[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!		April 16, 1998		volume 3, number 4
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 1998		Falcon Networking  	ISSN 1203-5696

         "Over Three Quarters of a Million Satisfied Visitors!"


         ****************************************
         Hot News: OS/2 e-Zine! goes bi-weekly --
              our next issue on May 2nd!
         ****************************************


OPINIONS:

  From the editor
  Chris' Rant


DEPARTMENTS:

  the Beta File
  News from the OS/2 World
  the REXX Files
  How Do I?


REVIEWS:

e-Mail Clients

  Introduction
  J Street Mailer Release One - Chris Wenham
  MR/2 ICE 1.40 - Dr. Dirk Terrell
  Notes Mail - Ryan Dill
  PMMail v1.95a - Christopher B. Wright
  Post Road Mailer 3.0 - Richard R. Klemmer


Other Software

  SmartSuite for OS/2 First Looks - Chris Wenham


READER SURVEYS:

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

You and Your Machine
  Answer these simple questions and find out how you compare to
  other OS/2 users.  Results will be printed next month!

Results from our "How can we improve" survey ?
  Find out what your fellow readers asked for and what our plans are.


CELEBRITY CORNER:

OS Wars - Brad Wardell
  Brad Wardell, founder of Stardock Systems, discusses what was, is
  and what might be in the operating system battlefront.


ARTICLES:

MP3 Authoring in OS/2 - Lief Clennon
  Forget RealAudio, MP3 is the hot new audio format on the Internet. 
  Leif Clennon gives us a primer on how to create your our own MP3's
  with native tools.

GRADD: Technology of the Week or the Future? - Colin Hildinger
  OS/2 has always suffered the fate of the "kid brother" when it
  comes to current device driver availability.  IBM hopes to change
  that with its GRADD technology.  Colin Hildinger examines whether
  they've hit the mark.


END NOTES:

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

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

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.

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

Chris' Rant	- by Chris Wenham

Software Distribution in the New Millennium

This piece is partially written for the ones who fret and doubt the existence of a "Warp 5", or that OS/2 will ever see updates to keep it current. The fact is, you probably won't see a "Warp 5" (and wouldn't it be just like IBM to prove me wrong?). But this isn't FUD, and you needn't feel threatened by it. Because in the coming years and the new millennium, the way that software will be distributed is going to change dramatically. In some places it already has. It's time to give up the fixation on major releases, they're on their way out, and it's all thanks to the Internet.

Here are the new trends for software distribution, neither of which replace current store-shelf methods on their own, but which all add up to almost completely eliminate the need for shrink-wrap. They also chart the future of application support in OS/2, and why things don't look so bad after all.

#1: Direct-to-HTML

A number of former standalone applications have already made the transition from compiled code to HTML-based forms delivered by a web server. Reference materials like dictionaries and encyclopedias in particular, but now E-Mail and newsreading has too. Where CD-ROMs wiped out the market for expensive, printed encyclopedia sets, the Web is wiping out the market for CD-ROMs. Who wants to pay for a reference that's outdated before you even buy it, when you can subscribe to an online source instead?

Thanks to (http://www.hotmail.com) Hotmail, (http://www.yahoo.com) Yahoo and (http://altavista.digital.com) AltaVista, you now don't need an e-mail client. The application is in the web page itself, complete with folders, filters, searching, signatures and a free account to boot. And with web-based games like (http://www.solariagames.com/games/) Earth 2025 getting more sophisticated, you'll see them replacing more and more categories of entertainment that you used to clear a space on the shelf and hard drive for. Action games like Quake aren't in any danger, but strategy games like Galactic Civilizations and even Myst could be rewritten as games played through a web browser -- following enhancements to VRML and other web browser technologies.

#2: HTML Hybrids

While in the planning stages of a community calendar web site intended to keep track of upcoming events, meetings, and all the important addresses relevant to a community, it occurred to me that with just a couple more tables in the server's database I could turn it into a fully featured Personal Information Manager (PIM). A little password protection, and an individual user could enter his private schedule -- separate from the community calendar -- along with his personal address book, notes and ToDo lists. But a web page, even with some Javascript tricks, can't display alarms or dial the phone for you; features taken for granted in traditional PIMs.

But what if you downloaded a tiny Java (or native) utility that complemented the features already implemented in HTML? Every time you sign online or edit your calendar, the applet downloads your schedule and waits in the background until it needs to display an alarm or dial the phone, caching your pages too so you can view and edit them even while offline.

These are the hybrids, which are already here too -- such as Yahoo's newsticker and the short-lived IBM Infomarket.

#3: Big Program, Tiny Updates

A 5 meg download updated a 29 meg Java Virtual Machine that originally came with a 300 meg operating system. A FixPak here, a Software Choice there, and all of a sudden you're not so desperate to see Warp 5. It's even happening on the Windows side, since who needs to buy Windows 98 when you can download Internet Explorer and get the same functionality? Market inertia is going to keep the major releases coming for a while, as people expect them. But thanks to the internet, a vendor doesn't have to save up a year or two's worth of changes and release it all as a massive shrinkwrapped update. They can release the updates in pieces, even charging a subscription to access them if necessary. TCP/IP 4.1, Java 1.1, Netscape, whatever. Soon it'll be file systems and GUIs too -- an art already practiced in the Unix world.

#4: Distributed Applications

Raise your hands if you're participating in the RC5 project? Seti@Home? These are all examples of distributed computing, where a large job is broken up across multiple computers to get it done sooner. Autodesk Animator and other high-end modelling programs have been doing this for years already, spreading a big job across a "render farm".

