com/archives/hobbes/os2/apps/graphics/viewer/galleria231.zip) the OS/2 Supersite (ZIP, 499k)
Registration: US$59.00

PMJpeg v1.74
by (http://www.pixvision.com/html/product_info_1.html) PixVision Software
download from (http://www.os2ss.com/archives/hobbes/os2/apps/graphics/convert/pmjpg174) the OS/2 Supersite (ZIP, 212k)
Registration: US$20.00

PMView v1.00
by (http://www.bmtmicro.com/pmview/) Peter Nielsen
download from (ftp://ftp.bmtmicro.com/bmtmicro/pmvw100.zip) BMT Micro (ZIP, 1.3M)
Registration: US$42.00

(dill@os2ezine.com) Ryan Dill is a student in Computer Science at Acadia University in Wolfville, NS and one of e-Zine! 's assistant editors.  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.

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

Widget Workshop for OS/2	- by Colin L. Hildinger

Late in 1995 Maxis released a batch of OS/2 ports of their games.  They included SimCity 2000, SimTown, and Widget Workshop.  Of course, you may not realize that these games ever existed because they never appeared on store shelves; they were only available from OS/2 only vendors like Indelible Blue and directly from Maxis.  These games were all ported by Softport (formerly WinWare), who also ported Doom and Links to OS/2.

Installation

The installation of Widget Workshop is straightforward, since it uses the IBM installer.  If you aren't familiar with installing software, there's even an OS/2 specific pamphlet in the jewel case telling you how to install the game from the CD -- a nice touch.  The only minor flaw I found with the pamphlet is that I believe the game requires DIVE and uses DART (which I think it will install on any Warp 3 system which doesn't already have DART installed), but the pamphlet only mentions SVGA and an OS/2 supported sound card.

What is a Widget Workshop?

Maxis describes it as a "Mad Scientist's Laboratory," but I think a "Mad Engineer's Laboratory" might be a better description.  (OK, so I'm a little biased.)  There are basically two aspects to the game.  The first aspect is the laboratory.  You can create "widgets" from literally dozens of different parts.  The second aspect is that of a puzzle game.  You are given partial widgets and have to make them work properly.

The Puzzles

The box says that the game is for ages 8 and up and this is probably accurate, since you'll have almost as much fun with this game as your 10 year old would.  The puzzle aspect of the game sort of reminded me of Sierra's "The Incredible Machine," except that there weren't enough puzzles for my taste.  The 25 puzzles included with the game only lasted me through one afternoon of tinkering (but it was a fun afternoon).  If they'd included 100-200 puzzles I would have played the game until I finished them all.  Of course, I am a Mechanical Engineer, so this stuff was right up my alley.  A 10 year old (or even a 14 year old) would probably take significantly longer to finish them (or at least I can hope he or she would!).

Widgets

Since there were only 25 puzzles, I assume that this is the main focus of the game.  The books included in the package include instructions on how to make a variety of different widgets.  They also tell why they work.  If your child is a budding engineer, or if he or she is the type who spends hours playing with Lego toys (especially the Technics ones), this is sure to teach them a few things in a way that they will enjoy.  Parts used in the widgets include timing devices, switches, and logic gates.  One of the sample widgets is a grandfather clock which chimes just like a real grandfather clock.

You can also upload your widgets to Maxis and download ones that others have created.  Maxis has a (http://www.maxis.com/games/widget_workshop/creations.html) "creations" web page where you can find a variety of widgets that other people have uploaded.  Since the widget files (.WGT files) are platform independent, you can share with Windows and Macintosh users.  I tried a widget from the creations page called "gate.wgt" that worked just fine.

There are also "stand-alone widgets" which are widgets with a wrapper containing the necessary executable code.  I was also able to create and run these under OS/2 without problems.  When you create a stand-alone widget, you can run it on any OS/2 machine, but you can't edit the widget after creating it.

I also tried to import some stand-alone widgets I downloaded from the Maxis web page but didn't have any luck.  Every time I tried I just crashed the game.  I'm not sure why someone would upload a stand-alone widget without including the .WGT file, but most of the files that were uploaded seem to be of that format.  I suspect that the failure to import them is a bug since the readme file specifically talks about creating stand-alone widgets that you expect to import onto a Macintosh (the OS/2 version allows a much larger work area than the Macintosh version, which is limited to 800x600).

A Rant

Electronic Arts recently purchased Maxis, and it appears that they've removed every trace of the OS/2 versions of all their products from their web page (the fix for SimCity 2000 is still on their FTP server), which was already the only place in the world to find information about them.  I didn't realize this until shortly before press time, but this gives me a little chance to rant.

Maxis created a good game.  They did a good job of porting it -- it ranks near Links in polish which really says something for the work of Jim Thomas and Softport.  Jim seems to do a good job on everything.

Unfortunately, Maxis never made any attempt to sell the product.  The Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and Macintosh versions are all included on one CD which you can find at software stores.  OS/2 is the only platform the game runs on which isn't in the box and therefore never made it to software stores.  Whatever their logic in doing this, it ensured low sales for the OS/2 port of the game, and it ensured that they wouldn't look at porting future games to OS/2.  Finally, to top it off, they take the OS/2 information off of their web page which further reduces the chances of anyone finding the information and ordering a copy.

I give them a B+ for porting the games (the ports are well done but they reached OS/2 well after they reached the Windows and Macintosh platforms) and an F- for marketing them.

Conclusions

Widget Workshop is a fairly entertaining toy that may well be something which your kids will enjoy and from which they will learn.  Like every game, this won't be true for everyone, so make your judgement based on your knowledge of your family.  If you want to get a peek at the game, check out the OS/2 Warp version 4 "Applications Sampler" CD.  There is a very limited demo version on that CD.  But for US$27 plus shipping, it's not that bad of a gamble.

               * * *

Widget Workshop for OS/2
by (http://www.maxis.com/) Maxis Software
MSRP: US$26.95 (CD only)

(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.

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

Game Reviews Revisited	- by Colin L. Hildinger

This month I thought I'd take a look back at games we've reviewed in the past and giving some updated information.  Some of the games haven't changed, but I've picked out a few which have been updated since we first ran our reviews.

In our second issue, Mikael Engdahl reviewed (http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n2/cards.html) Card Games for OS/2 v2.7.  Since that time, Card Games has been updated to v3.2 and has been purchased by (http://www.bmtmicro.com/) BMT Micro.  What's new in version 3.2?  Well, honestly I'm not sure what all the differences are, but you can check it out at (http://www.maschek.com/cardgame.shtml) Felix Maschek's web page.  This high quality game was nominated this year for a Shareware Industry Association Award.

In our fourth issue out of the gate Christopher B. Wright reviewed one of OS/2's all time classic games, (http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n4/galciv2.html) Galactic Civilizations II.  A lot has happened to this game since our first review, as features have constantly been added to it over time.  Your best bet is to grab the latest FixPak from (http://www.stardock.com/) Stardock, and maybe think about getting Shipyards ((http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n6/shipyard.html) reviewed two months later by Kris Kwilas).  Stardock has also released an expansion pack for Galactic Civilizations II, which we will be reviewing soon.

When we reviewed (http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n5/entertn.html) Entertainment Pack for OS/2, it was only at v1.7, but now it's up to version 2.7.  What does that mean?  Well, Entertainment Pack for OS/2 is a collection of small games, and each increment of the version number seems to mean that a new game has been added, so that means that 10 new games have been added since we did that first review.  Like FM Cards, Entertainment Pack for OS/2 was among the nominees for an SIA Award this year!

Since we reviewed (http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n5/master.html) Masterroids v0.9, version 1.0 has been released.  I heard just the other day that v1.1 is right around the corner, too.  Another game that has been updated a point release is (http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n6/matrix.html) Matrix, now at v1.3.  Once again I'm not sure what exactly was changed between version 1.2 and version 1.3, but hey, it's a new version!

When we reviewed (http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n7/sc2000.html) SimCity 2000 for OS/2 there wasn't a FixPak available for it.  Now there is.  There also wasn't a limited play demo available.  Now there is.  And, if you have SimCity 2000 for DOS or Windows, you can get the OS/2 version from Maxis for the cost of shipping.  Now that's a bargain!

When Warp 4 was released, (http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n10/toyland.htm) Toyland was updated to support voice control.  You can get this new voice enabled v1.1 from (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/games/puzzle/toyland.zip) Hobbes or any of the other usual OS/2 archives.

The following games all have had fixes released since we reviewed them: (http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n12/avarice.htm) Avarice: The Final Saga, (http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n4/talosv.htm) Vigilance on Talos V, and (http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n5/links.htm) Links for OS/2.  The fixes for the respective games can be found on the manufacturers' web pages.

Finally, as mentioned in my Gaming News column this month, there is now a demo version of PlusPak: B.U.G.S. (reviewed (http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n7/bugs.htm) last month) which can be obtained from (http://www.stardock.com/) Stardock's web page.

There are probably other updates that have been released to other games we've reviewed too, but these are some that stood out as I looked through my list.  If you find some others while reading through our (http://www.os2ezine.com/backissues.htm) back issues, (colin@os2ezine.com) let me know and I'll put them in next month's news column.

               * * *

(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.

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

CCK Technologies P133	- by Rodney Baker

More and more these days, those of us who are conversant with the workings of modern hardware and software are given the title of "guru" by those who are less conversant with technology.  And we are often called upon to assist and advise when, as a result of the inexorable forward march of technology and the current "state of the art", an upgrade is finally deemed to be necessary.

This time it was the local church, whose secretary had been struggling, even wrestling, with an outdated 486DX-40 with 4MB (!!) RAM, trying, with varying degrees of success, to run Microsoft Office 4.2 on DOS 5/Windows 3.1.

To Upgrade or to Replace?

I was first called upon to assist when the regular General Protection Faults, coffee breaks waiting for Word for Windows 6.0 to load and other assorted irritations finally became too much.  The first thing I decided to do was to upgrade the RAM to 16MB and optimise the Windows settings (including installing the correct video drivers for the Trident card) but this was only a stopgap measure.  The 420MB hard drive just wasn't adequate and it was decided that a new machine was called for.  A budget was set of AUS $2,000 even though I advised that I thought they were about $1,000 short of doing the job properly.  But I was overruled; that was all they could afford.

