[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.]


OS/2 e-Zine!		March 16, 1998		volume 3, number 3
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 1998		Falcon Networking  	ISSN 1203-5696

         "Over Three Quarters of a Million Satisfied Visitors!"


OPINIONS:

  Chris' Rant
   
DEPARTMENTS:

  the Beta File
  News from the OS/2 World
  the REXX Files
  Networking with OS/2


HTML Editors

  Introduction
  HomePage Publisher 2.0, level C - Christopher B. Wright
  HTML-Ed v0.96b - Colin L. Hildinger
  HTML Studio v1.55 - Chris Wenham


Other Software

  QuickMotion for OS/2 v2.0 - Chris Wenham



READER SURVEYS

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

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

How can we improve OS/2 e-Zine!?
  We're growing and improving all the time but now it's your turn to
  tell us what you want to see.



END NOTES:

  Hot Sellers - the top 10 selling OS/2 apps from BMT Micro.
  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 Mensys.


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 1998   -   Falcon Networking
ISSN 1203-5696

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

Chris's Rant	- by Chris Wenham

Predictions For A Perfect World

If an alternate universe with a different set of physics merged with ours, and if suddenly only the Right Thing(tm) ever happened in all situations, these then are the events I would predict for the future:

April 1st, 1998

o  9:30am: Homer Simpson wakes to the sound of a buzzer and a flashing light, and looking down on his console he notices the OS/2 MARKET SHARE dial has dropped into the red zone. With a squawk of panic he leaps up, scattering his stale donuts everywhere and proceeds to run around in circles and scream. Five minutes later he calms down to only a blithering mess and stares at the console, wondering what to do. With a meaty paw over his eyes he blindly reaches out and jabs a button at random. The flashing lights go out.

o  9:35am: Padlocks snap open and chains rattle free from the iron shackles of the IBM marketing division. Monitors glow again, lights shine, phones warm up and the money chugs in like an express train.

o  9:40am: Shutters and garage doors go flying up at the warehouses while the truck engines purr to life and the drivers study the maps of the old trade and distribution routes again. Palette upon palette upon palette of shiny shrink-wrapped boxes get loaded onto the trucks as they ready to pull out.

o  10:00am: IBMSAT-1, in geostationary orbit, swivels its big dish antenna around and prepares to relay the live press conference coast to coast.

o  10:10am: Steve Balmer, while monitoring Reuters, spits his Double-Whip Latte Mocha all over the keyboard and trips over his fax machine cord on the way to the phone. A resulting electrical short wipes out all communications at Redmond Campus Building A for six hours.

o  11:00am: The scheduled press conference is broadcast as planned, coast to coast, nation to nation, on CNN, C-SPAN, ABC, NBC, CBS, SkyTel and "Auntie Beeb."

o  12:00pm: Warp 5 hits the shelves, having been kept in secret beta and manufacturing since September, displacing the cloud-covered boxes until they topple onto the floor and get crushed under the stampede.

o  4:10pm: Communications in Redmond Campus Building A come back online. MSN promptly enters an eight-hour email outage.

o  7:00pm: Prime time, and the first in a series of 5-minute commercials from the newly awakened marketing UberJuggernaut hits the air. "Start Me Up" by the Stones drops to 4,981,721,323rd place on Billboard's Top 40.

April 2nd, 1998

o  2:00am: Top Secret Crack Stealth Squad "Blue Seals" break into Redmond Campus Building G and sabotage the mind control ray transmitter. Thousands of implanted receivers in the brains of trade journalists everywhere suddenly go dead.

o  9:00am: Ziff Davis online publishes an article with the headline; "No wait! It was all a horrible typo! We meant 'OS/2 is [a] DEAL!' "

o  9:50am: NBC is acquired. MSNBC is discontinued while IBMBC takes to the air for the first time.

o  12:00pm: Trevor gives me a pay raise.

April 4th, 1998

o  Bill Gates is caught stuffing a blank check into Janet Reno's purse. Jim Barksdale thinks twice, loosens the rope and steps down from the block of ice. Lou Gerstner acquires the Hershey Corporation as an apology gift for Esther Schindler.

April 6th, 1998

o  Heavy Monday trading leaves MSOFT at an all time low of three and a half shirt-buttons and a fleck of pocket lint as the financial community overreact to the news that, "Windows sucks".

o  Larry Ellison starts spreading rumors that he might buy Microsoft.

o  Trevor gives me another raise.

April 14th, 1998

o  Matt Drudge breaks the story that the Gates Mansion was mortgaged to cover taxes; the indoor basketball court being rented to local youth league.

o  Trevor gives me a promotion and another raise.

May 12th, 1998

o  WarpCast subscription count hits 18 million, Guy Kawasaki asks for a job on the moderating staff.

o  Lou G. appears on giant video screen behind Steve Jobs at a press conference and announces their $1.5 billion investment in Apple stock while doing a good job of not smirking when he stresses the "non voting" part.

May 13th, 1998

o  Apple's corporate board votes unanimously to fire Steve Jobs.

May 27th, 1998

o  In a last stab for immortality, William H. Gates the IIIrd spends the last of his fortune on renting the NASA Space Telescope array to beam his personal memoirs and "The Road Ahead" out to the stars.

June 1st, 1998

o  Haligonian Media acquires Ziff Davis, Trevor gives me another promotion just before changing his name to Charles Foster Kane and getting caught in a love-nest scandal.

o  Larry Ellison reveals on a French TV interview that he's on the new board of Microsoft Corp.

June 8th, 1998

o  Crippled alien spaceship lands and requests help to repair a computer system riddled with the Word Macro Virus.

July 4th, 1998

o  Godzilla opens at theatres, and the heavily guarded, computer generated image of the big lizard himself bears a striking resemblance to the ActiMates Barney.

November 3rd, 1998

o  The Beatles get back together to record "Free As A (Blue) Bird"

June 31st, 2000:

o  9:30am: Homer Simpson, at his new job working for SPG, wakes up to the sound of a buzzer and a flashing light. With a meaty paw over his eyes he blindly reaches out and jabs a button at random, leveling Miami Lakes in the wake of an 80 Megaton nuclear explosion.

                    - * -

So, you think you're Nostradamus and can predict the future better than me, eh?  Well (http://www.falcon-net.net/forums/get/ezine/ezine-rant/mar1998.html) prove it, in our Hypernews talkback forum.

(chris@os2ezine.com) Chris Wenham is the Senior Editor of OS/2 e-Zine! -- a promotion from Assistant Editor which means his parking spot will now be wide enough to keep his bicycle and a trailer.

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

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Productivity applications:  Relish - time management; Mesa 2 - spreadsheet; Clearlook - word processor; DBExpert - database.

(http://www.warpspeed.com.au/) WarpSpeed Computers
Developers of The Graham Utilities -- the largest, most comprehensive suite of disk, file and general utilities specifically written for OS/2.

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

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!

                    - * -

We'll start off this month with a few beta updates to programs e-Zine's already mentioned... (http://www.demon.co.uk/titan) IPAD, mentioned in (http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n7/beta.htm) July '97, has been updated (03/15/98) to (http://www.demon.co.uk/cgi-bin/titan/getfile?/IPAD/os2/ipad600b.zip) beta 0.6.00 (ZIP, 601k). (http://inet.uni-c.dk/~deckkh/) CUSeeMe/2, mentioned in (http://www.os2ezine.com/v3n02/beta.htm) last month's Beta File, has been updated (03/05/98) to (http://www.blackpalace.com/cu2/CUOS211.EXE) beta 1.6 (ZIP, 135k), and its (European) web page now has a North American mirror at the (http://www.blackpalace.com/cu2/index.html) Black Palace. (http://www2.rz.hu-berlin.de/~h0444vnd/frames/xfldr.htm) XFolder, also mentioned in (http://www.os2ezine.com/v3n02/beta.htm#xfolder) last month's Beta File, has been updated to (http://www2.rz.hu-berlin.de/~h0444vnd/xfld051.zip) beta 0.51 (ZIP, 153k) -- Additionally, InetPowerServer/2 (yup, you guessed it, (http://www.os2ezine.com/v3n02/beta.htm#ips2) last month's Beta File) has been updated to (http://hobbes/pub/os2/apps/internet/ftp/server/ips065.zip) beta 0.65 (ZIP, 115k). Lastly, the program (http://www.lab321.ru/~dip/sysbar2/) SysBar/2, first mentioned in (http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n9/rave.htm) September '97, now (03/01/98) has (http://www.lab321.ru/~dip/sysbar2/sbr2_011f.zip) beta 1.1f (ZIP, 171k) available.