In the future, especially with cheaper bandwidth, there may come a time where half the program you're using is running on your computer, and the other half is running on a server somewhere in the next office, or the next state. A graphics application that passes an image you're working on to a server, so it may be processed with a plug-in or effect that your don't have installed, but have access to through a subscription. Only the part of the image that needs processing is sent, and only the pixels that have changed are sent back.

#5: Broken-up applications

The modern word processor is a bloated, fat beast with features you will never use in its lifetime. In addition to making the program slower, the extra widgets can give the user the feeling that they must be used, slowing down productivity as they spend the time learning them -- only to find they're not useful to their work after all. But with technologies like JavaBeans, 80% of those features can be left on the server, downloaded only when they're actually called on. Throw in a cache, and popular features load quickly.

#6: Remote Control

X-Windows users have been doing this for so long they laugh whenever someone speaks in awe of Citrix WinFrame, or other technologies that let you control a program remotely, yet interact with it as if it were running on the local machine. This method is unlikely to be used outside corporate LANs for a while, but you never know. It's entirely possible that home users will begin using software run remotely this way too, with services provided by their ISP, phone or cable company. 

Making It Happen

I started this column after a conversation with a friend who was convinced the next millennia would bring applications so large they must be distributed on five CD ROMs and take 300 megs of hard drive space for a minimum install. And just for the sake of disagreeing with him (which is something I enjoy immensely) I said he was wrong and began listing all the reasons why. My bet is that even if some of the above trends don't work out, enough of the rest will. 


Especially with the HTML and HTML hybrids, the definition of "application" is going to get fuzzier and fuzzier. But bandwidth can only get larger, RAM can only get cheaper, chips can only get faster, Java and HTML (XML?) can only get better. All of the components needed to make it happen are happening, and all of the companies needed to shift their weight are shifting. IBM's done it with Warp and you'll most likely see all updates come in pieces, as they're developed, rather than being held back for months or years until everything else is ready. Warp 5 might come, by that name, but there'll be even less incentive to upgrade than there was with Warp 4.

And chances are that many of the applications on your shelf will be replaced by ones that are free, or paid by subscription, that are advertiser-supported, and that install the instant they run. And the only really important program on your system will be the web browser.


Are you cleaning space on your hard drive for the next batch 'o bigguns, or waiting for www.office-suite.com? Talk to me in our Hypernews appli... um... (http://www.falcon-net.net/forums/get/ezine/ezine-rant/apr1998.html) 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.

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

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 some beta updates to programs e-Zine's already mentioned..

o  (http://inet.uni-c.dk/~deckkh/) CUSeeMe/2, mentioned in (http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n7/beta.htm) July '97, has been updated (04/09/98) to (http://inet.uni-c.dk/~deckkh/CUOS212.EXE) beta 1.7 (ZIP, 1.3M).
o  (http://solo.lhg.hib.no/~bird/HumbleSoft/BootManager/) kBootManager, mentioned in (http://www.os2ezine.com/v3n01/beta.htm) January '98, has been updated (04/09/98) to (http://solo.lhg.hib.no/~bird/HumbleSoft/BootManager/kbm36003.zip) beta 0.36.3 (ZIP, 100k).
o  The (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/hkelder/#FAT32) FAT32 IFS mentioned in (http://www.os2ezine.com/v3n02/beta.htm#fat32) February '98, has been updated (04/15/98) to (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/hkelder/os2fat32.zip) beta 0.63 (ZIP, 162k).
o  (http://www.os2ezine.com/v3n03/beta.htm#sio2k) SIO v2, mentioned in (http://www.os2ezine.com/v3n03/beta.htm#sio2k) February '98, has been updated (03/30/98) to (http://www.gwinn.com/cgi-bin/v2beta.cmd) beta 7 (ZIP, 205k).
o  The (http://nick.secant.com/newsbeta.htm) MR/2 Newsreader (mentioned in (http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n6/beta.htm) June '97), has been updated (03/24/98) to (http://www.apk.net/secant/nick/news47.zip) beta #47 (ZIP, 1M).
o  (http://www.fm-net.com/pillarsoft/warpzip.html) WarpZip, mentioned in (http://www.os2ezine.com/v3n01/beta.htm) January '98, has been updated (03/20/98) to (http://fm-net.com/pillarsoft/pub/warpzip.zip) beta 1.07 (ZIP, 785k).
o  (http://sdg.ml.org/warpamp.html) WarpAMP, the GUI MP3 player mentioned in (http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n8/beta.htm) August '97, has been updated (03/26/98) to (ftp://ftp.sdg.ml.org/pub/warpamp/wamp_b4.zip) beta 4 (ZIP, 293k).
o  (http://users.invweb.net/~whgiii/pgp.html) PGP v5.0, mentioned in (http://www.os2ezine.com/v3n02/beta.htm#pgp) February '98, has been updated (03/26/98) to (http://users.invweb.net/~whgiii/pgp.html) beta 4 (ZIP, 517k).
o  IBM's (http://www.alphaWorks.ibm.com/formula) High Performance Compiler for Java, mentioned in (http://www.os2ezine.com/v3n01/beta.htm#javacompiler) February '98, has been updated (03/10/98) to (http://www.alphaWorks.ibm.com/forum/downstat.nsf/b9c03948d7fe2d2a8825646800839ae1?CreateDocument/ you're encouraged to try it out and give the author any feedback you may have.

                         - * -

(sking@irietools.com) Stuart King reports that he's now conducting a public beta test of Irie Pascal, a cross-platform compiler for the Pascal language. Using standard 32-bit Pascal, Irie Pascal runs on OS/2, Win95/NT, DOS and Linux (a FreeBSD version is planned as well). Its main feature is that programs developed under Irie Pascal can be run on any of its supported platforms _without recompiling_. It accomplishes this task by using a Virtual Machine Interpreter, much in the same way that a Java environment executes code in a Java VM (Virtual Machine).