Based on this, I set about doing some research on current prices and what could be achieved within the allowed budget.  Many firms were advertising specials on systems which included unnecessary items (for an office PC largely used for DTP and accounting) such as sound cards, multimedia speaker kits, lots of bundled multimedia and educational software and, of course, Windows 95 preloaded.

Since I was planning to set the church up with OS/2 Warp 4.0 and to keep their current suite of Windows 3.1 applications (which were serving their needs very well and in no real need of upgrading) Windows 95 and all the other software were redundant.  Unfortunately no-one I came across offered the choice of specifying OS/2 Warp 4.0.  Quite apart from that, none of the bundled systems I looked at came close to what I expected in terms of quality components either.  Being built down to a price, they all used cheap (and sometimes nasty) monitors, keyboards and cases.  Not the recipe for a good, long-lasting office machine.

Why OS/2 when they are using predominantly Windows 3.1 apps?  Well, for starters the thought of running DOS and the FAT file system on a 1.6GB hard drive makes me shudder.  HPFS is just so much more efficient.  That, coupled with OS/2's stability and multitasking capability makes it a no-brainer for me.  Besides, with the prospect of Java applications becoming viable alternatives in the not too distant future and the emergence of other application suites such as Star Office 4.0 made OS/2 look more and more like the right choice.  There's also the possibility of another couple of PC's being networked with the new machine and OS/2 provides that capability right out of the box.

Why Pay for Name Brands?

While researching prices, I enquired of a friend of mine who runs a business called CCK Technologies as to what they could do for me.  CCK is a small company, just getting off the ground by business standards, but nevertheless have proven to be reliable with support, backup and supply.  Peter Cockburn put some prices together and between us we specced out a system which was right on the money.

The spec we came up with is as follows:

o ABit SM5 jumperless Pentium motherboard
o Intel Pentium-S 133 CPU
o 32MB RAM
o Western Digital "Caviar" 1.6GB HDD
o 1.44MB Floppy Drive
o Panasonic 12x CD-ROM
o Asus PCI-V775V2C 2MB Video Card (S3 86C775 based)
o Optiquest V655 15" non-interlaced SVGA monitor 
o Compuccon 3 button mouse.
o 104 key keyboard

The system would have come in just under the church's budget with 16MB RAM, and was just over with 32MB.  I suggested that they go with 32MB and spend the extra now, given that memory requirements were likely to go up, not down.  On this point, they agreed and approved the purchase.

Attention to Detail

I was present when CCK Technologies assembled the computer (and have seen them doing other customers' systems also) so I can testify to the care with which it was built.  Everything was checked and double checked before moving on to the next step.  This is part of their rationale -- doing it right the first time and providing the customer with a system which works from first power-on.  If they're not happy with it, they won't ship it.  Simple.

Setting up the ABit motherboard for the processor is simplicity itself.  It autodetects almost every CPU currently known and sets the voltage, clock speed and other parameters on power up.  It also has a "CPU Soft Menu" available from the BIOS set up screen which allows you to override parameters if necessary.  However, in their documentation Abit warns that you shouldn't play with settings unless you know exactly what you're doing.  Good advice.  I left it alone.

This motherboard is also interesting in that it provides an OS/2-specific BIOS setting for memory access when using more than 64MB RAM.  I've not come across this before.

The Asus video card was a pleasant surprise, providing OS/2 drivers on the supplied CD-ROM and instructions for installing same in the manual, even if the supplied driver is a copy of the S3 drivers available on the S3 web site or the (http://www.asus.com.tw/) Asus web site rather than a vendor-specific driver as their NT and Windows 95 drivers appear to be.  Nevertheless, they do support OS/2 by providing drivers and that is to be commended.

Installation and Performance

OS/2 Warp 4.0's installation program correctly identified the S3 86C775 chipset on the card and installed the appropriate drivers by default anyway.  Having previously downloaded the latest 3.03.16 drivers from (http://www.s3.com/) S3 I reset the video to standard VGA and installed the new drivers.  They installed flawlessly the first time and have been rock solid ever since.  Video performance on this machine is excellent and I'd have no hesitation in recommending the Asus PCI-V775V2C video card to any OS/2 user in the market for a low-midrange PCI video card (max. 2MB RAM).

The Optiquest monitor is also a good, mid-priced performer.  These days I wouldn't recommend anything less than a 15" monitor, especially if you want to run higher video resolutions (1024x768 and above).  This particular monitor can handle that resolution at 65k colours at a healthy 75Hz vertical refresh rate with a horizontal rate of 60kHz.  This assures flicker free display and no eye strain, even when used for long periods.  The new S3 drivers allow for selection of font sizes (large, small, or auto) for higher video resolutions for OS/2, seamless WIN-OS/2 and full screen WIn-OS/2 sessions and the Optiquest monitor gives excellent clarity even on the "small fonts" setting.  Colour depth and presentation is also good.  Overall, a very good performer.

The performance of the Western Digital hard drives and Panasonic CD-ROM drives are well known so there's no need to elaborate on the basics, but a little optimisation of BIOS parameters and IBM1S506.ADD parameters went a long way to making sure that performance was as good as it could be.  To see what I mean, check out the disk transfer speeds before and after optimisation (results from SysBench 0.9.1d are below).  One wonders how many other systems out there could benefit from similar optimisation exercises, although that could be an article in itself.

Once OS/2 was installed and running, all that remained was to install the software and test the system for a while before delivering it to its final home.  This all proceeded without a hitch.  So far, in a week of testing with OS/2 and both seamless and full-screen WIN-OS/2 sessions I haven't managed to hang or crash it once.  Its video performance is good, drive speed excellent, multitasking fast and smooth and overall it's a very snappy performer.  Comparing it to a couple of genuine IBM machines (PC-350's) of similar specification which I recently commissioned for a client through my work, this feels noticeably smoother and faster in its performance.

Conclusions

To summarise, CCK Technologies have delivered a good, honest, reliable performer which runs OS/2 extremely well.  They have done so at a competitive price and excellent service.  Well done.

               * * *

CCK Technologies Pentium 133 System
by CCK Technologies
Phone: +61 8 8357 4444
Fax: +61 8 8276 6948
e-mail: (peter.cockburn@adelaide.on.net) peter.cockburn@adelaide.on.net
MSRP: AUS$2,450

(vk5ztv@qsl.net) Rodney Baker is a long-time OS/2 user, computer hobbyist and doesn't have a web page.

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


Sysbench 0.9.1d result file created Mon Jul 21 21:36:20 1997
Machine name    - CCK Technologies Pentium 133
Manufacturer    - CCK Technologies
Motherboard     - ABit SM5
Chipset         - Intel 430VX
Processor       - Intel Pentium-S 133
External cache  - 512K
Graphics card   - Asus V775V2C
Disk Controller - On-board EIDE
Machine data
Coprocessor     = Yes
RAM             = 32.00 MB
Priority        = Dynamic
Maxwait         = 2
Timeslice       = (32,32)
Swap file size  = 20.00MB
  ...initially  = 20.00MB
Video data
Resolution      = 1024x768x16 bits/pixel
Number planes   = 0
Screen Access   = Direct
Bank Switched   = No
Bytes/scanline  = 2048
Aperture size   = 2097152
Manufact. code  = 8
Chipset code    = 16
 Graphics
   BitBlt S->S cpy       :       51.577    Mpixels/s
   BitBlt M->S cpy       :        6.477    Mpixels/s
   Filled Rectangle      :      159.756    Mpixels/s
   Pattern Fill          :      161.309    Mpixels/s
   Vertical Lines        :        9.828    Mpixels/s
   Horizontal Lines      :       14.781    Mpixels/s
   Diagonal Lines        :       11.496    Mpixels/s
   Text Render           :       11.309    Mpixels/s
   ------------------------------------------------------------
   Total                 :       50.796    PM-marks
 CPU integer
   Dhrystone             :      105.738    VAX 11/780 MIPS
   Hanoi                 :       84.519    moves/25 usec
   Heapsort              :       61.242    MIPS
   Sieve                 :      119.253    MIPS
   ------------------------------------------------------------
   Total                 :       95.670    CPUint-marks
 CPU float
   Linpack               :        9.271    MFLOPS
   Flops                 :       20.859    MFLOPS
   Fast Fourier Tr.      :       15.494    VAX FFT's
   ------------------------------------------------------------
   Total                 :       16.650    CPUfloat-marks
 Direct Interface to video extensions - DIVE
   Video bus bandw.      :       53.864    MB/s
   DIVE fun              :      188.678    fps at 640x480x256
   M->S, DD,   1.00:1    :      184.069    fps at 640x480x256
   ------------------------------------------------------------
   Total                 :       69.105    DIVE-marks
 File I/O - cache read - Drive D:
   4Kb seq.   N     N    :     3355.853    KB/sec
   4Kb seq.   N     Y    :     3797.600    KB/sec
   4Kb random N     N    :      391.791    KB/sec
   4Kb random N     Y    :      388.326    KB/sec
   4Kb seq.   Y     N    :     1055.655    KB/sec
   4Kb seq.   Y     Y    :     3436.034    KB/sec
   4Kb random Y     N    :      112.620    KB/sec
   4Kb random Y     Y    :      121.615    KB/sec
   8Kb seq.   N     N    :     3724.955    KB/sec
   8Kb seq.   N     Y    :     4036.228    KB/sec
   8Kb random N     N    :      720.000    KB/sec
   8Kb random N     Y    :      704.158    KB/sec
   8Kb seq.   Y     N    :     1100.605    KB/sec
   8Kb seq.   Y     Y    :     4014.917    KB/sec
   8Kb random Y     N    :      205.642    KB/sec
   8Kb random Y     Y    :      697.067    KB/sec
   16K seq.   N     N    :     1912.673    KB/sec
   16K seq.   N     Y    :     4088.617    KB/sec
   16K random N     N    :     1305.970    KB/sec
   16K random N     Y    :     1256.533    KB/sec
   16K seq.   Y     N    :     1192.632    KB/sec
   16K seq.   Y     Y    :     4007.459    KB/sec
   16K random Y     N    :      373.524    KB/sec
   16K random Y     Y    :     1275.733    KB/sec
   32K seq.   N     N    :     3497.570    KB/sec
   32K seq.   N     Y    :     5066.098    KB/sec
   32K random N     N    :     2118.400    KB/sec
   32K random N     Y    :     2044.776    KB/sec
   32K seq.   Y     N    :     3398.721    KB/sec
   32K seq.   Y     Y    :     5040.512    KB/sec
   32K random Y     N    :     2048.000    KB/sec
   32K random Y     Y    :     2033.031    KB/sec
   64K seq.   N     N    :     6079.212    KB/sec
   64K seq.   N     Y    :     2587.107    KB/sec
   64K random N     N    :     3323.733    KB/sec
   64K random N     Y    :     2938.166    KB/sec
   64K seq.   Y     N    :     1406.360    KB/sec
   64K seq.   Y     Y    :     1615.344    KB/sec
   64K random Y     N    :     1280.000    KB/sec
   64K random Y     Y    :     1655.467    KB/sec
   ------------------------------------------------------------
   Total                 :     2235.218    File I/O-marks
 Memory
   5    kB copy          :      397.651    MB/s
   10   kB copy          :      130.035    MB/s
   20   kB copy          :       67.253    MB/s
   40   kB copy          :       63.095    MB/s
   80   kB copy          :       63.036    MB/s
   160  kB copy          :       58.802    MB/s
   320  kB copy          :       57.749    MB/s
   640  kB copy          :       49.350    MB/s
   1280 kB copy          :       44.543    MB/s
   5    kB read          :      159.085    MB/s
   10   kB read          :      121.080    MB/s
   20   kB read          :      106.129    MB/s
   40   kB read          :      106.235    MB/s
   80   kB read          :      106.263    MB/s
   160  kB read          :      103.418    MB/s
   320  kB read          :       82.775    MB/s
   640  kB read          :       76.855    MB/s
   1280 kB read          :       70.776    MB/s
   5    kB write         :       84.310    MB/s
   10   kB write         :       84.272    MB/s
   20   kB write         :       84.313    MB/s
   40   kB write         :       84.313    MB/s
   80   kB write         :       84.260    MB/s
   160  kB write         :       84.250    MB/s
   320  kB write         :       83.872    MB/s
   640  kB write         :       83.935    MB/s
   1280 kB write         :       83.894    MB/s
   ------------------------------------------------------------
   Total                 :       74.884    Mem-marks
 Disk I/O disk 1:  1547 MB - Seagate ST31621A
   Avg. data access time :       17.300    ms
   Cache/Bus xfer rate   :        6.106    MB/s
   Average Transfer rate :        4.775    MB/s
   Disk use CPU load     :       75.000    percent
   ------------------------------------------------------------
   Total                 :       34.422    Disk I/O-marks
 CD-ROM I/O disk 1:   515 MB - Panasonic 8x CD Rom
   Avg. data access time :      116.300    ms
   Average Transfer rate :     1197.000    KB/s
   CD-ROM use CPU load   :       70.000    percent
   ------------------------------------------------------------
   Total                 :       61.505    CD I/O-marks