                    - * -

For those still using the international beta of StarOffice v4.0 for OS/2, (http://www.stardivision.com) StarDivision has made available yet another patch to allow users to use the office suite past its normal expiry date. This patch allows International Beta II to operate up to May of 1998, and can be downloaded from the OS/2 archive at (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/incoming/delayed/staroffice-patch.zip) Hobbes. (It will eventually be moved out of this directory, so if it's gone by the time you read this, use the search function on Hobbes' main page to find the file staroffice-patch.zip)

                    - * -

The folks at the (http://www.netlabs.org/) OS/2 Netlabs project are ready to begin testing of the first beta version of GIMP for OS/2. GIMP is a photo-editing package originally for the Linux platform, often referred to as the "..Photoshop of Linux.." (meaning (http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/photoshop/overview.html) Adobe Photoshop) due to its power and array of features. The programmers at Netlabs have been working on porting the X-Windows version of GIMP to OS/2's own port of XFree86 (A fully native Presentation Manager version of GIMP is under development), and are looking for testers of their first beta version. Since it's released under the Gnu Public License, GIMP is free for all use -- When the OS/2 version becomes generally available, the GPL will apply for it as well.

To qualify for testing, you must have XFree86 installed (see the (http://borneo.gmd.de/~veit/os2/xf86os2.html) XFree86 web page for more information about this UNIX-ported window management environment), and it would be helpful (but not necessary) to know the LINUX version of GIMP. If you think you'd like to test GIMP/2, contact (ktk@netlabs.org) Adrian Gschwend at the OS/2 Netlabs for more info on the beta program. For the latest information about GIMP/2, keep in touch with the (http://www.netlabs.org/gimp.html) GIMP web page at the OS/2 Netlabs.

                    - * -

For those who have been anxiously waiting for any word from (http://www3.smart.net/~cybercom/) Cybercomm on the AccuCount/2 beta/demo mentioned in (http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n5/beta.htm) May 1997's Beta File (Cybercomm's web page, including 'Current Status' information on AccuCount/2, hasn't been updated in six months), Cybercomm's (rmauro@uu.net) Robert Mauro announced this on March 9th:

   "In 2 weeks, our web site will be updated with a short
   questionnaire for all registered beta-testers (in short all
   pre-order customers), as well as anyone interested in purchasing
   AC/2. The questionnaire will request such things as sample charts
   of accounts, printer setups, etc., which will in whole or part
   make it into the first major beta files to be released by month's
   end.

   By that time, we hope to have completed the transition of our web
   site to our own servers as well.

   For now the URL remains http://www3.smart.net/~cybercom/.

   Check for information on a slew of unannounced features as well...
   we've been delayed waiting on the final version of our development
   tools - but we've been very busy to make up for it."

                    - * -

(http://www.cmpsol.com/) Computing Solutions has released beta 1.0 of their program Domain Reporter/2, an application which gathers and displays information about an OS/2 LAN Server/WarpServer domain. Domain Reporter/2 allows an administrator using Warp Server or IBM's Workspace On Demand (WSOD) to easily show various information about their network, including servers, users, groups, and security features.

No information is yet available on when the final version is expected, but in the meantime the beta can be downloaded from (http://www.cmpsol.com/software.html) DomainReporter/2's web page When downloading, it's requested that you also fill out a short (http://www.cmpsol.com/dr2survey.html) survey to better allow Computing Solutions to serve you. For more information or feedback regarding DomainReporter/2, contact Jin Kim via (betatest@cmpsol.com) betatest@cmpsol.com.

                    - * -

Ray Gwinn, author of the SIO (Serial Input/Output) communications drivers for OS/2, is busy developing version 2 of SIO, commonly called SIO2K. SIO version 2 "...has major design and philosophical changes differing from any previous OS/2 serial drivers...", including SIO v1.x. Beta version 6 is now downloadable from the (http://www.gwinn.com/cgi-bin/v2beta.cmd) SIO web page. This beta version doesn't currently include versions of SIO's Utility program (SU.EXE) or the Poor Man's Line Monitor (PMLM.EXE) which are included in SIO v1.x.
Due to its extensive design changes, the price of SIO2K upon release will be more than the US$25 price of SIO version 1.x -- However, Gwinn is offering recently-registered SIO v1.x users (those whose serial numbers' last five digits are 25400 or greater) a free upgrade to SIO version 2. (He also points out that if the copy of SIO v1.x you have _isn't_ eligible for the free upgrade, if you're planning on buying SIO v2.0, it's actually cheaper to buy v1.x _again_, then use your new serial number to upgrade free to v2.0) For more information about SIO, including on-line registration, see its web page at (http://www.gwinn.com/) http://www.gwinn.com/.

                    - * -

While officially alpha software, IBM's Bamba technology has been around long enough that it's considered the equivalent of beta software to many. Bamba is IBM's foray into the market of streamed media, such as RealNetworks' RealAudio and RealVideo. Streamed media is audio or video which can be played (through a web browser, for example) while it's still being downloaded from the Internet, resulting in less wait for the download to finish. Pages with examples of Bamba media can be found at the (http://www.os2ss.com/links/bamba.html) Bamba page of the Supersite Links Collection.

Available from IBM's (http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/formula"alphaWorks development laboratories, Bamba is being developed in OS/2, Windows and Java versions. The OS/2 version has recently been updated to alpha 1.1, which includes a few bug fixes over previous version, as well as support for playing media as it's being broadcast live. 

Note that the OS/2 and Java packages of the software include only the decoder, for _playing_ Bamba media. To create your own Bamba files, you currently have to use the Windows-only encoding software. If you have a need for creating your own Bamba files under OS/2, post a message in the Bamba forum at the (http://www.alphaWorks.ibm.com/context/communityxchange) alphaWorks communityXchange to let the developers know that there's a demand for an OS/2 version of the encoding software.

                    - * -

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

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

News from the OS/2 World	- by Ryan Dill

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

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

                    - * -

(http://www.polyex.com) PolyEx Software creators of the (http://www.polyex.com/wgtinfo.html) Wordup Graphics Toolkit and the games (http://www.polyex.com/talos.html) Vigilance on Talos V and the upcoming (http://www.polyex.com/Hopkins.html) Hopkins: FBI, recently held a contest to develop a new company logo. Submissions were accepted up until midnight (EST) on March 14th, with judging being held the next day.
The winner of the contest was Andrea Resmini of Team OS/2 Italia, who submitted the logo which can be seen at the (http://www.polyex.com/) PolyEx web site.

                    - * -

Development of the OS/2 version of the (http://www.operasoftware.com) Opera web browser continues smoothly. The 3rd-party team doing OS/2 development for Opera (a company called Binary Concepts, from British Columbia, Canada) had the following to say in a March 10th update:

   "Opera/2 is coming along fine; we have about 75% of the code
   provided to us now compiling with only minor changes to the header
   files. 10% are C++ class problems (due to the difference in
   compilers) -- we are working on this. 5% are unsupported API's; the
   remaining 10% we haven't had time to fully go over yet. We spent a
   few days doing a down and dirty port to get an idea of the problems
   involved and are now doing a proper port (with the #ifdef etc..),
   and will be providing these to Opera within the next few days."

In Netscape news, an OS/2 section has opened up at Netscape's (http://www.mozilla.org/) mozilla.org web site; including both a newsgroup and a mailing list. (The list and group are linked, so anything posted in one automatically appears in the other) mozilla.org is the 'official' Netscape outlet for the soon-to-be-released Communicator 5 source code, and permits Netscape developers to collaborate closely with other interested developers in making use of the source. A list of all of the newsgroups and mailing lists mozilla.org offers (including the OS/2 ones) is available at the (http://www.mozilla.org/community.html) mozilla.org community page.

Previously, the OS/2 Netlabs' (http://www.netlabs.org/warpscape/) Warpscape project had been the only intended OS/2 port of Communicator 5, but another name is being bandied about by the OS/2 folks at mozilla.org -- WarpZilla. This almost sounds like the two groups are going to be working on the source separately, which would kind of be counterproductive; hopefully developers from both camps will simply join together, providing more development resources and a faster port for all involved. There's been discussion on the Warpscape mailing list about simply transferring its traffic to the OS/2 mozilla.org list, phasing out the old Warpscape list -- This is a step in the right direction, I think.