Like Java applications, programs generated in Irie Pascal code are much smaller than normal bytecode, since many of the required instructions are in the Virtual Machine instead of the actual program. In Irie Pascal's case, programs can be up to 20 times smaller than those developed with typical Pascal. However, also like a Java VM, code generated by Irie Pascal has to be interpreted on-the-fly by the Interpreter, so program execution can be up to 5 times slower than regular code.

The first beta of Irie Pascal for OS/2 is available for download from the (http://www.irietools.com/) Irie Tools web page. Once the beta cycle is completed, Irie Pascal will sell for a price of around $30-40 US. As encouragement to register the program, applications developed with unregistered versions of Irie Pascal (including this beta) will only run for 7 days before expiring. Also note that registrations fees will not be accepted until the beta cycle is completed, since the registered version doesn't actually exist yet. More information and a feedback form can be found on the above  web page.

                         - * -

Only a little over two weeks after releasing the production version of their new J Street Mailer software (a Java email client partially based on their popular OS/2 software, Post Road Mailer), (http://www.innoval.com) InnoVal has released a new beta version of JSM. This beta contains an improved copy of Sun's HotJava browser component in the package, so JSM users can either use JSM's built-in browser or use the HotJava component. Additionally, it includes better HTML support, optional support for FAT partitions (allowing you to run it from the same directory in both OS/2 and Windows), color-coding of messages based on filters, an improved message window, and much more. A full (http://www.innoval.com/porter/features.htm) list of J Street Mailer features is available from InnoVal.

This beta release of the J Street Mailer is free to all current Charter User Group members (basically, anyone who has already purchased the first release of J Street Mailer). J Street Mailer currently sells for about $44 US, with discounts available for academic affiliates, (http://www.javalobby.org) Java Lobby members, and users of Post Road Mailer v3. More information about email client can be found at the (http://www.innoval.com/porter/) J Street Mailer web page at InnoVal.

                         - * -

(http://www.polyex.com) PolyEx Software has announced a new beta program for the OS/2 version of their newest game, Hopkins: FBI. The cost to join the program is $39.95 (a savings of $10.00 off the game's retail price) and provides you with both the current beta copy of Hopkins and a free copy of the final release version when it's released sometime around July '98.

This beta offer will only last until 250 orders have been taken, and since the offer's been open since late last month, it's in your best interest to act as soon as possible. Also note that an update to the beta has been released -- the update, which will update Hopkins to v1.01, can be downloaded from (http://www.polyex.com/hopbp.html) PolyEx. For more information about the game in general, see the (http://www.polyex.com/Hopkins.html) Hopkins: FBI web page at PolyEx.

                         - * -

A new image processing program for astronomers by the name of SID is now in public beta stages. The program presents the user with a schematic diagram of images, so various stages of manipulation can be viewed at once. SID can deal with real, complex and bad-map images, allowing one to alter the images in various ways: filters, clipping, fixing of bad pixels and the like. It includes various mathematical functions like normalization, scalar arithmetic and tolerances, and allows for entry fields which can be keywords, string functions and numerical expressions. SID can read files of type ASCII, FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) and GIP (General Image Processing), and save them as either FITS or GIP.

SID is shareware, although the current beta (v0.9) may be used free of charge. While unregistered, the program will only run for 20 days before expiring, and registering also provides you with a discount for future versions of the software. (when you purchase SID version x.yy, you get all versions up to x.99 for free, so purchasing the current beta 0.9 allows you all versions free until 1.0, then you get discounts on v1.0 and up) To download or get more information, see the (http://www.synapse.net/~gjarvis/) SID web page.

                         - * -

Shaping up as competition against OS/2's WarpAMP MP3 player, (rosmo@kalja.com) Taneli Leppa and (guardia@cam.org) Samuel Audet have released the first beta of PM123, a GUI player for MPEG-3 audio files. While WarpAMP is based on the OS/2 port of Unix's (ftp://ftp.rasip.fer.hr/pub/mpeg/) AMP MP3 player, PM123 is based on one of the ports of (http://dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de/~olli/mpg123/) mpg123, another Unix player.

PM123 sports an attractive interface, and has a variety of features including the expected shuffle/repeat/play/stop/pause/fast forward and rewind commands, a playlist editor, and editing of an MP3's ID3 tags. Boasting the least resource drain of all PM MP3 players, PM 123 also allows drag-and-drop, has dynamic priority, support for multiple sound cards, and allows includes streamed media support for listening to MP3s on the web as they download.

PM123 beta 1 can be downloaded from the (http://www.teamos2.sci.fi/pm123) PM123 web page, where there's also more information like an on-line manual and screen shots. The program's freeware, so if you've been using another MP3 player, why not download PM123 and see how it stacks up?

                         - * -

Staying on the subject of playing audio, beta 0.86 of AudioCenter is now available. AudioCenter is a GUI front-end which can be used with a number of different, including UltiMOD, Muse/2, DMP (MOD players), Timidity (MIDI renderer), MAPlay, mp123 and mpg123 (MP3 players). This gives you the advantage of having a common user interface to play a variety of file types, including MP3, XM, S3M, MOD, etc.

With features like a timer, one-button deletion, dynamic song queueing of all support song types, drag-and-drop and more, AudioCenter does a nice job of linking multiple audio types into a clean interface. You can (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/apps/mmedia/jukebox/audc086b.zip) download AudioCenter from Hobbes, and use it to your heart's content -- it's freeware. Any comments or suggestions can be sent to the author, (langman@earthling.net) Kevin Langman.