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

Sysbench 0.9.1d result file created Tue Jul 22 00:38:39 1997
Machine name    - CCK Technologies Pentium 133
Manufacturer    - CCK Technologies
Motherboard     - ABit SM5
Chipset         - Intel 430VX
Processor       - Intel Pentium-S 133
External cache  - 512K
Graphics card   - Asus V775V2C
Disk Controller - On-board EIDE
Machine data
Coprocessor     = Yes
RAM             = 32.00 MB
Priority        = Dynamic
Maxwait         = 1
Timeslice       = (32,32)
Swap file size  = 20.00MB
  ...initially  = 20.00MB
Video data
Resolution      = 1024x768x16 bits/pixel
Number planes   = 0
Screen Access   = Direct
Bank Switched   = No
Bytes/scanline  = 2048
Aperture size   = 2097152
Manufact. code  = 8
Chipset code    = 16
 Graphics
   BitBlt S->S cpy       :       51.577    Mpixels/s
   BitBlt M->S cpy       :        6.582    Mpixels/s
   Filled Rectangle      :      159.809    Mpixels/s
   Pattern Fill          :      161.309    Mpixels/s
   Vertical Lines        :        9.700    Mpixels/s
   Horizontal Lines      :       14.781    Mpixels/s
   Diagonal Lines        :       11.562    Mpixels/s
   Text Render           :       11.315    Mpixels/s
   ------------------------------------------------------------
   Total                 :       50.814    PM-marks
 CPU integer
   Dhrystone             :      105.748    VAX 11/780 MIPS
   Hanoi                 :       84.814    moves/25 usec
   Heapsort              :       62.399    MIPS
   Sieve                 :      119.508    MIPS
   ------------------------------------------------------------
   Total                 :       96.017    CPUint-marks
 CPU float
   Linpack               :        9.347    MFLOPS
   Flops                 :       20.858    MFLOPS
   Fast Fourier Tr.      :       16.031    VAX FFT's
   ------------------------------------------------------------
   Total                 :       16.793    CPUfloat-marks
 Direct Interface to video extensions - DIVE
   Video bus bandw.      :       53.840    MB/s
   DIVE fun              :      188.541    fps at 640x480x256
   M->S, DD,   1.00:1    :      184.122    fps at 640x480x256
   ------------------------------------------------------------
   Total                 :       69.102    DIVE-marks
 File I/O - cache read - Drive D:
   4Kb seq.   N     N    :     2354.108    KB/sec
   4Kb seq.   N     Y    :     6000.267    KB/sec
   4Kb random N     N    :      384.800    KB/sec
   4Kb random N     Y    :      413.067    KB/sec
   4Kb seq.   Y     N    :      890.517    KB/sec
   4Kb seq.   Y     Y    :     5149.333    KB/sec
   4Kb random Y     N    :      109.457    KB/sec
   4Kb random Y     Y    :      124.000    KB/sec
   8Kb seq.   N     N    :     3980.020    KB/sec
   8Kb seq.   N     Y    :     6018.657    KB/sec
   8Kb random N     N    :      707.200    KB/sec
   8Kb random N     Y    :      777.067    KB/sec
   8Kb seq.   Y     N    :      712.281    KB/sec
   8Kb seq.   Y     Y    :     6019.733    KB/sec
   8Kb random Y     N    :      211.858    KB/sec
   8Kb random Y     Y    :      774.400    KB/sec
   16K seq.   N     N    :     1922.216    KB/sec
   16K seq.   N     Y    :     5937.067    KB/sec
   16K random N     N    :     1305.600    KB/sec
   16K random N     Y    :     1395.615    KB/sec
   16K seq.   Y     N    :     1266.525    KB/sec
   16K seq.   Y     Y    :     5915.733    KB/sec
   16K random Y     N    :      385.197    KB/sec
   16K random Y     Y    :     1394.456    KB/sec
   32K seq.   N     N    :     3508.221    KB/sec
   32K seq.   N     Y    :     5768.533    KB/sec
   32K random N     N    :     2164.179    KB/sec
   32K random N     Y    :     2250.667    KB/sec
   32K seq.   Y     N    :     3255.467    KB/sec
   32K seq.   Y     Y    :     5755.733    KB/sec
   32K random Y     N    :     2013.867    KB/sec
   32K random Y     Y    :     2253.731    KB/sec
   64K seq.   N     N    :     6287.540    KB/sec
   64K seq.   N     Y    :     2767.591    KB/sec
   64K random N     N    :     3060.406    KB/sec
   64K random N     Y    :     3204.267    KB/sec
   64K seq.   Y     N    :     1363.148    KB/sec
   64K seq.   Y     Y    :     1656.310    KB/sec
   64K random Y     N    :     1286.136    KB/sec
   64K random Y     Y    :     1664.000    KB/sec
   ------------------------------------------------------------
   Total                 :     2560.224    File I/O-marks
 Memory
   5    kB copy          :      455.780    MB/s
   10   kB copy          :      128.759    MB/s
   20   kB copy          :       67.260    MB/s
   40   kB copy          :       58.929    MB/s
   80   kB copy          :       58.889    MB/s
   160  kB copy          :       55.669    MB/s
   320  kB copy          :       55.676    MB/s
   640  kB copy          :       47.216    MB/s
   1280 kB copy          :       44.792    MB/s
   5    kB read          :      161.573    MB/s
   10   kB read          :      120.266    MB/s
   20   kB read          :      106.191    MB/s
   40   kB read          :       96.230    MB/s
   80   kB read          :       91.823    MB/s
   160  kB read          :       98.306    MB/s
   320  kB read          :       82.686    MB/s
   640  kB read          :       75.606    MB/s
   1280 kB read          :       70.776    MB/s
   5    kB write         :       84.260    MB/s
   10   kB write         :       84.260    MB/s
   20   kB write         :       84.317    MB/s
   40   kB write         :       84.295    MB/s
   80   kB write         :       84.294    MB/s
   160  kB write         :       84.250    MB/s
   320  kB write         :       83.935    MB/s
   640  kB write         :       83.935    MB/s
   1280 kB write         :       83.926    MB/s
   ------------------------------------------------------------
   Total                 :       75.521    Mem-marks
 Disk I/O disk 1:  1547 MB - Seagate ST31621A
   Avg. data access time :       17.200    ms
   Cache/Bus xfer rate   :       12.378    MB/s
   Average Transfer rate :        5.626    MB/s
   Disk use CPU load     :       11.000    percent
   ------------------------------------------------------------
   Total                 :       46.208    Disk I/O-marks
 CD-ROM I/O disk 1:   515 MB - Panasonic 8x CD Rom
   Avg. data access time :      119.200    ms
   Average Transfer rate :     1205.000    KB/s
   CD-ROM use CPU load   :       25.000    percent
   ------------------------------------------------------------
   Total                 :       62.232    CD I/O-marks

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

Adesso NUForm Keyboard	- by Pete Grubbs

Overview

Maybe it was a symptom of things to come, but when I was 13, I asked my mom for a Smith Corona portable typewriter for my birthday.  It came with a self-programmed touch typing course (on convenient 45 RPM records!  Remember those?) that I plowed through in a week.  With beginnings like that, it's easy to see why I gravitated to the computer and word processing, especially since I have a 'neat' personality coupled to the world's worst handwriting.

As a college student, I've spent many long hours tapping away on various computer keyboards, all with slightly different feels but all in the standard QWERTY, 101 key layout.  Recently, I decided to replace my aging keyboard with a new ergonomic unit from (http://www.adessoinc.com/) Adesso, the PCK-303T Nu-Form Keyboard with Touchpad for PC.  Even though it's designed for Windows '95, OS/2 users can benefit from its design and features.