                    - * -

Practice Corporation has just released the next version of its (http://www.quickmotion.com) QuickMotion software. (which allows OS/2 users to play (http://quicktime.apple.com) QuickTime media) QuickMotion v2.0 includes Virtual Reality support, so OS/2 users can now play the various QTVR (QuickTime Virtual Reality) files that you may have seen around. QuickTime VR is a special type of QuickTime which actually lets you 'move around' inside an image; sort of like a typical video, except _you_ control what part of the scene the camera shows you, simply by moving your mouse; it's a bit like VRML, except it's implemented with real pictures rather than created images. QuickMotion even includes features that QTVR viewers on other platforms just don't, like continuous zoom with the click of a button, or Pentium optimization.

Using it yourself gives you a better understanding of what it does than a description, and fortunately Practice has downloadable (http://www.quickmotion.com/download.html) demo versions for users to try out. If after testing it you'd like a copy, the QuickMotion program comes with online purchasing software included, and will allow you to buy the full version for $34.95US or the upgrade (from QuickMotion v1.x) for $19.95US. For more information about QuickMotion, including links to QTVR sites to test after you've installed QuickMotion 2.0, see its web page at http://www.quickmotion.com, or read the review of it in this month's issue.

                    - * -

The Win32-OS/2 project has released its first public alpha version of their program to convert Win32 programs into OS/2 programs. This distribution includes support for converting (http://www.idsoftware.com) id Software's game Quake II as a demonstration (you have to have a copy of Quake II already), but the conversion programs included will also convert a few other Win32 programs. The project's main web page has also changed location, and can now be found on the (http://www.os2ss.com/win32-os2/) OS/2 Supersite, along with mirrors in (http://win32os2.home.pages.de) Germany and (http://www.sdg.ml.org/win32os2/) Sweden for European web surfers.

Additionally, the folks at (http://www.yoursite.co.uk/) PowerDale IT Ltd. have put together an unofficial database of programs different people have tried to convert and what success they've had -- their (http://www.yoursite.co.uk/os/2/) Win32OS/2 Application Compatibility Resource allows you to add your own entries for a particular program, which will allow others to check to see if a particular conversion works or fails before they try it themselves and find out, the hard way, that it doesn't.

                    - * -

Finally this month, a few updates to OS/2 which users might be interested in:

o  FixPak 6 (US English) for Warp 4 and FixPak 35 (US English) for Warp 3 have been released. These FixPaks include IBM's new Removable Media Support (finally out of beta) for things such as ZIP drives, so if you're using the beta RMS drivers, you should uninstall them first. More details are included in the FixPaks. Additionally, a variety of new National Language Version releases of Warp 4 FixPak 5/Warp 3 FixPak 32 are out. For full details and download links to all available FixPaks, see IBM's (http://ps.boulder.ibm.com/pbin-usa-ps/getobj.pl?/pdocs-usa/softupd.html) Software Updates web site.

o  New updates to the commercial TCP/IP v4.1 stack were released on February 16th. They can be downloaded and installed via the web from the (http://service.software.ibm.com/pbin-usa-ps/getobj.pl?/pdocs-usa/latest41.html) TCP/IP v4.1 Stack RSU Page.

o  Java 1.1.4 was updated on March 6th; the self-extracting updates for the Java runtime, toolkit package and Java samples can all be downloaded from the (ftp://service.boulder.ibm.com/software/java/fixes/os2/11/) Java 1.1.x updates FTP site
o  IBM's GRADD accelerated video driver package was updated on March 5th; it can be downloaded from IBM's (ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/drivers/video/graddbb.zip) video updates site (ZIP, 1.07M).

                    - * -

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 Assistant 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.

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

the REXX Files	- by Dr. Dirk Terrell

Let's begin a project this month that will enable us to execute a search on one of the popular search engines and parse the results. We'll use the AltaVista search engine, but we'll code it in such a way that we can easily add others. This will probably take us several columns to accomplish, so this month we'll concentrate on creating the URL that executes the search and look at issues relating to that before we get into writing the networking code to talk to the search engine.

If you fire up your web browser, go to (http://www.altavista.digital.com/) the AltaVista site, and then do a search on, say, "OS/2 Supersite", you will get a response page listing the hits for that string. Look in the active URL text area of your browser and you will see a long URL with a strange appearance:

http://www.altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=q&what=web&kl=XX&q=%22OS%2F2+Supersite%22&search.x=65&search.y=10

Notice all the percent signs, plus signs and the ampersands. Those are special characters in a URL that is pointed at a CGI program (notice the "/cgi-bin/" in the URL). CGI, short for "Common Gateway Interface", is the most common way of running a program on a web server and then displaying the results in the user's web browser. (See the (http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n14/rexx.htm) December, 1996 REXX Files column for a discussion about using REXX for CGI programs.)

A URL can not directly contain non-printable characters like tabs and carriage returns (and certain others), so the way to include them is to use hexadecimal notation. A tab is ASCII (decimal) code 9, and 9 in hexadecimal is 09. A carriage return is ASCII code 13, or 0D in hexadecimal. In a URL, the percent sign is used to signal that the next two digits are the hexadecimal representation of a character. Looking at the URL above, we see that the first percent sign is followed by "22" meaning hexadecimal 22, which is ASCII code 34, or the double quote. The next one is "%2F", ASCII code 47 or the forward slash, as in OS/2. So, the string that was entered in the search field on the AltaVista web page was

"OS/2 Supersite" 

and it gets turned into

%22OS%2F2+Supersite%22 

As you might suspect, REXX makes it very easy to go back and forth between characters and their hexadecimal codes. The c2x() function returns the hexadecimal code for a given character, and the x2c() function does the reverse. As you can see above, not all characters have to be converted into their hexadecimal codes. These characters are the digits and the letters of the (English) alphabet:

0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 

So all we have to do is check to see if a particular character is contained in the above set and convert it to a hexadecimal code if it is not. One way to do this is to loop over the characters of a string and use the Pos() function to see if they are contained in the list of valid characters. Here is some code to do this:

   /* Convert a string to URL form */
   AString='"OS/2 Supersite"'
	OkayChars = '0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'
	NewString=""

	Do i = 1 to Length( AString)
		if Pos( SubStr( AString, i, 1), OkayChars) > 0
			Then NewString = NewString || SubStr( AString, i, 1)
			Else NewString = NewString || '%' || c2x( SubStr( AString, i, 1))
	End
   Say AString "converts to" NewString

But there is still one thing we have to take care of: the space (ASCII 32) gets special treatment. Spaces in a string have to be converted to plus signs (+). To do this, we modify the above routine slightly:

   /* Convert a string to URL form and handle spaces properly */
   AString='"OS/2 Supersite"'
	OkayChars = '0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'
	NewString=""

	Do i = 1 to Length( AString)
		if Pos( SubStr( AString, i, 1), OkayChars) > 0
			Then NewString = NewString || SubStr( AString, i, 1)
			else Do 
            If SubStr(AString,i,1)=" "
               Then NewString=NewString||"+"
               Else NewString = NewString || '%' || c2x( SubStr( AString, i, 1))
         end
	end
   Say AString "converts to" NewString

Now, the more experienced readers will notice that the above routines are not as efficient as they could be. The primary inefficiency relates to the multiple calls to SubStr(). If you are converting small strings, then the multiple calls don't make much difference. But if you are converting large strings, you would be better off calling SubStr() once and storing the result in a variable like this:

AString='"OS/2 Supersite"'
OkayChars = '0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'
NewString=""

Do i = 1 to Length( AString)
   Test = SubStr( AString, i, 1)
   if Pos( Test, OkayChars) > 0
      Then NewString = NewString || Test
      else Do 
         If SubStr(AString,i,1)=" "
            Then NewString=NewString||"+"
            Else NewString = NewString || '%' || c2x( Test)
      end
end
Say AString "converts to" NewString

So now we have a routine that will encode a string into the proper form for a URL. Next month we'll look at how the CGI program on the server end interprets the URL that we send to it and begin writing the communications code so that we can talk to it.

                    - * -

(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.

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

Networking with OS/2	- by Brian L. Juergensmeyer

Hi, everyone. I apologize first for skipping out on the last couple of months. For those that are interested, the hospital that I work for just merged with another hospital of equal size, and merging the routine pool and database proved to be "something of a challenge". However, that is all in the past now, and I'm back and ready to go.