                         - * -

PowerDale IT Ltd. has released an early beta version of their Advanced Web Writer software; as the name implies, an editor for the creation and maintenance of HTML pages. AWW is set up with a list of HTML the most common tags next to your page editing area; to insert a tag, just double-click the tag's entry in the list. For any HTML tags which are not yet implemented, Advanced Web Writer is designed around a DEF file format which allows you to add whatever tags you may need to those the program supports; if you add a set of tags to your copy of the program, it's requested that you send a copy of the tag set to PowerDale, so that they can in turn add desired tags to the next version of AWW.

The program contains a few other features, including keyboard macros, but as said, it's a very early version. Should people express interest in the program, PowerDale has a variety of other ideas lined up, including automatic preview of HTML pages, extended HTML tags and definitions, templates, drag-and-drop support, and more -- suggestions are welcome. This beta of Advanced Web Writer is free for use, with the only requirement being that if you use the program, you must send an email to (os2software@yoursite.co.uk) os2software@yoursite.co.uk to let the developers know you're trying it out. For more information or to download and test drive a copy, see the (http://www.yoursite.co.uk/os/2/webwriter/) Advanced Web Writer web page.

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

                         - * -

Well, Netscape's released the source code for Communicator v5, and OS/2 coders everywhere are getting busy. There are at least two separate efforts going on to port the code: The (http://www.netlabs.org/warpscape/) Warpscape project at the (http://www.netlabs.org/) OS/2 Netlabs, and the (http://people.netscape.com/law/warpzilla/index.html) Warpzilla project at (http://www.mozilla.org) mozilla.org. The Warpscape project is in the process of porting a version for XFreeOS/2 first (OS/2's port of the XFree86 windowing system -- see the (http://borneo.gmd.de/~veit/os2/xf86os2.html) XFreeOS/2 page for more information), then they'll convert that into a version native to OS/2's Presentation Manager. The Warpzilla project seems to be doing something similar; they plan on using an XFree86 front-end (interface) to help test the back end (underlying OS/2 code), and once this is finished will tack the back end onto an OS/2-specific front end.

It seems likely that the Warpzilla project will progress faster than the Warpscape project, for two reasons: Warpzilla seems to have some members who have actually worked on the current Navigator and Communicator projects, and the Warpzilla project seems to have more members overall. Then again, Warpscape currently seems to be a bit more organized in terms of "who's doing what", whereas at the moment it seems there's a bunch of people doing the same things in the Warpzilla project. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see who comes out with a usable product first.

On the subject of Netscape, recently someone uploaded the latest 128-bit secure Netscape Navigator for OS/2 to a site in Europe so that all OS/2 users worldwide can take advantage of it. (IBM has limited distribution of this version to users in the United States and Canada due to some aggravating U.S. munitions export laws) The site, (ftp://ftp.replay.com/pub/crypto/browsers/128bit/IBM-OS2/) ftp.replay.com, is the same site which housed (and still houses) an earlier build of the 128-bit Navigator for a number of months. Note that it's illegal to download and use either of these browsers if you're not a citizen of either Canada or the U.S.A., and we here at e-Zine! do not recommend you do so. One really wishes that the U.S. government would remove web browsers from these ludicrous restrictions; browsers with secure encryption are not designed to be 'munitions' as these restrictions claim; they're designed to benefit the general public.

                         - * -

Thankfully, others agree. Farrell McKay, an employee of the Australian company Wayfarer Systems Pty. Ltd., has created an add-on for Netscape Navigator which will it give it the ability to use strong (128-bit) encryption. Since the program, Fortify was developed in Australia using Australian resources, it doesn't fall under U.S. export laws, and can be legally used by anyone. Most importantly, Fortify is also available in an OS/2 version, which works with OS/2's Netscape 2.02+.

To get more information on the product, or to download a version of Fortify and give your Navigator 128-bit encryption, check out the (http://www.fortify.net/) Fortify web site. If you find Fortify to be useful, or even if you don't use it but support unrestricted encryption, be sure to (https://www.fortify.net/feedback.html) drop McKay a note to thank him. (For the OS/2 support especially! <grin>)

                         - * -

Sam Detweiler of IBM Device Driver Development was recently interviewed in an IRC session organized by VOICE (Virtual OS/2 International Consumer Education). Among all the questions were a few interesting points about upcoming features for OS/2:

o  Support for IDE hard drives greater than 8.2 gigabytes is currently in final testing, and should be released soon.
o  There's no plans to add full support for the DVD ((http://www.pcwebopedia.com/DVD.htm) Digital Virtual Disk) format, but the data portion of the format _will_ be supported. (In fact, work on this is already going on)
o  Support for USB ((http://www.pcwebopaedia.com/USB.htm) Universal Serial Bus) is in the works.
o  IBM developers have put hardware OpenGL acceleration on their want list, and anre developing certain pieces even now
o  Support for AGP ((http://www.pcwebopedia.com/AGP.htm) Accelerated Graphics Port) is being worked on, but won't be available at Warp 5 release time.
o  A prototype of functions for implementing software write protection and password protection on removable media such as Iomega Zip disks has been coded, but is being held up pending approval by Iomega. (This sort of function is available in Iomega's drivers for other platforms, like Windows)


To see a (http://www.os2voice.org/logs/SamDetweiler.log) full transcript of the IRC session, or get more information about VOICE in general, see (http://www.os2voice.org) http://www.os2voice.org.


                         - * -

(http://www.stardock.com/) Stardock has released another update for their latest game, Entrepreneur. Entrepreneur is a cross-platform game of cutthroat corporate strategy and warfare -- outsell, outresearch, outmaneuver competitors every chance you get; crush your opponents into the ground without mercy... Just like real life. <grin> For more information about the game, see the (http://www.stardock.com/products/ent/ent.html) Entrepreneur web page at Stardock.