Test System

The machine used to rate this product is powered by a Cyrix 100 chip running 32M of RAM.  The graphics card is a D24 BitBlaster with 1M of RAM hooked into an AcerView 56 15" monitor.  The single hard drive is a Fujitsu 1090M and the operating system is OS/2 Warp 4.0 (sans FixPaks).  I also have Stardock's Process Commander and NPS WPS installed.

Installation

The Adesso NUForm includes a touch pad (called "Glidepoint") which replaces the mouse, so installation includes plugging in two cords, one for the keyboard itself and another for the pad.  The cord is only 4.5' long which made for a bit of a challenge as I tried to thread it over and through the clutter that lives on my desk.  This unit uses a standard 9-pin connector and should be configured as a serial mouse.  The keyboard will not work with an XT (but then, how many of those are running any version of Warp?).  Adesso also offers this product with a pointing stick or without any pointing device at all.

Up and Running

After rebooting, I was pleased to see that Warp recognized the Glidepoint immediately.  Working with this type of pointing device takes a bit of practice.  Like many, I started my GUI days with a two-button mouse and the differences between devices are significant.  Moving the pointer is as simple as stroking the pad with a fingertip.  This pad is velocity sensitive so the faster you stroke it, the further the pointer moves.

While the Glidepoint has two buttons to simulate mouse clicks, these are mounted above one another on its left side.  The top button takes the place of the right mouse button, while the bottom stands in for the left.  You can also tap the pad to simulate a left mouse click (two taps for a double-click).  I was able to fully configure the Glidepoint with the Mouse object in the OS/2 Setup folder as easily as I could my old Acer mouse with one exception (see below).

The Basics

The Adesso's split design is supposed to make typing less strenuous, but I can't say that I've noticed any huge difference in the (admittedly short) time that I've worked with it.  What I did notice, immediately, was the difference in having my hands a good two inches apart as they sat on the Home Row.  Surprisingly, it took very little time for me to become completely comfortable with this arrangement.  (The Adesso manual notes that new users generally become accustomed to ergonomic boards in a few days.)

The keyboard has a split space bar, just long enough for each thumb to comfortably operate it.  The keys themselves have a very clean feel.  In fact, the whole unit feels very solid.  Key response is predictable and pleasant while the keyboard takes up noticeably less space on my desktop than my old one.

The Glidepoint, mounted beneath the space bar, works very comfortably for someone who touch types, and I find myself enjoying the fact that I'm not constantly reaching across my desk to grab a mouse when I'm in the middle of a document.  Selecting text with the Glidepoint is a matter of either holding down the bottom (left) button while dragging a finger across the pad's surface or tapping the pad once and then dragging.  The latter requires a little practice, but it's not too difficult to master.  Drag operations are accomplished in essentially the same way.

Other Goodies

Since I'm running Process Commander, I'm able to use this board's Win95 keys.  In fact, after installing PC, I decided to make a point of getting a Win95 keyboard to try out this feature.  After less than a week, I can only say that I love it.  I have the Windows keys set to switch between tasks (a la Alt-Esc) and the TaskList key to bring up my Window List.  (Of course, this functionality is available on any Win95 keyboard provided you're running Process Commander.)

Hmm . . . Is this a bug or a feature?

To date, I've only had one significant problem with this product:  There are times when Warp just doesn't seem to know that it's there.  I've booted 3 or 4 times and found that I had a mouse, i.e., the Glidepoint worked, but the keyboard itself didn't.  Perplexed, I shut down and rebooted only to have the same problem.  I finally solved this by unplugging and re-plugging the keyboard while my machine was up and running.

In the many years that I've been a computer user, I've never had a glitch like this one.  And I've never had a keyboard cause my machine to whine like a phaser on overload (Star Trek style, not STNG).  This has only happened once, and, again, the solution was to simply unplug and re-plug the keyboard.  (Since I'm fortunate enough to have space on my desktop for my computer case, this is a very simple job, however, I wouldn't envy anyone who had to crawl about to accomplish the same task and I'd moan to high heaven if I had to do so to make this keyboard work.)

I called Adesso's tech support and discussed the problem with one of their reps.  (It's a toll call, but the voice mail menu was easily navigable, the wait on hold was very short, about 20 seconds, and the tech person I talked to was pleasant and helpful.)  Apparently this problem has cropped up in a number of older units and Adesso has changed the controller chip in the board.  If you purchase one of these units, Adesso will repair or replace it at no charge.

One of the most obvious limitations of this keyboard, though, is the touchpad.   For all its convenience, the Glidepoint's small area can make dragging an object the length of the Desktop difficult, particularly if you're not holding down a mouse button.  This is, of course, a function of the technology's design.  I mention it only to make the reader aware of the fact that certain common mouse movements aren't quite as convenient with the Glidepoint.

And speaking of buttons, I could not remap the Glidepoint mouse button functions under Warp.  When I tried to select the left mouse button to drag, nothing happened.  I am not certain if this is a problem with the overall design or if it's a function of the defect in my particular unit.

To Buy or Not to Buy 

If you spend most of your work day cranking out documents and you're sick of removing a hand from the keys to reach for your mouse, this is the keyboard for you.  The Glidepoint's central location on the keyboard makes keyboard-intensive work much easier while keeping the mouse pointer readily available.  The keys have an excellent feel and the split configuration is easy to become accustomed to.

For general mousing about, the Glidepoint is adequate, although plan on spending some time with it before it becomes as natural as working with the mouse.  You may want to run Process Commander, NPS WPS or another Workplace Shell enhancement to augment Glidepoint.  (NPS WPS' ability to move the pointer to focus makes a touch pad much easier to live with.)  One word of warning: CAD users and those who do extensive graphics work may find the Glidepoint very frustrating.  My own limited experience with CAD and the Glidepoint gives me the sense that I might want to switch back to my mouse before settling in for any serious work.

Being able to map the Windows 95 keys is also a real boon.  I've become quite attached to bringing up my task list with a single keystroke.  On the whole, I'd recommend this product to those who do tons of typing.  Other users may be interested in Adesso's other, less expensive model which doesn't include any form of on-board pointer.  After using this unit, I can't imagine going back to my old keyboard -- but I may try to find those old Smith Corona records and check them for backward masking.  Just in case.

               * * *

PCK-303T NUForm Keyboard
by (http://www.adessoinc.com/) Adesso, Inc.
MSRP: US$59.97 (from MEI Micro)

(peg5@psu.edu) Pete Grubbs is a self-described OS/2 wonk, a doctoral candidate in English literature at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, a part-time faculty member at Penn State and is currently developing a copy editing/creation service, The Document Doctor, which tailors documents for small businesses.

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

July '97 Reader Survey Results

OS/2's detractors have long insisted that OS/2 has too few native apps, while its proponents often maintain that there are plenty available.  On top of this, many argue, OS/2's ability to run DOS and Win3.x apps gives OS/2 users a wider choice of software than anyone could possibly need.

We were curious about exactly what types of applications people had installed on their machines so last month we asked, "What programs do you use?"

Answers to our survey were accepted from July 16th until August 13th.  We had a total of 2,041 replies to our questionnaire last month with 128 "spoiled" replies (replies were considered "spoiled" if they did not contain an e-mail address, if they were incomplete or if they were duplicates).  This left 1,913 valid replies.  The results were as follows:

How many native OS/2 programs do you have installed?

Overall, the responses to this question weren't surprising -- after all, we expected most of our readers had a fair number of OS/2 programs installed.  And this is, in fact, what our survey showed; the two most popular answers to our first question were "11 - 20" and "21 or more" OS/2 programs installed, for a combined total 62.7% of our readers.

What was surprising though, was the one reader who told us that he or she had no OS/2 programs installed.  Apparently Warp is such a great platform, you don't even need OS/2 programs to make it worthwhile!

How many DOS programs do you have installed?

When asked about DOS programs, our readers' answers peaked near the other end of the scale.  The most common answer to this question (given by 37.0% of those who responded) was "1 - 3" DOS programs installed.  Another 22.9% of those surveyed had "4 - 6" programs installed; only 27.6% of our readers had more than 6 installed.

Perhaps the surprise here, considering OS/2's excellent DOS support, is the large number of people (241, or 12.6%) that have no DOS apps on their OS/2 systems.  Could it be that DOS's days are finally over?

How many Windows programs do you have installed?

A very similar pattern among our readers was revealed regarding the number of Windows programs installed.  Again, a significant percentage (12.3%) had no Windows apps at all installed.  And, like DOS programs, over a third of our readers (34.1%) had "1 - 3" Windows programs on their systems.

How often do you use Dual Boot or Boot Manager to run a DOS or Windows program?

When it comes to Dual Boot or Boot Manager, it seems our readers just can't be bothered.  Possibly because Warp 4 (which most of our readers have upgraded to) handles DOS and Windows apps so well, the vast majority of you (80.2%) told us that you leave OS/2 for another operating system less than 3 times a week.  In fact, the largest group of respondents (40.5%) answered that they never use Dual Boot or Boot Manager.

But that doesn't mean some people aren't fond of switching operating systems.  Five people told us they switch out of OS/2 "11 - 20 times a day" and another 5 claim they do it "21 or more times each day".  Didn't their mothers ever tell them that doing anything that much will make them go blind?

-----

That's it for last month's survey.  Don't forget to fill out this month's questionnaire and check back in September for complete results!

 
               Complete July '97 Survey Results

How many native OS/2 programs do you have installed?
	
Category	Count	Percentage
0		1	0.1%
1 - 3		68	3.6%
4 - 6		256	13.4%
7 - 10		388	20.3%
11 - 20	576	30.1%
21 or more	624	32.6%
-----
TOTAL	1,913	100.1%

Note: the extra 0.1% in the above table is due to rounding errors.


How many DOS programs doyou have installed?

Category	Count	Percentage
0		241	12.6%
1 - 3		707	37.0%
4 - 6		438	22.9%
7 - 10		223	11.7%
11 - 20	140	7.3%
21 or more	164	8.6%
-----
TOTAL	1,913	100.1%

Note: the extra 0.1% in the above table is due to rounding errors.


How many Windows programs do you have installed?

Category	Count	Percentage
0		235	12.3%
1 - 3		653	34.1%
4 - 6		464	24.3%
7 - 10		317	16.6%
11 - 20	158	8.3%
21 or more	86	4.5%
-----
TOTAL	1,913	100.1%

Note: the extra 0.1% in the above table is due to rounding errors.


How often do you use Dual Boot or Boot Manager to run a DOS or Windows program?