One last thing before we get to this month's article: if anyone out there has any suggestions or requests for me to cover in the monthly networking column, please feel free to let either myself, Chris, or Trevor know. Some of you have already done so, and I've taken some suggestions. Others, while they did make sense and would have been good, were a practical impossibility (the suggestion of a LANAlyzer review comes to mind: I'd dearly love to do just such a review, but a decent LANAlyzer retails for ~$3,000 US. I have access to a LANAlyzer at work but a review based on one product would be kind of lopsided, don't you think?)

Now, on to the show. I had originally intended to write about the formation of TCP and IP packets, and how they interacted, but some of my documentation disappeared. I ended up going straight to the source, and hope to have the relevant RFC's translated into human-speak before next month's deadline.

Instead, an individual saved my life this month by suggesting an article on the use of RAS between OS/2 Warp and Windows NT. RAS (or Remote Access Service) is a method for accessing shared folders on a remote local area network. Basically, it is a method of running NetBIOS over PPP. While it is effective, it is also hideously (and I do mean HIDEOUSLY) slow on anything slower than a true 56k connection. Many of you are familiar with local area networks, and with the process of accessing shared folders over a network. For most, that access is virtually instantaneous. However, most folks are accessing their internal LAN's with a 10 megabit shared Ethernet backbone at minimum. This would give the user a good chunk of that 10 megabit bandwidth to his/herself. When all you have to go over is a 28.8 k modem, however, access does slow down significantly. This is most noticeable when doing a general network browse or when transferring a large amount of data.

However, there are other reasons to use a RAS connection. In addition to being able to access all of your documents as if you were connected locally to the network that contained them, you will actually be a virtual member of that network. I have used RAS at home for precisely that reason. There are two firewalls between my home box and my work box if I attempt to connect to it via my standard, home PPP connection. Developing client-server applications can be very difficult if there are two firewalls between yourself and the server that you are using for development. If I connect to the RAS server directly instead, I can bypass all of the firewalls and can do my network development in peace.

Having said all of that, for those that wish to utilize a RAS server, you must first have the RAS client installed. This is done by either choosing to install the Remote Access Client during the original install of OS/2 Warp, or by doing a "selective install for networking" (found in the "Install/Remove" folder in "Selective Install for Networks"). If you have, by chance, installed a new drive since your original installation of OS/2 (this goes for those of you that have a Zip drive), you will probably have to remark out the driver for your Zip drive to do the selective install of RAS. The Selective Install application requires that you do your selective install from the same drive that you did the original installation of Warp from (IBM, what were we thinking here???).

You may choose to configure a connection to use during the installation of the RAS driver, or you may choose to wait until after you have installed the driver to configure a connection. There will be several items that need to be set up properly for each entry. If you are doing this configuration during installation, these settings will be right in front of you. If you are modifying a current installation, you will need to go to your "System Setup" folder. Inside of your "System Setup" folder there now lives a Remote Access Client icon. Double click on it. After the service starts (which can take a few seconds), right click on the icon representing your PC and select the popup menu that you wish to use. 

The first notebook tab is the phone book. You may change the phone number of the remote server that you are dialing here. Next is the answer tab (used by those whose server calls them back). The Dial tab allows you to specify when a popup message appears. You may, if you need to do so, modify the comm ports or the modem you are using for LAN distance remote on the Ports and Modem pages as necessary.

The addresses tab allows you to type in the virtual NIC card address that you will be using. This address MUST be unique across your network. This address is the lowest level of address available to the server. Indeed, the facility that makes a router special is the ability to translate from IP address to NIC address. You will also need to choose which type of networking protocol you are using.

The next page allows you to give the name by which your OS/2 box will be known on the network. The LAPS tab allows you to modify the protocols that you will be using (are you using IPX at work? Here is the place to add it in). Finally, we have timers and security.

The timers are primarily there to ensure that your connection is working the way that it should, and that it hangs up on you when it has been left unused for a certain amount of time. Your defaults should be adequate here. Finally, if you wish to enable security and place password authorization over your computer, the security tab is the way to do it. Note that this only enables security locally, it does not send your NT password to the NT network.

According to the paperwork that I've seen, this setup should then be able to connect to a Microsoft Windows NT RAS Server. However, I've not yet been able to get this to work. I'll report further on it next month, and we'll cover setting up a LAN Distance server and/or another LAN Distance client.

                    - * -

(brianj@bearkan.com) 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.

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

HTML Editors - Introduction

HTML Purists and Right-Brained Designers still fight bitterly over which is superior; code-level or WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web page editors. Both do more or less the same job, both are capable of producing the same results, but each does it in a fundamentally different way. In this review of three HTML (or "Web page") editors, only one is "WYSIWYG", while the other two thrust you knee deep into the particulars of HTML source code.

The first of the code-level editors is HTML Studio - winner of the 1996 Readers Choice Award and Runner Up in the 1997 award for HTML Editors. Made by Panacea, the same company that produced another e-Zine! Reader's Choice Runner-Up -- ProNews/2 -- Chris Wenham reviews it for us this month.

Second is HTML-Ed, a personal favorite among several e-Zine! staff members, and most notable for its speed, keyboard control and unique way of managing the preview mode. Colin Hildinger has this review.

Editor's Choice

Third, and the winner of our Editor's Choice, is HomePage Publisher by JBC. Not only did it win Readers Choice in our 1997 awards, but it earned Runner-Up status the year before, performing a kind of tango with HTML Studio for the same spot. But yes, we fell to the clutches of the Dark Side and picked the one "WYSIWYG" editor from the set, we must surely be losing our grip. Chris Wright tells us how it works for him.

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

HomePage Publisher	- by Christopher B. Wright

In the world of web design, there are two types of web designers: those who feel comfortable coding a site by hand, and those who don't. Those who do have an innate advantage over the rest of us: somehow, they can visualize how the site they are working on will ultimately look, while the rest of us simply see many lines of text.

While there have been graphical web design tools available on the Windows and Mac markets for a while, most of these tools won't let you configure and customize your code to the degree that doing it from scratch will. In most cases, when you move from handwritten code to graphically-assisted HTML design tools, you sacrifice a lot of the control of your site in order to make everything faster and easier to manage.

HomePage Publisher is an impressive bridge between hand-coding and graphical web design tools.  It gives you a very complete WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface as you build your site, but it also gives you a lot of control over the specific settings of each tag.  In fact, the degree of control is so high that it helps if you have some familiarity with HTML and the different tag settings before you start using the application.

If you have a moderate level of familiarity with the HTML 3.2 specification, and you're a visually-oriented person who prefers seeing what they're building as they build it, HomePage Publisher will be a fine addition to your web design toolbox.

Features

As befits a WYSIWYG design application, on first glance HomePage Publisher might look more like a simple word processing application than it would a web design tool.  It's set up with the standard two-row button bars at the top of the page, containing all the common tools you'd expect in a word processing app.  Along with a set of font and font control tools (you can choose between serif and sans serif typefaces), you also have single-click access to the bold, underline, and italic effects. Also on the toolbars are standard cut/copy/paste and undo/redo keys -- HomePage Publisher gives you unlimited undo capability, a feature so useful I can't possibly do it justice.

HomePage Publisher is not a word processor, however, it is a web design tool; along with these standard tools, the button bars include HTML-specific tags.  With the click of a single button you can define a word or a line of text as a hyperlink, insert a GIF or JPEG image, or even insert a web plug-in or Java applet. These toolbars are also customizable to a limited degree: you can add buttons to them, swap buttons between bars, even change their default positions (so they appear on the bottom of the screen, floating outside the application, or docked to the right- or left-hand side).

HomePage Publisher's work area displays your page-in-progress very accurately.  In previous versions of this application, there was a disparity between the size of "standard" text on HPP and on some PC-based browsers -- HPP defaulted to 10 points and Netscape, for example, defaulted to 12.  In the latest update (2.0C) this has been made a configurable setting: you can now specify the default font size to be either 10 or 12 points.

HomePage Publisher can define almost any part of the HTML 3.2 specification -- even some that current OS/2 browsers can't display.  For example, HPP allows you to define certain text as being displayed in certain typefaces (currently, only Times New Roman, Helvetica, and Arial typefaces are supported) even though Netscape/2 and WebExplorer will only display a default typeface for all of its text.  The (http://www.dtcweb.com/) DTCWeb site that I maintain makes heavy use of this feature, though at the moment no one can really tell unless they're using a browser from another operating system.

If you are familiar with the HTML spec and how each tag can be defined, HPP can speed your ability to change the properties of a tag.  Double-clicking the work area activates the Extended Settings dialog box, a region that appears just below the menu area and allows you to "fine tune" the settings of whatever tag you're working on at the time.