The update, which will bring your copy of Entrepreneur to version 1.1b, corrects a floating-point problem experienced on some (mostly non-Intel) machines, as well as correcting an occasional exit hang. Note that to apply the 1.1b update, your version of Entrepreneur must already be at version 1.1a -- if it's not, you can get both updates from Stardock's (http://www.stardock.com/update/update_ent.html) Entrepreneur update page.

In other Entrepreneur news, Stardock reports, "the game is now in most retail stores -- a first for an OS/2 game."  Brad Wardell tells us that not even the amazingly popular Galactic Civilizations made it into as many stores as Entrepreneur is now in.

And for those of you who crave diversity, Stardock has released a bunch of new free maps for Entrepreneur.  Finally, while the map converter for Entrepreneur was originally created for (and available for) Win32 only, Brad Barclay has successfully used the (http://www.os2ss.com/win32-os2/) Win32-OS/2 converter program and turned it into an OS/2 program.

                         - * -

Some updates to OS/2 itself that users may be interested in:

o  Java 1.1.4 was updated again on March 23rd. You can download the updated runtime.exe, samples.exe and toolkit.exe from (ftp://service.boulder.ibm.com/software/java/fixes/os2/11/) IBM's Java updates FTP site.

o  Feature Install, IBM's browser-based installation utility, has been updated to version 1.2.2. You can download it for free from the (http://service.boulder.ibm.com/asd-bin/doc/en_us/fi12/f-feat.htm) Feature Install page on IBM's (http://service.boulder.ibm.com/asd-bin/doc/en_us/home.htm) Software Choice web site.

o  IBM has released an (ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/fixes/v4warp/english-us/xr_m006/doscall1.dll) updated version of doscall1.dll to correct a bug introduced in Warp 4 FixPak 6 while running certain functions of (http://www.devtech.com) DevTech's (http://www.devtech.com/prods.html) DeskMan/2 software.

o  A Year 2000 update for WinOS2's File Manager program (winfile.exe) was intended for FixPak 5, but never made it in. Then it was intended for FixPak 6, but was again left out by mistake. Here's the (ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/fixes/v4warp/english-us/xr_m006/winfile.exe) updated winfile.exe.

o  IBM has released fix 8423 for MPTS, the Multi-Protocol Transport Services section of OS/2 networking. If you have MPTS installed, you can (ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/ps/products/mpts/fixes/english-us/wr08423_conv) download fix 8423 here.

o  Another new addition to (http://service.boulder.ibm.com/asd-bin/doc/en_us/home.htm) Software Choice is a useful tool for Warp Server users; (http://service.boulder.ibm.com/asd-bin/doc/en_us/backrv6/f-feat.htm) OS/2 Warp Server Backup/Restore v6.0 is an easy-to-use feature which backs up data to a wide range of storage devices. Those with a Software Choice subscription can download it at the above URL.

o  Lastly, IBM has released updated versions of Netfinity Manager and Netfinity Client Services for its Netfinity v5.1 software. The new versions contain the features and functions of the previous versions of Netfinity, plus several enhancements that make things easier for LAN administrators. If you administer a LAN on OS/2 and use Netfinity, and you have a Software Choice subscription, you can download the (http://service.boulder.ibm.com/asd-bin/doc/en_us/netf51/f-feat.htm) updated Netfinity products from IBM's (http://service.boulder.ibm.com/asd-bin/doc/en_us/home.htm) Software Choice web site.

                         - * -

The owners of BocaSoft's WipeOut screensaver for OS/2 have released the program to the public domain, intending to release the source code for the program in the near future as well. If you have access to (http://www.compuserve.com) CompuServe, you can download the two required installation disks from Compuserve's OS2AVEN forum in Library 10 -- the files are WO20DSK1.ZIP and WO20DSK2.ZIP (expect both to change to "real" DSK files soon). You can also download the program from the (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu) Hobbes OS/2 archive as the file (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/apps/scrnsave/wipeoutss.zip) wipeoutss.zip.

Note that to install the program, it requires two floppies, which must be labeled as 'WIPEOUT20 1' and 'WIPEOUT20 2'; the installation program checks the floppies for these labels and won't work correctly without them. Also note that an update has been released which is required for WipeOut to allow it to function under Warp 4; the (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/apps/scrnsave/w02052.zip) WipeOut Warp 4 update can also be downloaded from Hobbes.

                         - * -

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

Last month we began a project to create a REXX program that communicates with the (http://altavista.digital.com) AltaVista search engine, executing a search and parsing the results. So far we have written the code that properly encodes our search string. Now we need to look at how the search server will interpret the request we send and write the code to create the actual request to be sent to the server.

Since there is no public documentation on the inner workings of the AltaVista server, we'll have to do a little detective work with our browser to see how things tick, but it's not too hard to figure out what's going on with a little experimenting. Executing a search for "OS/2 Supersite" with a web browser returns a URL that looks like this:

  http://www.altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=q&what=web&kl=XX&q=%22OS%2F2+Supersite%22&search.x=59&search.y=2

The first part:

  http://www.altavista.digital.com

is obviously the address that we will want to connect to with our program.

The next part:

  /cgi-bin/query

tells the search engine that we would like to use the CGI program called "query" to execute a search. The next character, the question mark, signals the beginning of the input that we want to send to the query program. 