Category			Count	Percentage
never				774	40.5%
1 - 3 times each month	483	25.2%
1 - 3 times each week		278	14.5%
4 - 6 times each week		176	9.2%
1 - 3 times each day		170	8.9%
4 - 10 times each day		22	1.2%
11 - 20 times each day	5	0.3%
21 or more times each day	5	0.3%
-----
TOTAL	1,913	100.1%

Note: the extra 0.1% in the above table is due to rounding errors.

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

Reader Survey

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/v2n8/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 (feedback@os2ezine.com) good survey question?

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

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


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

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.  Last month, Brad Wardell of Stardock Systems began a three part series of articles on OS/2: where it is going and where it has been.

Here is the second chapter: OS/2 Present.  Stay tuned to OS/2 e-Zine! next month for the final installment of Brad's trilogy!

-----

               Part II: OS/2 Present

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

A final look back

After the first article in this series became widely read I received a lot of e-mail from people who had lived through the OS/2 2.0 and OS/2 3.0 days.  I thought I'd add a little more about the past to give further background to this article.

The e-mail I received confirmed the rumor that OS/2 2.11 SMP was largely the work of one person who later left IBM.  Once that person left and IBM had gotten rid of most of the contractors at Boca Raton, Florida (IBM decided to centralized PSP in Austin) the brain drain was so great that OS/2 would never get a client SMP version again.

The fact that OS/2 had an SMP version so early could have made a huge difference in the high end market.  Unfortunately, IBM failed to capitalize on this and eventually Windows NT (which still can't match OS/2 2.11's SMP scalability) took over as the primary SMP client.  By the time IBM got around to showing how cool OS/2 SMP was, it was too late.

Background on OS/2 Warp 4

A lot of the e-mail I received last month focused on IBM's inability to market OS/2.  But IBM did try very hard to market OS/2; they just couldn't figure out how to effectively market it to all their market segments at once.  IBM spent the bucks, they just didn't spend them effectively.

IBM also treated OS/2 ISVs very well.  For example, Stardock benefited greatly from IBM's encouragement; they helped our growing little company learn the ropes of doing preloads, site licensing, demonstrating, and yes, marketing.  IBM UK and IBM Germany, especially, did a heck of a lot to help Stardock.  People ask why we stick with OS/2 and one of the reasons is that IBM's terrific treatment of us during this time period earned our long term loyalty.  Unfortunately, the people who made all this happen at IBM are mostly gone now.

At a particular IBM meeting in the Fall of 1995, one of the executives at O&M (IBM's advertising agency) presented IBM's next stage marketing campaign (the infamous "Nuns" ads and other "Solutions for a Small Planet" ads).  When he asked if there were any questions I quickly raised my hand.

Now before I tell you what my question was, I want to make clear that up to this point I had never "burned any bridges" with anyone at IBM.  My question that day though quickly set flame to one of my bridges with PSP.

In front of some of IBM's top customers, I asked, "Those Warp 3 ads with the surfer people... what exactly were you thinking?"

The O&M guy responded, "We wanted to show that OS/2 was hip and cool to use."

I said, "Well, who exactly are you targeting?  Are you trying to imply to the 15 year old market segment that if they use Warp that they'll get beat up less at school?  You could have shown how OS/2 was a good and beautiful OS that increases productivity but instead wasted the advertising campaign promoting OS/2 as something you use after surfing!"  At that point, the IBM customers laughed and then applauded because they felt the same way.  I knew my question would stir up trouble but after seeing all the posts on the 'net and meeting all the OS/2 users who were frustrated at how poorly the USA Warp 3 marketing campaign was launched, how could I not seize the opportunity to bring this up to the specific people responsible for those horrible ads?

It turned out that the presenter was one of the actual people who came up with them.  Ironically, my question helped cement a Stardock/Vobis preload agreement since they felt the same way I did about the marketing of Warp.  (It should be noted that we are talking about the USA OS/2 ads.  The European ads were quite good.)

Comdex '95, the end of the world

It was by Comdex '95 that Lou Gerstner had told PSP that OS/2 Warp for the PowerPC had to be done.  IBM PSP failed.  IBM had invited Stardock to demonstrate in the PowerPC tent that year but we declined since we had heard this rumor and knew that Power OS/2 (as I liked to call it) would not be done by then.

One of the things that made OS/2 relatively successful was that within IBM there were contingents of OS/2 advocates.  People who lived, breathed, and slept OS/2.  I won't name names here, but in Austin, in the United Kingdom, in Germany, in Denmark, and speckled elsewhere, were people who made things happen for OS/2 even though they didn't have executive level positions.  It was, for example, an IBM contractor in Boca Raton who "discovered" Stardock, got IBM to port DOOM (well before Microsoft had thought of it), got video tools put into OS/2, etc.

Most of IBM, though, is pretty indifferent to the outside world.  Many IBMers think of their jobs as the thing they do between weekends.  So when you find an IBMer that is an advocate of something (like OS/2), he or she can have great impact.

I mention this because at Comdex '95 two things became clear.  1) Because Power OS/2 failed to meet its deadline, PSP was doomed from a budget point of view.  And 2) Microsoft, ever paranoid of PSP, had spared no expense in promoting Windows 95 (and hinting that NT 4 would solve any remaining problems Win95 didn't).  As a result, many of these advocates within IBM saw the light at the end of the tunnel as the freight train of the Microsoft marketing machine.

These IBMer OS/2 advocates had hoped to make OS/2 the dominant platform.  But Comdex '95 made it clear that OS/2 would be, at best, a niche product.  Thus began the great exodus of IBMer OS/2 advocates to either different parts (i.e. non-PSP) of IBM or out of IBM entirely.  Even David Barnes eventually went to Lotus (although he still loves OS/2).

Taking Stock of the Situation...

It's January 1996 and IBM has to assess the situation.  PSP is to be trimmed drastically, largely due to its handling of PowerPC OS/2.  The Warp 3 campaign was expensive and many of the "13 million" OS/2 users left OS/2 as quickly as they came (I could write an entire article on how ridiculous the claim, "there are 13+ million OS/2 users," is).  The IBMer OS/2 advocates were largely gone.  And to add insult to injury, many of IBM's OS/2 "Business Partners" not only didn't produce anything, but blatantly ripped IBM off.

Long time OS/2 ISVs, unlike DOS/Windows ISVs who had received millions of dollars to bring their products to OS/2, had not gotten any money and subsequently had not noticeably grown (except mainly for Stardock which had moved into the lucrative Desktop management and utility market).  In short, IBM spent millions on DOS/Windows ISVs in an effort to get them to port to OS/2 and these ISVs largely took IBM to the cleaners.  Despite this, IBM ignored OS/2-specific ISVs and, thus, they remained small (less than 10 person shops in general).

Some people always make the suggestion that IBM should pay Windows ISVs to port to OS/2 -- the fact is, IBM tried that and got the short end of the stick.

But the fatal flaw (in hindsight) in the strategy IBM used is that they could have spent their money to help existing OS/2 ISVs become big companies that would have been loyal and been able to produce "Class A" products instead of paying big companies to port their class A products to OS/2.

Again, even though to the average OS/2 user it may not seem like a big deal, OS/2 for the PowerPC is what did the most damage to OS/2 -- in terms of wasted developer energy and in making the rest of IBM lose faith in IBM PSP (which, in turn, vastly cut PSP's budget).  It wasn't Microsoft that hurt OS/2 the most, it was OS/2 for the PowerPC.

So IBM's options in January of 1996 were pretty limited.  They had blown much of their third party support money trying to get various Windows ISVs to port to OS/2.  Many of those companies took the money and never delivered anything.  IBM was slow to enforce their agreements and the agreements were structured in a half now, half later payment schedule.  By 1997, PSP didn't have the money to pay "the other half" and they just terminated all the outstanding agreements.

The result was that PSP didn't have any money to help mature existing OS/2 ISVs.  To make things worse, most of the people who had worked on the core parts of OS/2 were contractors who were long gone (back in Boca Raton) so Warp 4 couldn't have too many fundamental changes to it.  And the Warp 4 marketing campaign would be very small due to budget cuts.  What were they going to do?

In February of 1996 I flew to Austin at the request of PSP.  Since we were continuing to release more and more OS/2 products, IBM was interested in what Stardock thought about OS/2 Warp 4.  At this point, JAVA wasn't even on IBM's radar screen (yes, I realize that seems hard to believe, but it wasn't until Spring of that year that JAVA really came onto the scene).  Warp 4 was going to include improvements such as OpenDoc, Coaches (which is where a big chunk of development money went), an updated UI, Smartcenter (later renamed WarpCenter), a system object similar to Windows 95's, and a number of other features that had been hanging around PSP and other divisions of IBM but hadn't made it in previous versions of OS/2 because of IBM's rigorous testing methodology (which any IBMer could write books about).

At that meeting it became clear that development resources at IBM had disintegrated since the glory days of OS/2 2.11 and 3.0.  Basically, PSP no longer had enough developers who were familiar with the core code of OS/2 (much of OS/2 is still written in assembly language).  This meant no dynamic caching, no multiple message queues (though one heroic PSP developer did much to work around the problem which is in Warp 4 and FP 17 or later for Warp 3), and no major changes to SOM.

When asked, with these issues in mind, what I thought many users would like to see in Warp 4 I said (in this order): Make WIN-OS/2 look like OS/2.  Modify the file dialog to see long file names on FAT.  Add TrueType support.  Simplify the Desktop (i.e. fewer objects on the Desktop, sort programs by their type -- applications, utilities, etc. instead of Windows apps, OS/2 apps, DOS apps, etc.).  And make the networking more intuitive.

While some of these suggestions went in (TrueType, a simpler Desktop, and more intuitive networking) the biggest suggestions were left out.  Stardock had planned on putting an enhanced file dialog in Object Desktop 1.5 but chose not to in hopes IBM would do it.  The same is true for making Windows programs look like OS/2 programs.  These two things alone would have made OS/2 much nicer to work with.  Still worse, the TrueType support was done very poorly, giving OS/2 fonts a very ugly look.

Now, some time in the Spring of 1996, a new mood began to spread about the upper levels of IBM.  That mood was, "we're going to JAVA, we don't really need our existing OS/2 ISVs so we won't worry about what we do that might hurt them."  