The Extended Settings area is very useful if you know what you're doing (and if you don't know what you're doing, the Extended Settings area is a great way to learn the finer points of HTML tags.) In fact, I would go so far as to say this is the single most powerful feature in the entire application.  This area allows you, for example, to set the ALTernate text for a graphic very easily, or to change its dimensions (make it larger or smaller) as you see fit. The Extended Settings area automatically changes to reflect whatever element of the web page you're working on at the time. It's most valuable when working with tables, since not only the overall table but each row and even each cell can be configured separately from each other.

With the release of version 2, HomePage Publisher also gave you the ability to work with frames.  HPP allows you to view both the <FRAMES> and <NOFRAMES> areas of your site without any fuss, so updating both areas is a relatively painless process.  There are some kinks in this tool, however -- for example, I've found when I first create frames on a page I'm unable to actually add anything to the frames themselves until I create files for them containing basic HTML header and body tags. Some people who are more familiar with HTML code may find it more convenient to prepare your frames pages before actually working with them in HomePage Publisher, at least until it's been developed a little further.

While HomePage Publisher is intended to be a visual layout tool for web page design, it does allow you to view the source code, and with the most recent update (2.0C) it allows you to format that code as well.  A settings box allows you to specify how you would like the code to appear (all lower case, mixed case, all upper case) and gives you a list of formatting options you can choose to either turn on or turn off.  There are times when viewing source code is the most efficient way of getting something done (for example, inserting a Link Exchange banner) and these features can help you find your place a little more quickly.

It's impractical to list every feature HPP has.  Suffice to say that it covers most of the HTML 3.2 specification, but none of the "cutting edge" HTML 4.0 specification (no layers, no cascading style sheets) at this point in time.

Performance

My machine isn't a good baseline for measuring application speed, but I've heard reports that it can be sluggish on anything lower than a Pentium on the PC food chain.  There are a few other concerns, however, that you need to keep in mind when working on this program.

HomePage Publisher uses some aspects of OS/2's video display system that some drivers don't much like to interact with.  I discovered this when displaying 16 million colors on my Matrox Millennium II card at 1280x1024. This specific color depth and resolution would cause my system to freeze up when some web pages were displayed in HPP.  Strangely enough, this only occurred at that resolution/color depth, and only on Warp 4 machines.  Switching to a 64k color depth got around the problem and I'm told that Matrox has been informed of the problem and is looking into it.  (It is unclear as to whether or not IBM's GRADD drivers overcome this issue, because I've yet to successfully get the GRADD drivers to display 1280x1024 at 16 million colors).

Also, some video cards won't display backgrounds correctly, instead causing the toolbar and work area to take on a pink hue and to corrupt the mouse pointer.  Because of this problem the ability to view backgrounds is disabled by default (if your video card is not affected by this problem, there are instructions in the help files on how to enable the feature).  Again, my Matrox card had this problem, and I'm told Matrox is looking into this as well.  The IBM GRADD drivers do solve this problem, so if you're willing to live with a beta display driver you might want to consider using them as a work-around solution.

There are a few other performance quirks when using this program.  When you're typing on a blank page, and the text exceeds the space in the work area, the work area will not "scroll down" to let you see what you're doing.  In fact, you'll need to save the page and reload it in order for scroll bars to appear at all.


Support

The documentation and end-user support for this application is nothing short of impressive.  HomePage Publisher has one of the most complete online help menus I've seen for any shareware application -- only Electronic Teller's is as thorough and as helpful.

This application is also actively supported by its author. He seems genuinely interested in receiving feedback (both positive and negative) from people who use the program, and has incorporated end-user feature requests into program updates.  A new version update seems to come out every one to three months, fixing a bug here, adding a feature there, and giving the overall impression of a program that is always being refined and supported.


Analysis

If you're a purist who believes the best way to design a web site is to do it by hand, you probably won't like the features HomePage Publisher provides -- but even you may be (grudgingly) impressed with the quality of the HTML code HPP produces.  While a WYSIWYG editor will probably never be able to match the optimization that can be achieved by hand-coding the site, HomePage Publisher is pretty good at not leaving extraneous tags hanging about, and it gets better with every release.

HomePage Publisher is an excellent web page design tool, but the price tag is a little hefty -- US$90 is the price of many shrink-wrapped, over-the-counter web design tools, and it's surprising to see a shareware application with a price that high.  HomePage Publisher can go head-to-head, feature-wise, with most of those applications, however, and I have found it worth the price. For those of you who are willing to go without frames support, a stripped-down version is available for $45; a more affordable solution for novices and hobbyists who just want to be able to see what they're doing as they build web sites for their own enjoyment.

If you're looking for a WYSIWIG design environment for your web work, and you'd like to use an application that is well-supported by its author, HomePage Publisher is an excellent choice. Strongly recommended.

                    - * -

HomePage Publisher 2.0, level C
     by (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/clerin/) JBC
     download from (ftp://ftp.bmtmicro.com/bmtmicro/hpp200c.zip) BMT Micro (ZIP, 3.9 megs)
     Registration: US$95 / $49

(wrightc@dtcweb.com) Christopher B. Wright is a technical writer in the Richmond, VA area, and has been using OS/2 Warp since January 95.  He is also a member of Team OS/2.

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

HTML-Ed v.96b	- by Colin Hildinger

HTML-Ed is, in my opinion, the sports car of HTML editors.  It's small, it's fast, and, in the hands of someone who knows how to use it, it really performs.  I'm using it right now and use it all the time.  I have to admit (shamefully) that I am not a registered owner of HTML-Ed yet, but will be registering it in my first batch of "Post-Higher-Education Software Registrations."  That's a promise.  Paychecks are a wonderful thing.

The Options

There are a lot of solutions for creating HTML, but I like to stick with the direct way: text and tags.  Sure, you could use a WYSIWIG editor to create your HTML, but I find that when you do that you can easily create pages that: a) waste space with extraneous tags and b) don't necessarily look good in all browsers.  The web is not WYSIWIG, as much as Microsoft and now Netscape want it to be.  There's nothing more irritating that pulling up a page on your 1280x1024 desktop and realizing that some idiot wrote it so that it would only use the left half of the screen.  You end up having to tweak your raw HTML after creating it so that it's clean and "right."  Sure, some people don't, but there are a ton of web pages out there which just don't work as intended.

There are also a number of other editors out there which can be used as HTML editors, some of which have plug-in modules available (usually created by third parties) which add HTML tag support.  These are nice if you already use the editor extensively and are familiar with them.  There are also other HTML-specific editors which let you drop the tags into the text, but in my experience, none of them are quite as quick and slick as HTML-Ed.

How it Works for Me

With easy-to-remember key combinations you can insert all the common HTML 2.0 and many HTML 3.0 tags.  Some of the tags, like the <image> tag, also have dialog boxes which help you fill in the blanks.  The dialog I just mentioned also has the nice habit of detecting the size of an image and putting the proper height and width tags with it to speed up loading of the web page you are creating.  There is even a list of "special characters" which you can insert, like the less than and greater than symbols I used above.  When I started using HTML-Ed (and when I started doing web pages) I used the drop down menu system to find the tags I wanted, but now I pretty much stick to the key combinations because I'm so familiar with them.  It seems that other programs may appear a little easier to learn, but if you're doing any serious amounts of editing, HTML-Ed becomes a minimal effort way of doing things.  My hands almost never leave the keyboard.

When I want to see how a page looks, I hit <alt>-t and I see what it looks like in Web Explorer, because HTML-Ed is capable of using the Web Explorer DLL's to display HTML within its own window.  I can have multiple web pages open in one window through the use of HTML-Ed's Ring Editing feature.  You get a little left and right arrow that lets you quickly flip between pages.  I also have HTML-Ed set to automatically keep open each HTML page I go to when doing a preview.  That way, when editing my games page, for instance, I can "browse" each of the pages I want to edit while in preview mode, and then switch back to edit mode and they're all open.  Then when I'm done I "Save All" and upload the updates.  Again, HTML-Ed does things fast and simple.  No dillydallying around for hours in "file->open" dialog boxes, I open the root page for one of my web pages from a shadow on my Tab Launchpad, and I'm set.

And then for those of you eager to customize to the hilt, HTML-Ed offers both the ability to redefine the keyboard shortcuts to your own liking, plus a fairly comprehensive Rexx interface. With its built-in library of commands, any Rexx programmer should have no trouble with adding his or her own functionality. 

What Could be Improved?