To understand how to assemble the CGI program's input, we have to understand how it will interpret it. The CGI program will parse the input on the ampersands. If you look at the above URL, you will see variable = value statements followed by
ampersands that terminate the values. When the CGI program parses the input, it will use the values of these variables to perform its functions. So all we have to do is form strings that have the necessary variable = value statements (properly encoding the strings as we discussed last time). The tricky part, of course, is interpreting what the variables mean. For most things, it's pretty obvious. In the above URL, for example, we see a variable

  q=%22OS%2F2+Supersite%22&

which is obviously the string that we would like to have the server execute a search on. Other variables take a little more work. For example, one variable

  pg=q&

doesn't seem very obvious. But if you go to the AltaVista main page and put your mouse cursor over the "Advanced Search" link, you will see a search URL with 

  pg=aq&

so obviously the variable pg tells the CGI program whether to do an advanced search or a simple one. We will use the simple search for now. Another variable

  what=web&

changes when you select whether you want to search the web or the Usenet archives, since changing that to Usenet on the AltaVista web page causes the variable to be set to

  what=news&

We will concentrate on searches in the database of web sites. Let's go ahead and write the code that will create the query string. First we set up some variables that will, for now, be constant, and then create the query that we will send to the web server. Knowing that 
this code will be part of a larger program, let's put code in subroutines to make it easier to organize things. The main program for now looks like this:

/* Search engine query program */
crlf=d2c(13)||d2c(10)          /* Carriage return - linefeed pair */
Site = "www.altavista.digital.com"
SiteCommand = "GET /cgi-bin/query?pg=q&what=web&q="
SearchString = "OS/2 Supersite"
UserAgent = "User-Agent: OS/2 REXX Query Program 1.0"  /* The name of our program */

Call CreateQuery /* Create the query */
Say Query
Exit

The CreateQuery routine is called in the main program and creates the actual query that will be sent to AltaVista:

/* Create the query string to be sent to the web server */
CreateQuery:

/* Only allow the routine to see the necessary variables */
Procedure Expose SiteCommand SearchString UserAgent Query crlf

/* Create a list of the types of responses we can handle */
Accept = "Accept: text/plain"||crlf||"Accept: text/html"||crlf

SearchStringEncoded = Encode(SearchString) /* Last month's code */

Query = SiteCommand||SearchStringEncoded "HTTP/1.0"||crlf||Accept
Query = Query || UserAgent || crlf || crlf

Return

which uses last month's encoding routine to get the non-alphanumeric characters encoded correctly:

/* Encoder routine for URLs */
Encode:
Procedure
Parse Arg AString
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 Test=" "
         Then NewString=NewString||"+"
      Else NewString = NewString || '%' || c2x( Test)
   end
end
Return NewString

There are several things in the code that need some explanation. First, notice how the variable SiteCommand has "GET" at the beginning. That is the HTTP command that we will issue to the web server to "GET" the web page that we want, in this case the output of a CGI program. The variable Accept contains the types of documents that we are prepared to accept and process, namely ASCII text or HTML text. Finally, the variable Query is formed by concatenating SiteCommand, the string HTTP/1.0, the contents of Accept, and the contents of UserAgent. The HTTP/1.0 string tells the web server that we will use version 1.0 of HTTP when communicating with it. 

Notice the double CR/LF pair at the end of the query string. We need two because that is how the web server knows where the end of our request's header is. The server reads lines and interprets them as header lines until it sees a blank line. What follows is the body of the request, which in our case is blank because everything the server needs to satisfy our request is in the header. If we were using the HTTP "POST" command, then we would encode our request and place it in the body of the document. 

At this point we're ready to start talking to the web server. Next month we'll write the code that enables us to communicate with a remote web server over the Internet.

View the complete source for this month's column below.

                         - * - 

(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.

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

/* Search engine query program */
crlf=d2c(13)||d2c(10)          /* Carriage return - linefeed pair */
Site = "www.altavista.digital.com"
SiteCommand = "GET /cgi-bin/query?pg=q&what=web&q="
SearchString = "OS/2 Supersite"
UserAgent = "User-Agent: OS/2 REXX Query Program 1.0"  /* The name of our program */

Call CreateQuery /* Create the query */
Say Query
Exit

/* Create the query string to be sent to the web server */
CreateQuery:

/* Only allow the routine to see the necessary variables */
Procedure Expose SiteCommand SearchString UserAgent Query crlf

/* Create a list of the types of responses we can handle */
Accept = "Accept: text/plain"||crlf||"Accept: text/html"||crlf

SearchStringEncoded = Encode(SearchString) /* Last month's code */

Query = SiteCommand||SearchStringEncoded "HTTP/1.0"||crlf||Accept
Query = Query || UserAgent || crlf || crlf

Return

/* Encoder routine for URLs */
Encode:
Procedure
Parse Arg AString
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 Test=" "
         Then NewString=NewString||"+"
      Else NewString = NewString || '%' || c2x( Test)
   end
end
Return NewString

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

How Do I?	- by Eric Slaats

Hi all. I'm sorry I missed last month; I was just too busy with other stuff. Some of the more exciting stuff was for the Intranet project I'm working on. Right now I've got one of my graduates working on a virtual conferencing project. In the sideline of this project we've looked at some very nice programs. I was very impressed by the O'Reilly webboard program -- a great program. (I was equally impressed with their web site software). It's really a pity that people like this won't develop for the OS/2 platform. Yesterday some Connectix cameras were brought in and I had the chance to toy with the CuSeeMe/2 Beta 1.6. This was another occasion I could show my colleagues that OS/2 matches anything Windows has to offer. What I'm lacking is the Netscape Communicator for OS/2; thank god something like WarpZilla's is going on. I strongly believe in Web applications. So Java and Browsers are the future. This means a strong browser for OS/2 might be critical.

Enough of this. What are we going to look at this month? We will continue to enhance the first version of the calculator and add some functions. The additions are rather small, but the discussion about them will be extensive. So I guess the learning takes precedence over new features right now.