Examples of this included screen shots of "Merlin" from IBM which were nothing more than Warp 3 with a modified PMMerge.DLL, Object Desktop installed, and NPS installed.  This created the impression that OS/2 Warp 4 (Merlin) would make Object Desktop obsolete.  This devastated our sales at the time -- a time when Stardock was cosponsoring the IBM Technical Interchange with IBM and Lotus.

But it wasn't just Stardock that IBM stepped on.  IBM implied strongly that Merlin would come with a full blown tape backup package which hurt ISVs like CDS and MSR.  And IBM went on to imply that Merlin would come with security features which likely had effects on Pinnacle (the leader in OS/2 security software) as well as, again, Stardock which was previewing Object Desktop Professional (which also secures OS/2 Desktops).  So, until Merlin actually shipped, many ISVs had to battle the erroneous perception that Merlin would have many features that competed with their products.

IBM also decided to publicly tell users that OS/2 should not be used for playing games.  This statement, only a few months after IBM aggressively lobbied ISVs to bring games to OS/2, had devastating effects.  For example, when IBM positioned OS/2 as a game platform, people quit their jobs to start companies dedicated to writing for OS/2.  Excellent games such as Trials of Battle, from Shadowsoft, Bug Eyed Monsters from Grinning Lizard, and others sold less than 1/40th of what Galactic Civilizations II had sold.  Sales from these games wouldn't even pay the salary of a single developer, leaving some of these people not only with disappointment, but also with serious debts!

IBM had nothing to gain by telling people what OS/2 wasn't but they did so anyway.

So by the Summer of 1996, it seemed like aliens had taken control of once benevolent powers at PSP.  At this point, the well respected columnist Will Zachmann began to notice the aforementioned budget cuts PSP had suffered (whether he realized this was due primarily to the PowerPC debacle and not just Microsoft I don't know).  Unfortunately, he concluded that these budget cuts meant IBM was essentially abandoning OS/2 and publicly announced this.

IBM hadn't abandoned OS/2; they had merely given up on trying to take over the entire OS market.  Make no mistake, IBM had wanted to make OS/2 THE general purpose PC OS.  But by mid 1996, IBM was positioning OS/2 as a niche OS.  They hadn't yet figured out where it would fit but JAVA was looking promising and they had VoiceType floating around (which PSP had managed to forcibly obtain from another IBM division).

Internal debate at IBM was mostly between two opposing strategies: either A) Position OS/2 as a high end OS where people would talk to their computer and do power user type stuff with it or B) make OS/2 the ultimate JAVA client.  These were mutually exclusive goals but it wasn't until after Warp 4's release that IBM decided on a course (choice B).

During the Summer, IBM vigorously courted Netscape to bring their browser to OS/2.  IBM, having learned from previous experiences with "business partners", assigned some of their best developers to work on-site at Netscape to bring Navigator to OS/2.

The Warp 4 Launch...

If anyone doubted that IBM had pretty much given up on its native OS/2 ISVs, a trip to the Warp 4 launch would bring them around.  Stardock and Pinnacle were the only long time OS/2 ISVs that had a booth at the launch.  Stardock was there because of our Workplace Shell leadership and Pinnacle was there because of their leadership in the security market.  

IBM had never resolved what OS/2 Warp 4 was supposed to be for.  It was the JAVA client you could talk to that had a kind of working Win32 API (Open32).  The problem was, JAVA on OS/2 was slow and implemented so poorly on base Warp 4 as to be useless.  VoiceType was a niche product that required a ton of memory and was incompatible with many programs that used sound.  And Open32... well, it had more issues than this article has room for.

That's not to say that Warp 4 wasn't a good OS and a worthy upgrade -- it was and is.  But a successful product needs to have a defined market, good distribution, and be technically sound.  Unfortunately, even now, most OS/2 users aren't sure who OS/2 Warp 4 is for.

Sales of OS/2 Warp 4, to put it mildly, did not live up to the glory days of Warp 3.  Many people just didn't know why they needed to upgrade.  After all, OS/2 Warp 3 with FP26 is pretty incredible.  If Warp 4 simply brought a slower version of JAVA and VoiceType, "why should people (especially corporations) upgrade?" was the general question.  Ironically, many of the sales of Warp 4 came from an unexpected source -- end users who, at this point, IBM wanted to go away.

So as 1997 began, OS/2 Warp 4's market clearly became a niche.  It also became clear that regardless of what IBM said or did, OS/2 would remain the choice of many "power users", consultants, and corporations; for the first time, OS/2 was getting a life of its own.

That is to say, IBM had provided this wonderful 32-bit, multithreaded, object oriented OS and third parties and users had gotten together and begun to actually take the reigns away from IBM.  "The OS/2 Marketplace" developer's conference was created by the Phoenix OS/2 Society -- not IBM.  In October 1997, an OS/2 trade show, created by OS/2 users called Warpstock is planned.  In short, 1997 may be the year that third party proponents of OS/2 stop riding IBM's coat tails and take action on their own behalf.  Actions that will expand OS/2's customer base in areas IBM wouldn't expect, enhance the OS in ways IBM can not, and define which market segments OS/2 is aimed at.

This is an exciting time for OS/2 users and the OS/2 market.  IBM created an open architecture for OS/2 and has even retreated out of all the market segments except for the high end client/server markets allowing others to step in and fill the void.  How they may fill that void we'll talk about in the next part...

"OS/2's Future"

               * * *

(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 Wenham and Dr. Dirk Terrell

In all its history, OS/2 has never represented the largest market in the computer world.  Because of this, many OS/2 ISVs are eventually tempted to develop cross-platform products.  This practice often ignites strong emotions in the users who buy these ISVs' products.  Some feel OS/2 ISVs should remain only OS/2 developers while some believe there is benefit to a cross platform strategy.

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

-----

Dirk:  My feeling on this matter is that companies should not go cross-platform (and we all know that cross-platform = Windows) because it inevitably means the demise of the OS/2 version.  The OS/2 version becomes the ugly duckling of the family because it sells fewer units, which begins the endless loop of less attention to the product, lower quality, and then fewer sales.  Eventually, the OS/2 version dies.

Chris:   Dirk, I disagree.  I think if the OS/2 version withers and dies it's because it would have anyway.

And staying OS/2-centric doesn't provide any magical incentive to keep the developer churning out great software forever.  OS/2 happens to benefit from software being ported from other platforms -- I could name a couple of graphics apps that came from the Amiga, for example.  So if we benefit from cross-platform development by non OS/2 ISVs, should we selfishly hoard everything we've got?

Dirk:  Yes, I think we should, in the sense that we should encourage ISV's to support our platform by purchasing quality products and interacting with them about our desires for the product.

Actually, I wouldn't mind OS/2 ISVs porting to Amiga, Linux, etc.  Windows is a different matter though.  The Windows market seems to make people "weird out" and develop delusions that they will make it REALLY big.  They may succeed, but I suspect more often than not, they overextend themselves and go under -- meaning the end of the OS/2 version too!

Chris:  More likely they enter a market where competition is much more rampant and bloodthirsty.  I don't think they have delusions; I think they just suddenly find themselves trying to "keep up with the Joneses".  And that is why the OS/2 versions suffer from lack of attention -- all their development resources get sucked into war with another Windows based competitor.

However, the technology is now here, such as Java and OpenClass, for companies to develop with a common code-base.  That way they can't help but improve their OS/2 version at the same rate as their Windows counterpart.  The OS/2 version could be just a recompile away, or maybe even just different install instructions.  Then, as a result, OS/2 users benefit from competition occurring mostly in the Windows market and the developers earn revenue from both.

Dirk:  It has been my experience that cross-platform code never requires "just a recompile" for anything more than very simple programs.  There is always a significant amount of work to get things just right on all platforms.  And cross-platform libraries tend to be bloated and address the lowest common denominator.  Thus your code is slower and less functional than your Windows competitors'. To keep pace, what do you do?  Switch to the Microsoft classes and leave your OS/2 users in the dust.

Chris:  I'll concede that "just a recompile" will probably not apply for complex software, but it hardly leaves the developer coding from scratch all over again.  As for bloated cross-platform libraries, well this also depends on what is used.  OpenClass is slow, but some companies have developed their own libraries that are faster.  Those who do are on solid ground whatever happens in the platform wars.

Secondly, Windows isn't exactly a single unified platform either.  It took years for some 16-bit applications to be ported from Win3.x to Windows 95.  Now Windows NT has a diverging API too.  To this date, there are still more Windows 3.1 machines in the world than anything else.  In short, writing to the Windows API is just going to leave the developer with the same problem as before: which API?

So, if you're going to be forced to write cross-platform to cover all the Windows bases, you might as well really be cross-platform.  It can only help OS/2.

Dirk:  By having even fewer resources for OS/2 development?!?  Hmmm...  Perhaps this is a clever strategy by Microsoft -- have constantly shifting API's that keep developers busy chasing them rather than developing for other platforms.  Maybe Java will improve the situation in the long run, but only if Microsoft's attempts to sabotage it are thwarted.  Unless Java comes on really strong, our only hopes for new software lie with smaller companies that concentrate on OS/2.

Chris:  OS/2 users have long begged for ports of their favorite Windows software, it would look like we were using a double standard if we criticized OS/2 vendors for doing the same thing in the other direction.  We must encourage developers to use cross-platform technologies, since the market has shown diversification of platforms rather than consolidation.  We also stand to see better software come along when developers concentrate on adding and improving features rather than spinning their wheels like mad trying to adapt to Microsoft's API-du-Jour.  When this happens, a port to any platform should be economical, no matter what the size of its user base.

-----

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

               * * *

(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.

(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.

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

CD-ROM Recording with OS/2	- by Chris Williams

In an earlier review I wrote about the hardware solution we put together in my office for recording CD-ROMs (CDs).  To summarize, the first step in having a reliable CD recording solution is to get the most powerful system you can reasonably put together.

Now it's time to introduce the world of recording CDs in OS/2.  As it turns out, this is a good news/bad news story fraught with all the controversies and standards wars the rest of the PC industry knows so well.  Recording your own CDs is still almost as much an art as it is a science.  And there is no substitute for finding good sources of information.

Record a CD?

So why would anybody want to record their own CDs?  Lots of reasons!  They range from a very inexpensive way to do data archival and backup, to an easy way to distribute software, to mastering your own set of favorite songs.  (But be careful of copyright laws!)  In our case, distributing customized software packages to different places quickly and easily was the driving force.  Have you ever tried to move several hundred megabytes of data between two PCs connected by a relatively slow wide area network?  How about moving large amounts of data between PCs with no network connecting them at all?  That means either a lot of diskettes, a few Zip disks, or one good CD recorder.