Well, first of all, the program hasn't been updated since the middle of 1996.  I hope this changes, because I really like it and hope it doesn't wither with the wealth of new HTML tags being created by Microsoft, Netscape, and others.  The first feature which is absent, thank God, is support for frames.  I think frames are a tool which can be very nice when used properly and viewed properly, but that they defy the "view anywhere" mission of HTML.  I avoid their use.  Support for table tags, on the other hand, would be greatly appreciated.  Sure, I can create my tables manually, but it would be really nice if they could be treated in a way similar to the way images are treated.  There are other tags that are absent, but most of the ones you really need existed in HTML 2.0 and 3.0, so I won't dwell on it.

Finally, there are one or two mildly annoying bugs that the author could fix.  Actually, I can only think of one bug, and it didn't exist in the previous version, but I really do hope that the author will consider dusting off the code and expanding it.  Perhaps adding in support for using Netscape for OS/2 as your previewer, or just adding in some more tags.  Even if he doesn't, he's earned my $20 because HTML-Ed is truly a productivity tool.

Editor's note: To see what another OS/2 e-Zine! writer thought of HTML-Ed a few years ago, see (http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n8/htmled.htm) Chris Wenham's review of HTML-Ed v.94b.

                    - * -

HTML-Ed v.96b
     by (ianprest@connect.reach.net) Ian Prest
     download from the (http://www.os2ss.com/archives/hobbes/os2/apps/internet/www/editors/htmle96b.zip) OS/2 Supersite (ZIP, 178k)
     Registration: US$20

(http://www.ionet.net/~colin) Colin Hildinger is a Mechanical Engineer working for Enviro Systems, Inc. where he manages the network and designs aircraft heating, air conditioning, and pressurization systems.  He 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.

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

HTML Studio v1.55	- by Chris Wenham

As the OS/2 e-Zine! Runner-Up award winner this year and first-place winner last year in the same category, HTML Studio has no lack of popularity. It stands somewhere between a fully WYSIWYG and text-only web page editor, editing the pages themselves at the code level, but offering near real-time previews in either its built-in preview window or a DDE link with Netscape. In addition, it also features rudimentary publishing features and table creation. However, it doesn't quite live up to its promise of creating web pages without knowledge of HTML -- it's more likely that you'll reach a compromise between learning enough HTML to get by, and relying on HTML Studio to fill in the gaps of your knowledge.

Installation

HTML Studio's own installation program creates and moves all the necessary files into a directory you name and places a folder of icons on the desktop with which to launch the application. A bit puzzling is the creation of an "Uninstall" icon for the installation program, since the INSTALL.EXE it points to is never actually copied over from the floppy or temporary directory you installed from. (It's not made clear anywhere that you must copy the INSTALL.EXE over to the new directory yourself after the install program has finished running)

Interface

If you're familiar with Panacea's other major application -- the ProNews/2 newsreader -- then you'll already know how to operate much of HTML Studio's interface, especially the toolbar. Right click on it and you can start adding your own buttons and functions, or drag existing ones to change their order. HTML studio allows you to invoke any of the program's menu functions this way, or launch external programs. The button faces can come from the built-in collection, or a bitmap of your choice.

Slightly annoying were the keyboard associations. While there are keyboard shortcuts for bold and italics, there are none for "strong" or "emphasis" -- the preferred method of getting the same effect in HTML. To get these you'll have to dig through the QuickTags menu each time or make buttons for them, since there isn't a way of modifying the keyboard shortcuts, as there is in HTML-Ed.

And then it insists on adopting an MDI (Multiple Document Interface), where each file is in a separate sub-window, "slaved" to the main one. The chief disadvantage here was that maximized document windows didn't re-size at the same time you re-sized the main window -- meaning that you could lose the document's titlebar and have to tile-and-maximize everything again. I particularly noticed and disliked this while I was trying to size the editor part of the program to coexist with the free-floating preview window on the same screen.

Editing

HTML Studio passes well as an editor with a high level of HTML support added. In addition to the table support mentioned earlier, it can also handle form elements (check boxes, radio buttons, etc.), Java tags and special characters (like accented characters, the copyright symbol and so on). What's handy about the special characters dialog is that it's modeless -- meaning you can open and leave it on the side until needed while you continue typing.

The Table support is a little questionable and not as elegantly done as it could be. Through a pair of dialogs you must first put together a list of column headers (which also defines how many columns across the final table will be), then add data to the rows that follow with the second dialog. This second, row-adding dialog remembers the columns from the last table you created, but isn't smart enough to see if you've perhaps moved the cursor to a second table in the same document. 

I would have preferred the option of simply defining the initial dimensions of the table in rows and columns, but perhaps HTML Studio's current two-step process is easier for new users unfamiliar with the intimidating syntax.

Handy shortcuts and Drag-n-Drop

To speed up the entry of some common sets of tags, such as "META NAME" blocks, Headers and WebEx animations, HTML Studio has dialogs that simplify the task down to plugging the data into a few forms, then inserting the correctly formatted tags at the current cursor position. You'll see such "helpful" dialogs the first time you try to create a document too, as HTML Studio will insist on having a filename, destination directory and page title before starting a new file. 

Images are handled this way too (complete with preview and alignment options), or by a much easier method; drag-n-drop from the Workplace Shell. HTML Studio intelligently uses relative, Unix-friendly paths to reference the image too -- so they shouldn't be broken when the page is finally published to the server. WIDTH and HEIGHT tags are correctly filled in too, saving you a trip to the image viewer.

Previewing

The built-in "Web Window" is based on and requires IBM's Web Explorer, which comes with OS/2 3.0 and higher. Opened in a separate window, rather than toggling in-place like HTML-Ed, this preview of the document being edited can be updated either manually or after every Edit/Insert operation, such as highlighting and deleting, pasting text, or inserting a table. If the Web Window isn't good enough, you can have it update a currently running copy of Netscape or Lynx instead via DDE. The only disadvantage to either is that HTML Studio cannot scroll down the preview to the part you were editing, meaning that on long pages you'll find yourself re-scrolling Netscape or the Web Window down to the spot you were at whenever a refresh occurs.

Conclusions

What I really missed the most in HTML Studio was the ability to define my own keyboard shortcuts and a good Rexx interface with which to write macros and batch jobs. I also don't quite buy the idea that someone without HTML experience could create a "full featured" web page with the program. Create from scratch with no mistakes, maybe, but when you come back to edit the same page later you'll definitely need to start learning a few basics of HTML, if only to know how to insert an extra column or row in a table.

HTML Studio will most likely teach you, rather than isolate you. Its shortcuts and preview methods are very handy too.

                    - * -

HTML Studio v1.55
     by (http://www.program.com/panacea/) Panacea Software
     download from the (http://www.os2ss.com/archives/hobbes/os2/apps/internet/www/editors/htmls155.zip) OS/2 Supersite (ZIP, 670k)
     Registration: US$30

(chris@os2ezine.com) Chris Wenham is the Senior Editor of OS/2 e-Zine! -- a promotion from Assistant Editor which means his parking spot will now be wide enough to keep his bicycle and a trailer.

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

QuickMotion 2.0	- by Chris Wenham

Promises and a leaked Alpha was all that we got from IBM and Apple when we needed QuickTime support in OS/2, so it was up to someone else to come up with an alternative. MainActor for OS/2 was able to display QuickTime movies, but with no support for QuickTime VR (navigable, 360-degree panoramas) nor any MMOS/2 codec, it was still impossible to view embedded QuickTime movies in Netscape or in other MMOS/2 aware programs. Fortunately we have a second option, and that's QuickMotion from Practice Corp. In the latest version, 2.0, QuickTime not only supports QuickTime VR, it also supports clickable hot spots and multi-node QuickTime movies.

Installation

If you've been happily running with PROTECTONLY=YES, you're gonna hate the installation process. Since Practice wanted a secure means of distributing and ordering their software electronically they chose to package the installation files with a Windows-based scheme called "ZipLock". The package comes as one big, self-extracting executable archive with a Windows-based front-end, of which you will need to run in a Win-OS/2 session. This front-end provides the first stage of the installation (unpacking the files to a temporary directory) and also acts as the "Electronic store" that you can later purchase the software from. For this electronic purchasing step you'll need to have configured Win-OS/2 to work with OS/2's TCP/IP stack.