Ok, let's enhance the calculator some more. I got an e-mail from Cindy, who pointed out a way to simplify some of my code. In the last column I described a way to strip the trailing zeros and dots from a calculated result. I used the following code:

   sprintf(achOutput, "%f", flLeftMember);

   while (achOutput[strlen(achOutput)-1] == '0')   // Strip zero's
           achOutput[strlen(achOutput)-1] = 0;
   if (achOutput[strlen(achOutput)-1] == '.')      // Strip dot
           achOutput[strlen(achOutput)-1] = 0;

Cindy pointed out that this can be replaced with the following line of code:

    sprintf(achOutput, "%g", flLeftMember);

This approach not only makes the code a lot smaller, but also handles the display of 'e...' power formatted numbers. Thanks, Cindy, for this improvement; I'd still been wondering about a way to solve this.

I found myself using this calculator more and more for simple calculations. While using it, I found some things annoying. You guessed it -- we're going to take care of these things, hopefully learning something in the process.

One of the things I didn't like was that the backspace can't be used when a wrong number is entered. Just like on a normal calculator, I have to use the clear button. However, this erases the whole entry, not just the wrong number -- this fact is the downside of the approach we took by using the Mnemonic capabilities of the dialog. The entryfield is read-only, so it won't handle the backspace for us. This means we've got to design a way to handle the event of a user pressing the backspace key. 


Before we delve into that, how do we know the user pressed a key, or more specifically, the backspace key? Of course OS/2 has a message for that; the WM_CHAR message. This message is sent to the active window every time a user presses a key. The message parameters of the WM_CHAR message contain the character information we look for, but this is the point where things get tricky. The message parameters are filled as following:


mp1	31------24 The last byte (bits 31-24) contains the hardware scan code
	23------16 This byte contains the repeat count
	15------00 This first short contains flags. (We discuss them later)
	
mp2 The upper short contains the virtual key code
    The lower short contains the character code (16 bit)
    

I guess this needs some explanation. There are three keyboard codes available in the message parameters, so we'll take a short tour. From the mp1 parameter: the hardware scan code. This code is generated by your PC. You can be fairly sure this code will be different on non-PC machines, so I wouldn't recommend this value. If you do, this probably means redoing your program for every machine that will run OS/2. 

The virtual key code is contained in the upper short of mp2. Virtual keys are those like the function keys, delete, backspace, etc. -- basically, all the non-character keys except the <ALT>, <SHIFT> and <CTRL> keys. We'll take a look at virtual codes in a minute, since the backspace is one of these.

The last code is the character code contained in the lower short of mp2. This code contains the ASCII codes of the key pressed, so it will be sensitive to <SHIFT> and <CTRL> keys.  (Although the <CTRL> is a special case.) 

What we need is the backspace. How do we know it's pressed? Well, I stated that backspace is a virtual key. There are several ways to accomplish this. Of course we can dissect the message parameters, but there's a more convenient way. The OS/2 API contains a macro to handle the WM_CHAR message. (Using it is a little awkward) For example if I want the fs flag from mp1, I have to use the following:

	CHARMSG(&msg)->fs

This can also be compared with another value, so if we want to check to see if a virtual key is pressed, it can be done with:

	CHARMSG(&msg)->fs & KC_VIRTUALKEY

(We won't delve into the character flags right now.) In the same fashion a virtual key code can be extracted. Every virtual key in OS/2 has a defined value. These values are saved in the VK_ flags. For example VK_F1 is function key 1, VK_LEFT is the left cursor and VK_BACKSPACE is the backspace key. (All these values can be found in the OS/2 API description.) Knowing this makes processing the backspace easy -- we simply check to see if the vkey is equal to VK_BACKSPACE. This produces the following if statement to start the WM_CHAR handler with:

	if (CHARMSG(&msg)->vkey == VK_BACKSPACE)

Note that handling keyboard events is an art in itself. We only scratched the surface of what's possible here.

Now that we know how to detect the backspace, let's build the event handler. What we want is to cut the last character of the string contained in the entryfield. So the first thing to be done is to query this string. The simplest way to proceed is to place the NULL character in the second-last place of the string. This will shift the end of the string one character, since a string is terminated by a NULL in C. To insert this NULL, we need to know the length of the string. We also can only process the string if it has nonzero length, so in this respect we need the string length too. This gives us the following code:

//-----------------------------------------------------------------------
// Handle the backspace char.
//-----------------------------------------------------------------------
case WM_CHAR:
	{
	if (CHARMSG(&msg)->vkey == VK_BACKSPACE)
		{
		char achValue[32];
		long ValueLength;

		WinQueryDlgItemText(hwndDlg , ENTRYFIELD1, 32, achValue);
		ValueLength = strlen(achValue);

		if (ValueLength)
			{
			achValue[ValueLength-1] = 0;
			WinSetDlgItemText(hwndDlg, ENTRYFIELD1, achValue);
			}

		}
	}		
break;

The second thing I wanted to change is the handling of the tallyroll; an option to be able to clear it. Besides that, I wanted to be able to click on a number in the tally and thereby transport it to the number entryfield. Both additions proved to be fairly simple to implement.

First the clearing of the tallyroll. What we want is a menu item, that when selected will discard all entries in the tally. We need to expand the menu first. I added an edit menu and in the process of doing so I also added an 'about' box with an accompanying menu option. This means a new event handler has to be created for the event that the user selects in the edit menu.

Now how can we clear a listbox? I usually browse through the control's messages when searching for something like this. It's such an obvious action that there has to be a message which handles it. There is -- the LM_DELETEALL message. So the only thing we have to do in clearing the tallyroll is send this message to the listbox:
				
//-------------------------------------------------------------
// Clear the Tally roll
//-------------------------------------------------------------
case IDM_CLEARTALLY:
	{
	WinSendDlgItemMsg(hwndDlg, LISTBOX1, LM_DELETEALL, 0L, 0L);
	}
return(0);

Now for the click and display trick. I want to be able to click on a number in the tallyroll. If we do, it must be transported to the entryfield. In doing so, it'll also delete the current entry. Because this action has a destructive effect on the already-entered number, we must take the approach that this can't be done accidentally, so a single click on a number won't do. We need at least a double click (this can hardly be done accidentally). First thing is to find a way to detect a double click on the listbox. 