Why should you use such a "hot" machine for this?  At present, recording your own CDs is not just as simple as copying files to a drive.  It is a complicated process which requires that all of the data you wish to write to the CD is properly prepared and then sent to the recorder in a constant manner.  This process can not be interrupted.  Most CD recorders have hardware buffers built in to handle short interruptions in the flow of data to the CD, but once this is exhausted, the recording process will fail.  (A failure caused by the buffers in the recorder being exhausted before the process is finished is called a "Buffer Underrun".  This is one of the most notorious errors known when it comes to recording CDs.)

Obviously a true multitasking operating system can provide a significant advantage in maintaining a constant flow of data to the CD recorder.  But even here, if the recording process is interrupted by something else (like heavy disk swapping) for a long enough period of time, buffer underruns will occur.  This normally results in a CD which is suitable as a nice wall decoration or perhaps a coaster.  You don't usually get a second chance with a recordable CD once an attempt to record has failed.  And at an average cost of $9 each, the price of failure can get expensive in a hurry.

High performance PCs, with lots of RAM, cache and disk space, run faster and can handle more workload.  Individual processes tend not to get interrupted as frequently, or for as long, compared to slower systems.  This means you'll wind up with fewer computer "conversation pieces" and a lot of money saved over time.

Some Basics

Just like any other type of media that contains data, CD information is arranged in a file system.  When you buy one of these disks from the store and put it in your CD-ROM drive, the computer reads tracks of data just like it does when reading from a floppy disk or your hard drive.  Unlike magnetic media, the file systems on CDs are designed to be read by the laser(s) in your CD-ROM drive.  Just as with magnetic media, there's more than one CD file system to choose from -- and the "standards wars" over CD file systems have a familiar ring to OS/2 users.

OS/2 uses an Installable File System (IFS) driver for reading CDs.  If your OS/2 system has a CD-ROM drive, your CONFIG.SYS file should have several entries in it that will include something like:

DEVICE=C:\OS2\BOOT\OS2CDROM.DMD /Q
IFS=C:\OS2\BOOT\CDFS.IFS /Q
DEVICE=C:\OS2\MDOS\VCDROM.SYS

The file CDFS.IFS is the actual CD file system driver for OS/2 and is capable of recognizing most of the common CD file systems in use today -- with a couple of exceptions.  When you start recording CDs, you need to pay close attention to which file system you are using.  The most common ones found today are:

o ISO 9660 Level 1 - This is the lowest common denominator of all CD file systems and is capable of being read by almost every computer platform around including UNIX and Macintosh.  The downside of this file system is that file names are limited to the DOS 8.3 standard, and only the uppercase characters A through Z, 0 through 9, and the underscore "_" are allowed.  Directories are also limited to 8 levels deep.

o ISO 9660 Level 2 - This file system has the same limitations as ISO 9660 Level 1, except that the allowable length of names was increased to 31 characters.

o ISO 9660 Level 3 - This ISO format has no restrictions to file or directory names.  This allows naming conventions that are supported by many different file systems.

o Romeo - Adaptec developed this file naming system to address some of the needs of newer operating systems that use long file names.  Romeo allows a maximum name length of 128 characters and also allows special characters.  It appears to be more or less an extension to the ISO format.

o Joliet - Developed by Microsoft, this file system allows for file names of up to 64 characters, provides Unicode support for multiple languages, and preserves an 8.3 alias for those programs which can't use the longer file names.  Joliet is not an extension of the ISO series.  Microsoft, being Microsoft, also apparently wanted to have its own proprietary file system, and (wonder of wonders) Joliet is not directly recognized by OS/2.  You can expect Microsoft to start releasing lots of Joliet CDs.  For its part, IBM has released a beta CDFS.IFS driver for OS/2 that does recognize Joliet.  It is available for download from IBM's Device Driver web site.

o Universal Data Format (UDF) - This is probably the newest file system to come along.  Endorsed by the Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA), UDF is designed to be used with new recording techniques like packet writing.  This new technique makes writing information to CD as easy as writing to a hard disk.  The forthcoming rewritable CDs are also expected to start taking advantage of packet writing.  So far, UDF and packet writing are only supported under Windows 95 (NT isn't supported either), and only one vendor (Adaptec) currently produces commercially available packet writing software.  Others are likely to follow soon.

The Hardware and Software

The next step in recording your own CDs is finding a good CD recorder and software.  There are lots of choices in OS/2 supported hardware.  That's the good news.  The Yamaha CDR series is still recognized as best of breed in recorders, but the prices also reflect this.  Other brands include Phillips, Sony, and Teac just to name a few.  While IDE recorders are also available, the best reliability still comes from a SCSI system with either an on-board or PCI bus SCSI controller.

In my particular case, I decided to go with the Yamaha CDR400 external unit.  Warp 4 will also recognize this device as a SCSI CD-ROM drive, so you can do more than just record with it.  The CDR400 also supports packet writing and has a generous 2MB hardware buffer which Yamaha claims virtually eliminates those costly "Buffer Underrun" errors mentioned earlier.

In terms of OS/2 based CD-Recording software, the choices have become quite limited.  That's the bad news.  In months of searching, I found only two OS/2 based CD-Recording software products.  Worse, both of them were out of date compared to their Win32 based counterparts.  The last straw was that one of them faded into oblivion as I was evaluating software.  The two candidates I looked at were Gear for OS/2 by Elektroson, and Unite CD Maker from Cirrus Technologies.

I first downloaded Gear from the Elektroson Web site a few months ago and ran the installation program.  It crashed almost instantly, refusing to install.  After a bit more poking around on their web site, I found an update to the installation program that claimed to prevent the crash during installation, so I downloaded this part and followed the instructions for installation again.  The installation program continued to promptly and consistently crash.  I was never able to get Gear for OS/2 to install on my Warp 4 system, and as time passed, I watched constant and consistent updates to their software for virtually every other operating system except OS/2.  Most recently, Gear for OS/2 has disappeared from their web site completely.  One can only assume that they have decided to look for "greener pastures" in the "Land of Gates".  So much for getting in Gear...

As far as installation is concerned, my other candidate, Unite CD Maker for OS/2, fared much better.  The demo version of the software installed correctly on my system the first time.  After evaluating it for a while, I ordered a license for myself.  Overall, Unite CD Maker lives up to its billing and does everything it says.  I have only found a couple of problems with this package (and not all of them are technical).

First, the OS/2 version of Unite is still at 2.1, while the Win32 version has gone on to version 3.  Second, my nice, new Yamaha CDR400 was not supported by Unite out of the box.  This has changed with version 2.1c which was just released, literally, a few days ago.  Fortunately, an upgrade for my version (2.1b) has also been released to support the Yamaha and bring the software level to 2.1c.  It is available for the price of the connect time to download it.  My new Yamaha works well with the software given the short time I've had to look at it.

Getting it on Disk

Unite uses a two step process for getting files from a hard disk to CD.  First, you create a special folder called a CD Stage.  The CD Stage is one of several SOM objects Unite registers at installation.  This folder provides all of the information about the CD you are going to create including volume and author information, comments, which file system to use, and shadows of the files to be copied.  The next step is to create a virtual CD Image file from the CD Stage.  This is a single file which is more or less on the same level as an image file of a floppy disk which has the disk information stored as tracks and sectors.  The image file is then used to create the actual CD.  Unite also allows you to create a CD directly from a CD Stage.  When you do this, the virtual CD image file is built in memory on the fly and then written to the CD.  Unite handles each of these tasks on separate threads.

My only technical problem has been with copying large numbers of files (hundreds of megabytes) from a CD Stage directly to a CD.  It only works reliably if I create a CD image file first.  I'm hoping that Cirrus Technologies' technical support team will come through for me here.  They've been quite responsive so far, and believe the problem may be related to my SCSI controller.  Before upgrading to the 2.1c level, I had to use a somewhat older Smart & Friendly CDR4000 Pro from another machine as a substitute.  This Smart & Friendly is really a Yamaha CDR100 on the inside, and it works with Unite with very few problems.

Unite for OS/2 supports ISO levels 1 and 2 as well as HPFS on CDs.  This is a nice feature for OS/2 specific applications as you have the full HPFS character set to work with.  Just be careful if DOS or other operating systems need to read CDs created with HPFS.  Once you exceed the name length limits of other platforms, they won't be able to read the long names.  The result is the same as a DOS session ignoring long names on your HPFS hard drive.

One of the nicest features of Unite is that you can configure an additional software buffer space to help prevent those nasty buffer underruns.  Like most newer CD recording packages, a test burn mode is also supported to lower the number of trashed CDs you're likely to produce.  Unfortunately, many new features and file formats like CD to CD copying, Disc-at-Once, and packet writing are not supported in version 2.1.  Most only become available in version 3, which leads me to another unfortunate situation.

The last word I had from Cirrus is that they have no firm plans to upgrade the OS/2 version of Unite to be on par with the Win32 version.  They cite lack of interest as the cause.  After a few conversations with both sales and technical support people, it is clear that this is purely a financial business decision.

On the plus side, they did say that if they saw enough demand for it, they would reconsider upgrading the OS/2 product.  On the other hand, they did offer to sell me the Windows version now if I'd prefer; an offer I politely refused.  As it now seems they are pretty much the only game in town for OS/2 based CD recording, maybe something could be done to spur their interest.  Telling them you would pay money for an OS/2 version that had the same features as the Windows version, for example, (and then doing it) would be a good place to start.

On the interesting side, I got a hint that they've been writing quite a bit of Java code lately.  Could a Java version of Unite be around the corner?  I've had no official answer either way and Cirrus has more in its product catalog than just Unite, but who knows?  Java just might be the thing to turn the OS/2 application shortage around after all.

With the release of 2.1c, Cirrus is now selling Unite as a version 3 package that comes with both the Win32 (version 3) and OS/2 (version 2.1c) flavors in one box.  It's available through most of the popular OS/2 software resellers.

Sorting It All Out

As you can see, there's a lot to consider when it comes to making your own CDs.  OS/2 adds some definite challenges and benefits not found in other platforms.  The amount of CD recording information available on-line is still aimed mostly at very technical people.  That's a reflection of the newness of the idea of making your own CDs.  This area of computing is still in its infancy, so be prepared for lots of changes and innovations if you decide to jump into it.