Once the demo or registered version has been unlocked and extracted to a temporary folder, you then drop back into OS/2 and run the INSTALL.CMD script that will start OS/2's Multimedia Install utility. From there on the Multimedia Install program will copy all the necessary files to their appropriate locations, install the Netscape plug-in and create a set of desktop icons. QuickMotion comes with a registered version of AnPoCODEC too -- a bonus that lets you view Windows AVI files that default Warp didn't already cover.

As a short note, CODECs are modules of code that enable MMOS/2 to CODe and DECode files in many different formats. They are preferable to standalone players since any MMOS/2-aware application will inherit the ability to read those formats too.

QuickFlick, The Netscape Plug-in

If you've already installed the Plug-in Pack that's distributed alongside Netscape for OS/2 then you've already got a "stub" plug-in that's supposed to play QuickTime movies in web pages by calling on MMOS/2. This "stub" wasn't much more than a placeholder, and won't function initially. The installation of QuickMotion's CODECs will fix that, but its own Netscape plug-in, called QuickFlick, offers much more functionality -- especially when it comes to QuickTime VR.

QuickFlick has a few simple configuration options, accessed by going to Netscape's about:plugins page and clicking on the "Properties" button next to the QuickFlick logo. Here you can tell it to display the first frame of the movie as soon as possible, and how to position non-embedded movies.

QuickFlick has the ability to start playing movies before they've fully downloaded, and will show a little marker on the progress bar to indicate where it thinks it will be able to start playing without catching up on the unloaded portion too early. You have the ability to play, pause, fast-forward and rewind through the movie. It also supports looping, if the movie's author has set that particular property.

QuickTime VR

QuickTime VR is a wonderful addition to the QuickTime API that allows viewing panoramic "Virtual Reality" scenes. Usually these scenes are made by stitching together a series of photographs that represent a 360-degree view from one spot. The viewer can then pan this scene with the mouse, looking left, right, up and down or zooming in and out. This method can also be inversed, letting you look around a single object, seeing it from all sides - a highly useful tool for virtual stores that want to let customers examine a widget over the internet before buying.

In QuickMotion, QT VR cannot be handled by MMOS/2 on its own due to the advanced navigation and therefore such movies must be played either through the standalone player that QuickMotion installs, or through the Netscape Plug-in. One pleasant feature of QuickFlick (both the plug-in and the standalone viewer) is the ability to save any frame of a QT VR panorama to a GIF or other picture file. This frame saving ability isn't available for regular movies, however.

Hot spots and Multi-node movies

The next major new feature in this version of QuickMotion is the support of Multi-node movies (movies with more than one "chapter") and clickable hot spots that can take you to another node in the movie, or another web page (something that can lead to pretty funky navigation schemes, especially for art-gallery sites).

These hot spots, when used in QuickTime VR, will stay in one place relative to the panorama. So as you rotate your view, the hot spot slips in and out of reach. Panoramas of a room can have hot spots around the doors and windows -- each leading to a new room and a new panorama. Imagine using that to sell your house on the internet!

For the impatient, QuickMotion allows you to begin navigating the first node of a multi-node movie before the remaining nodes have finished downloading.

Conclusions

It's hard to find faults with QuickMotion's advertised benefits, since it is a well made plug-in and CODEC. The only major problem you're likely to have is with the Windows-based ZipLock distribution and electronic purchasing part, for this we wince and cringe a little, but it's a small evil to momentarily bear for the world of content that QuickTime opens up.

The only disappointments really are the lack of support for some of the newer, or more obscure aspects to the QuickTime API. It doesn't support QuickTime 3.0, QuickTime VR 2.0, recording, changing frame rates or multiple decompression methods. These and other limitations are covered in the product's documentation, however, and we hope Practice will see it in their means to address these in the future.

                    - * -

QuickMotion 2.0
     by (http://www.practice.xo.com/) Practice Corporation
     MSRP: US$34.95

                    - * -

(chris@os2ezine.com) Chris Wenham is the Senior Editor of OS/2 e-Zine! -- a promotion from Assistant Editor which means his parking spot will now be wide enough to keep his bicycle and a trailer.

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

February '98 Reader Survey Results

The concept of shareware was conceived so long ago that most modern computer users can't even remember when they first came across this type of software.  Today shareware has become so ubiquitous that it can be found on every continent, on every personal computing platform, and on nearly every computer.

Last month we were wondering if OS/2 users viewed shareware differently than other users.  Before we could even begin to speculate, of course, we had to find out exactly how OS/2ers felt about shareware (the attitudes of non-OS/2ers are an even bigger task to gauge!).  So in February we asked our readers about their "Support for Shareware".

Answers to our survey were accepted from February 16th until March 13th.  We had a total of 1,389 replies to our questionnaire with 93 "spoiled" entries (replies were considered "spoiled" if they did not contain an e-mail address, if all questions were not answered or if they were duplicates).  This left 1,296 valid replies.  The results were as follows:

Do you use shareware on a regular basis?

Even more fundamental than how you use or abuse shareware is whether you use it at all.  So this was our natural starting point.  We found that, not surprisingly considering current trends in software distribution, almost everyone surveyed (95.9%) currently uses some shareware, with over half of those responding (50.5%) reporting they use 4 to 10 shareware apps.  No big surprises here.

Do you register shareware if you keep it?

After verifying that we were indeed dealing with bona fide shareware users, we asked if you register the packages you "keep".  As most people know, shareware comes with a license that stipulates you may use the package for a set period, after which, if you feel you would like to continue using it, you must purchase (aka "register") it.

Do you or don't you?  Well, according to your survey replies, most of you are mostly honourable when it comes to shareware.  The largest group in this category (34.1%) told us they register everything they continue to use past the trial period (bravo!) and nearly three quarters (74.7%) reported they registered at least 51% of what they keep.  Overall, a fairly trustworthy bunch.

Of course, there were the 50 people (3.9% of our respondents) who admitted they never register anything -- whether they keep it or not...

Are you more likely or less likely to register OS/2 shareware (compared to other platforms)?

Probably the question most pondered by OS/2 developers is whether they can count on the honesty of OS/2 consumers any more than usual because of the special conditions in the OS/2 market.  We would all like to believe that a group of users as dedicated as we all are would put our money where our mouths are.  Yet some developers have complained that this is not the case.

Our survey found that, in fact, OS/2 users are more loyal to OS/2 developers than they are to developers for other platforms.  More than half (50.3%) said they were much more likely to register an OS/2 app than a non-OS/2 app, and 70.7% were at least a little more likely to do so.  If you add the 14.0% of our readers who reported they don't even use any non-OS/2 shareware, you have 84.7% of our readers who would be more likely to leave their money with an OS/2 developer than a developer for Windows, the Mac, BeOS, Linux, etc.

How do you prefer to register shareware?

But the desire to pay for the software we use is only half the equation.  We also need to be able to get our dollars into developers' pockets in the easiest way possible.  We all know that sometimes we put off registering (or forget to altogether) because of the inconvenience of writing a cheque or converting currencies.  So we wondered exactly what the most convenient payment methods were for our readers.

And, of course, the credit card leads the way.  Almost three quarters (71.3%) of us prefer to make our shareware purchases by credit card, either by phone, email, fax or the WWW.  What is surprising about this number is that the majority of us (53.5%) actually prefer to use the WWW to make our purchases, beating out email by ten to one (5.4%) and even telephone by more than five to one (9.6%).  Obviously we are leaving the days of credit card fraud worries behind us and embracing the idea of secure servers.

                    - * -

That's it for this month.  Don't forget to fill out this month's questionnaire and check back in March for complete results.  Also, this month we have a special survey on how we can improve OS/2 e-Zine!.  Please tell us what you want!

 


                    Complete February '98 Survey Results

Do you use shareware on a regular basis?

Category					Count	Percentage
I have never used shareware		1	0.1%
I have used shareware but not currently	52	4.0%
I use 1 - 3 shareware programs		276	21.3%
I use 4 - 10 shareware programs		654	50.5%
I use 11 - 20 shareware programs		218	16.8%
I use 21 or more shareware programs		95	7.3%
I can't remember				0	0.0%
I don't understand the question		0	0.0%
TOTAL					1296	100.0%


Do you register shareware if you keep it?

Category					Count	Percentage
I have never used shareware		5	0.4%
I never register what I keep		50	3.9%
I register 1 to 25 percent of what I keep	146	11.3%
I register 26 to 50 percent of what I keep	123	9.5%
I register 51 to 75 percent of what I keep	200	15.4%
I register 76 to 99 percent of what I keep	326	25.2%
I register all shareware that I keep	442	34.1%
I don't know				4	0.3%
I don't understand the question		0	0.0%
TOTAL					1296	100.1%


Are you more likely or less likely to register OS/2 shareware (compared to other platforms)?