Prices on CD recorders are dropping constantly, and this market is certain to heat up over the next year or so.  It is only a matter of time before optical media will replace magnetic media as the preferred method of storing all computer information, so if you want to be on the bleeding edge, the time to get familiar is now.

               * * *

(http://privateI.com/~chrisw/) Chris Williams has been actively involved with OS/2 systems for the past six years.  A former IBM employee, OS/2 Ambassador, and long time member of Team OS/2, he is currently a PC and network specialist for Perot Systems Corporation.

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

The Truth About the SIC Awards	- by Joe Dougherty

One of the major obstacles facing OS/2 users is the lack of high-quality application software.  While Windows users appear to have an infinite number of software choices from which to select, Warp users are often forced to search far and wide for that "killer" app to
perform a specific task.

The major software developers don't seem to want to put the time and effort into cross-development for Warp. They often blame the "limited market" for OS/2 programs, claiming that they can't recoup the cost of developing sophisticated software for such small numbers.  An intimidation factor exists as well; many Windows developers receive substantial free assistance from Microsoft.  But these developers also know that assistance would vanish the moment they begin porting their Windows programs to other platforms.

IBM makes an effort to support application authors through its Developer Connection and other programs, but most of the tools introduced to develop cross-platform applications simply haven't caught on with programmers.

IBM also appears to be focusing Warp's future on network connectivity and Java.  While the idea of open systems and portable applications across networks has appeal, full implementation of the concepts are still some time off.

Until then, the typical Warp user has few choices to satisfy their software needs.  They can continue to use old, outdated, or orphaned programs.  They can use Windows 3.X or DOS programs.  Or they can muddle through the finite number of commercial programs on the market.  Though the quality of those commercial apps is often high, their scant numbers seem to demonstrate a lack of commitment to the Warp platform.

However, one area does exist where OS/2 is generously represented: the world of shareware.

Shareware: It's Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

Since its first appearance in the 1980's, shareware has been a primary source of inexpensive, quality software for the PC user.  OS/2 users are no strangers to shareware applications, as the file directories of such popular sites as (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/) Hobbes, (ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/os2/) Walnut Creek and (http://www.leo.org/archiv/os2/) Leo will attest.  The idea of "try-before-you-buy" has tremendous appeal to the Warp user, considering the cost and lack of availability of commercial software.

The SIC

A number of organizations devoted to promoting shareware have sprung up in recent years.  One is the (http://www.sic.org/index.shtml) Shareware Industry Council, a group of volunteer developers, distributors, and users who attempt to promote quality shareware to the computing public.  Over the past few years, the SIC has sponsored the Shareware Industry Awards Foundation, a group which evaluates, nominates and presents awards of recognition to quality shareware applications in a variety of categories.

Warp Wows the Crowds

To the delight of Warp denizens, the (http://www.sic.org/awards97.html) 1997 SIAF nominations included numerous OS/2 applications this year, the first time the Warp platform was included.

The OS/2 presence was more than a token.  Twenty-four OS/2-native applications, utilities, and games were nominated among the thirteen categories.  The OS/2 shareware authors recognized this year were:

Best Utility:
    FontFolder - (http://www.bmtmicro.com/catalog/fontfolder/) PVsoft
    FM/2 - (http://www.bmtmicro.com/catalog/fm2/) Bare Bones Software

Best Application:
    ZOC - (http://www.emtec.com/) EmTec
    PMView - (http://www.bmtmicro.com/pmview/) Peter Nielsen

Best Graphics/Multimedia Program/Utility
    PMView - (http://www.bmtmicro.com/pmview/) Peter Nielsen
    Main Actor - (http://www.mainconcept.de/) MainConcept

Best Vertical Market Program/Utility
    Family Tree - (http://www.bmtmicro.com/catalog/familytree.html) Nils Meier
    Conversion Pro - (http://www.bmtmicro.com/catalog/cproos2/) NEGC Software
                         
Best Business/Finance Program
    E-Teller - (http://www.bmtmicro.com/catalog/eteller.html) Paul Caron
    TaxDollars - (http://www.electriciti.com/bttech/) BT&T Consumer Technology
           
Best Word Processing Application/Utility
    SpellGuard - (http://www.netusa.net/~rmahoney/) 2Rud Software
    HTML Studio - (http://www.program.com/panacea/index.shtml) Panacea Software

Best Educational Program
    Tablica/2 - (peter@abbpol.krakow.pl) Peter Rachwal
    Vocabulary Modern - (http://www.mcs.net/~bvonmoss/vomod/welcome.html) Bob VonMoss

Best Home/Hobby Program
    Family Tree - (http://www.bmtmicro.com/catalog/familytree.html) Nils Meier
    Night Vision - (http://www.wilmington.net/bmtmicro/catalog/nightv/) Brian Simpson

Best Internet Program/Utility
    In-Joy - (http://www.fx.dk/injoy/index.htm) F/X Communications
    MR/2 Ice - (http://nick.secant.com/mr2ice.htm) Knightware Software Solutions
    PMMail - (http://www.southsoft.com/) SouthSoft, Inc.

Best Entertainment Program
    Entertainment Pack for OS/2 - (http://stud1.tuwien.ac.at/~e8925493/home.html) Peter Wansch
    FM Cards - (http://www.maschek.com/cardgame.shtml) Felix Maschek

Best Action/Arcade Game
    Masterroids - (e8925453@stud1.tuwien.ac.at) Roman Komary
    Roids - (73544.1154@compuserve.com) Hungry Main Software

Most Innovative New Product
         XIT - (http://www.bmtmicro.com/catalog/xit/xit.html) CodeSmith

The Warp nominations even produced one winner, in a very unlikely category.  Peter Nielsen's (http://www.bmtmicro.com/pmview/) PMView 1.0 took home the prize in the Best Graphics/Multimedia Program/Utility, facing such Windows stalwarts as Paint Shop Pro 95 and Animagic GIF for Windows.

Despite PMView's high reputation among its users, author Nielsen was surprised at the victory.

"I was very delighted to hear that PMView won the SIAF award," Nielsen said.  "I really didn't expect this, because of the strong competition.  I never even thought it would be possible for PMView to win over the highly regarded Paint Shop Pro 95."

Michael Callahan of C|NET directed the nominations and voting for the 1997 SIAF Awards.  In fact, he offered the suggestion to include OS/2 to the SIAF board.

"It had always been my hope to include other  platforms in the SIA," he commented.  Callahan said that the Mac platform was included during the awards' second year, but was later dropped for lack of participation.

Things were different this year, however, as Callahan enlisted a number of OS/2 users to participate in the testing, nominating and voting for the various programs.  All nominees were given equal weight in the voting.  Even the Macintosh platform was once again represented, though by only one application.

When asked which OS/2 professionals he approached to act as nominators and voters, Callahan replied that the names of the nominators/voters are not made public by the SIC.

"This has been their request because they are very busy people," Callahan said.  "They don't want to be flooded by e-mail and large file attachments from shareware authors who want them to look at their programs."  He said that the nominators are people from various parts of the computer industry, including file sysops from on-line services, vendors, press people, and, in the case of OS/2, even people from IBM.

"The process worked out well thus far," Callahan commented.  "Next year, I want to have a public area where users can place the names of programs they'd like nominators to look at."

The most important target of the SIC and the SIAF awards is public recognition of the nominees.  "The goal," stated Callahan, "has always been to put a spotlight on some of the best shareware and that goal has not changed."

Warp Users: The Real Winners

In spite of the constant barrage of "Warp is dead" pronouncements and the perceived lack of direction from IBM, it's apparent that OS/2 remains a legitimate, vital development platform.  The authors of the popular Warp shareware titles honored in this year's awards obviously believe so, evidenced by their time commitment and attention to detail.  And their dedication to Warp finally appears to be attaining wider recognition, as the SIAF awards demonstrate.
   
There's a very real likelihood that if you use Warp regularly, you also regularly use a shareware application to perform some necessary function, such as composing e-mail, dialing your Internet provider, or developing that slick-looking Web site.  Check to see if you've sent the registration fee for that program.  The author deserves your support.

And keep checking those FTP sites.

               * * *

(joedoc@ibm.net) Joe Dougherty is the systems and network administrator at a Defense Department forensic laboratory.  He has been using OS/2 personally and professionally since 1992.  Joe and his family live outside Jacksonville, Florida, home of the soon-to-be-NFL-champion Jaguars.

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

July's Top Selling Applications from Indelible Blue

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

This Month	Last Month	Product			Developer
1		2		BackMaster		MSR Development
2		--		Avarice Preview	Stardock Systems
3 (tie)		1		Hobbes CD-ROM	Walnut Creek
3 (tie)		8		BackAgain/2 Pro	Computer Data Strategies
4 (tie)		--		Chron			Hilgraeve
4 (tie)		--		Sytos Premium	Seagate
5		3		FaxWorks Pro v3	Keller Group Inc.
6 (tie)		5		IBM AntiVirus		IBM
6 (tie)		6		Performance Plus	Clear & Simple
7 (tie)		10		Links for OS/2		Stardock Systems
7 (tie)		--		QuickMotion		Practice Corp.
8		--		Photo>Graphics	TrueSpectra
9 (tie)		6		Partition Magic		PowerQuest
9 (tie)		--		OS/2 Essentials	Stardock Systems
10		15		UniMaint		SofTouch Systems
11		7		Deskman/2		DevTech
12 (tie)	4		ColorWorks V2		SPG
12 (tie)	--		Impos2		Compart GmbH
12 (tie)	--		Seagate		BackupSeagate
13		--		GammaTech Utilities	SofTouch Systems
14		--		LinkWiz		PCX
15		--		SPF/PC		Command Technologies

               * * *

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

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

July's Top Selling Applications from J3

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


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

               * * *

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

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

July's Top Selling Applications from BMT Micro

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


This Month	Last Month	Product			Developer
1		2		InJoy			F/X Communications
2		1		PMMail			SouthSide Software
3		3		PMView		Peter Nielsen
4		4		X File			CodeSmith Software
5		6		ScreenSaver		Siegfried Hanish
6		5		iLink/2		BMT Micro
7		8		File Commander/2	Brian Havard
8		--		Web Organizer		ONG Software
9		7		SIO			The Software Division
10		--		X IT			CodeSmith Software

               * * *

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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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/) Indelible Blue
Indelible Blue, a mail order company, provides OS/2 software and hardware solutions to customers worldwide.

(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