Category					Count	Percentage
I never use OS/2 shareware			4	0.3%
I never use non-OS/2 shareware		182	14.0%
I never use any shareware			1	0.1%
A little less likely			4	0.3%
Less likely				7	0.5%
Much less likely				7	0.5%
About the same				164	12.7%
A little more likely			48	3.7%
More likely				217	16.7%
Much more likely				652	50.3%
I'm not sure				6	0.5%
I don't understand the question		4	0.3%
TOTAL					1296	99.9%


How do you prefer to register shareware?

Category					Count	Percentage
I do not register shareware		13	1.0%
Using a credit card (by WWW)		694	53.5%
Using a credit card (by email)		70	5.4%
Using a credit card (by telephone)		124	9.6%
Using a credit card (by fax)		36	2.8%
Using cheque or money order		185	14.3%
Using cash				28	2.2%
Other					40	3.1%
I have no preference			105	8.1%
I don't understand the question		1	0.1%
TOTAL					1296	100.1%

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

March '98 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/v3n03/survey2.htm and check back next month to find out how "normal" you really are!

This month's topic: How do you use OS/2?

                    - * -

Our thanks go to Lorne Tyndale of Applied Data Solutions, Windsor, Ontario for this month's topic suggestion.

Do you have an idea that you think would make a good survey question?

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

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How Can We Improve?

OS/2 e-Zine! has been around long enough to qualify as a veteran of the online publishing business and we've undergone many changes in our "long" life.  But like any online magazine (or any print magazine, for that matter), we are continuing to grow and improve.  In the coming months, you'll see the results of many of these improvements.

But rather than follow the traditional practice of asking high-paid corporate executives what our readers want to see, we decided to harness the power of the Internet to speak directly to the people who count: you.  We already have some great ideas for ways to improve OS/2 e-Zine! -- many of which were contributed by our readers -- but we want to know what you think of them too.

Fill in the form at http://www.os2ezine.com/v3n03/survey3.htm and let us know what you want to see in the future.  And, as always, if you have comments or suggestions that can't be expressed with this form, please use our "feedback" button at the bottom of the page to contact us.  We want to hear from you!

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OS/2 Top Sellers Lists

Each month OS/2 e-Zine! gathers data from various OS/2 retailers on the hottest selling OS/2 applications from around the world and presents the findings right here.  Because of the unique on-line OS/2 community, these lists may represent shareware, commercial software or a combination of the two.

We are pleased to bring you the top selling software lists from the following vendors:

o  BMT Micro

o  Indelible Blue

o  J3 Computer Technologies

o  Mensys

Note: These lists represent only the monthly sales figures of the respective retailers.  The list above is presented in alphabetical order.  It is not OS/2 e-Zine!'s intention to recommend one retailer over another.  Please see our disclaimer below for more information.

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

February's Top Selling Apps from BMT Micro


This	Last	Product			Developer
Month	Month
1	1	ProNews/2		Panacea Software
2	--	Dialog Enhancer		Richard Castle
3	3	InJoy			F/X Communications
4	2	PMView			Peter Nielsen
5	4	PMMail			SouthSide Software
6	5	ZOC			EmTec
7	--	FM/2			BareBones Software
8	--	iLink/2			BMT Micro
9	8	OpenChat/2		Max Mikhanosha
10	9	HomePage Publisher	JBC

                    - * -

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

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

February's Top Selling Apps from Indelible Blue


This	Last	Product				Developer
Month	Month
1	2	IBM AntiVirus			IBM
2	1	Smartsuite OS/2 Warp 4 Beta	Lotus
3	3	QuickMotion			Practice Corporation
4	7	BackAgain/2 Pro			Computer Data Strategies
5	--	DeskMan/2			Development Technologies
6	6	Software Choice for OS/2 Warp	IBM
7	--	Smack! for OS/2			Perfect Niche Software
8	10	FaxWorks Pro			Keller Group
9	6	Partition Magic			PowerQuest
10	4	BackMaster			MSR Development
11	5	Object Desktop			Stardock Systems
12	--	Secure Workplace for OS/2		Syntegration
13	8	VisualAge Java Pro		IBM
14 (tie)	9	Hobbes CD-ROM			Walnut Creek
14 (tie)	13	Unite CD Maker			Cirrus
15	12	UniMaint				SofTouch Systems

                    - * -

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

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

February's Top Selling Apps from J3


This	Last	Product				Developer
Month	Month
1	1	Smartsuite OS/2 Warp 4 Beta	Lotus
2	--	TidalWave128 [sound card]	
3	9	Quickmotion			Practice Corporation
4	--	LinkWiz				PCX
5	--	Getting to Know OS/2 Warp 4 [Book]	
6	--	FaxWorks Pro v3 Upgrade		Keller Group
7	5	Partition Magic			PowerQuest
8	--	System Commander			V Communications
9	--	In Charge			Spitfire Software
10	7	ColorWorks V2			SPG

                    - * -

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

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

February's Top Selling Apps from Mensys


This	Last	Product					Developer
Month	Month
1	--	Object Desktop				Stardock Systems
2	--	ImpOS/2					Compart
3	2	Smartsuite OS/2 Warp 4 Beta 2 & More	Mensys
4	4	Partition Magic				PowerQuest
5	9	DriveImage Professional			PowerQuest
6	--	ISDNPM Registration			Meijer
7	3	DriveCopy				PowerQuest
8	6	DriveImage				PowerQuest
9	--	System Commander				V Communications
10	1	Entrepreneur				Stardock Systems

                    - * -

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

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Top Sellers Lists Disclaimer

Our "top sellers lists" represent sales figures compiled for OS/2 e-Zine! by (http://www.bmtmicro.com/) BMT Micro, Inc., (http://www.indelible-blue.com/) Indelible Blue, Inc., (http://www.os2store.com/) J3 Computer Technologies and (http://www.mensys.nl/indexuk.html) Mensys.  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.

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

Subscribe for FREE

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If you have problems please (feedback@os2ezine.com) e-mail us or contact us at:

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

Sponsor OS/2 e-Zine!

* Corporate Sponsors

OS/2 e-Zine! has space for a limited number of corporate advertisers.  A variety of affordable advertising options are available including high impact, inline graphical advertising.  Arrangements are available for multiple issue insertions.

For more information please e-mail admin@os2ss.com or phone at (800) 595-1974 (Toll free - US & Canada) or (352) 335-9693 (Outside US & Canada).

* Readers Can Sponsor Too!

If you feel OS/2 e-Zine! is useful, entertaining or educational, please send what you feel a one year subscription is worth.  Even sponsorship of a few dollars is appreciated.  Individuals sponsoring US$15 or more will be listed in our Sponsors Page (with an optional link to their home page).

Just send your cash, cheque or money order (made payable to Falcon Networking) along with:

o  a note stating that it is for OS/2 e-Zine! sponsorship
o  your name
o  your address (city, state/province and country)
o  your e-mail address
o  your web URL if applicable

Alternatively, you may choose to sponsor OS/2 e-Zine! by credit card through BMT Micro, Inc. (http://www.bmtmicro.com/).  BMT Micro acccepts Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express, Diner's Club and many other credit cards.  Just call:

o (800) 414-4268 (Voice) 9:00am - 7:00pm EST
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o Or, use BMT's (https://secure.falcon-net.net/BMT/order0261.html) Secure Order Form.  It's safe, fast and simple!

Any amount is appreciated and whether you choose to sponsor or not, you will still be able to enjoy every issue of OS/2 e-Zine! on the WWW!

For more information or any other questions please (feedback@os2ezine.com) e-mail us or contact us at:

Falcon Networking
4302 NW 25th Terrace
Gainesville FL, 32605
U.S.A.

(902) 461-2266

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

Corporate Sponsors

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

(http://www.prominic.com/) Prominic Technologies, Inc.
On-line sales & solutions for VisualAge, DB2, OS/2 Warp, Workspace on Demand, Notes/Domino, AIX Firewall, and Net.Commerce (design/hosting).  The best deals on IBM and Lotus software and hardware (PCs, Servers, and RS/6000s) -- with OS/2 preloads!

(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.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.

(http://www.warpspeed.com.au/) WarpSpeed Computers
Developers of The Graham Utilities -- the largest, most comprehensive suite of disk, file and general utilities specifically written for OS/2.

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Copyright 1998   -   Falcon Networking
ISSN 1203-5696