A few columns back I talked about the WM_CONTROL message. The WM_CONTROL message will notify a control of events happening on it. A double click is a typical event happening on a control, in this case the listbox. When browsing through the listbox notification, we'll find the LN_ENTER as the notification we want. Since there is only one listbox in our program, we can act directly on the LN_ENTER notification. Since we only handle a notification for the listbox on WM_CONTROL we only need an 'if' statement.

	if (SHORT2FROMMP(mp1) == LN_ENTER)

Inside this we'll have to handle the click. First we need the contents of the listbox item selected; if we want the contents of a listbox line, we'll first need the index number of that line. For obtaining this index there is a convenient macro available, the  WinQueryLboxSelectedItem macro. After that we can query the contents. The following code will do the trick:

hwndLbox  = WinWindowFromID(hwndDlg, LISTBOX1);
lSelected = WinQueryLboxSelectedItem(hwndLbox);
WinQueryLboxItemText(hwndLbox, lSelected, achListValue, 32);

Now that we've got the contents of a line, we need to think up a way to process them. Not all the lines can be taken up and placed in the entryfield; some lines only contain an action or equal sign. Therefore, we've got to check the contents if they have a length of 1. If this is the case and the line only contains an action, it can't be placed in the entryfield. Knowing this we can compose the code:

case WM_CONTROL:
	{
	if (SHORT2FROMMP(mp1) == LN_ENTER)
		{
		//-------------------------------------------------------------
		// Query selected listbox entry
		//-------------------------------------------------------------
		char achListValue[32];
		HWND hwndLbox;
		long lSelected;

		hwndLbox  = WinWindowFromID(hwndDlg, LISTBOX1);
		lSelected = WinQueryLboxSelectedItem(hwndLbox);
		WinQueryLboxItemText(hwndLbox, lSelected, achListValue, 32);
		//-------------------------------------------------------------
		// Check if entry is a number
		//-------------------------------------------------------------
		if (strlen(achListValue) !=1 ||
			(achListValue[0] != '=' && achListValue[0] != '-' &&
			 achListValue[0] != '+' && achListValue[0] != '*' &&
			 achListValue[0] != '/'))
			//--------------------------------------------------------
			// Place selected item in the listbox
			//--------------------------------------------------------
			WinSetDlgItemText(hwndDlg, ENTRYFIELD1, achListValue);
		}
	}
break;

So, that's it for this month. Next month we'll take a look at small code. One of the things I dislike about modern software packages is that they are enormously bulky. In my humble opinion, this size can be avoided in most cases. There are some simple tricks to avoid programs getting too big.

 'til next month.

Donwload the source for this month's column: (http://www.os2ezine.com/v3n04/sample16.zip) sample16.zip (24K)

                         - * - 

(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.

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

Mail Clients: Introduction	- by Chris Wenham

Many of these clients we've already visited before in the pages of the e-Zine!, but as we've improved over the years, so have they. As a new batch of clients joins the ranks we decided to review them shoulder to shoulder, hold up a measure, and see which has grown the tallest.

Lotus Notes Mail

Apart from UltiMail, which we chose not to review in this issue, Lotus Notes Mail is the only other mail client to come bundled with OS/2 Warp 4. Originally designed to work with a Lotus Notes database on a company network, Notes Mail can be modified with a free download to access Internet e-mail from your ISP's mail server too. Ryan Dill shows us how to set this up, and what else to expect.

Post Road Mailer 3.0

Post Road has been around for eons, having its roots in two versions, "blue" and "green", for use with OV/VM PROFS and Internet mail systems respectively. Its newest version, 3.0, has changed a lot -- both in interface and in functionality, which converges with InnoVal's Java based e-mail client too. Richard R. Klemmer, who reviewed Post Road's early versions for us before, has his look at it again.

J Street Mailer Release One

And InnoVal again, for their 100% Pure Java based J Street Mailer -- a true multiplatform e-mail solution that runs well on OS/2 as well thanks to IBM's fast Java Virtual Machine. Chris Wenham discovers some surprising attributes to this newcomer that may make you sit up and take notice.

MR/2 ICE (Internet Cruiser Edition) 1.40

Another client with deep roots, and particularly high customer approval (as evidenced by its Readers's Choice Awards winning streak), is the Internet Cruiser Edition of MR/2 from Knightware. With a version in beta that converges mail and news reading features together into one program, Dr. Dirk Terrell reviews the current non-beta release; version 1.40.

OS/2 e-Zine! Editor's Choice

But the last in our round up, and the winner of the OS/2 e-Zine! Editor's Choice, is PMMail from Southside Software. Ranked at the top of the popularity charts as well, arguably wrestling for space with MR/2 ICE, it has grown and expanded into a Windows version too that can inter-operate with the OS/2 version. But even so, the company is just as committed to OS/2 as ever. In fact, version 1.96 was released just a day before this issue went online -- too late for us to consider in the review. Chris Wright thus reviews version 1.95a for us instead. 

                         - * -
(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.

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

J Street Mailer: Release One	- by Chris Wenham

According to OS/2 e-Zine!'s editorial policy, native OS/2 applications designed specifically with OS/2 in mind always get priority over those that are mere "also OS/2" ports. Innoval's J Street Mailer was a notable exception to this rule, seeing as it has roots in Post Road Mailer for OS/2 and was borne of a company that has shown a lot of support for OS/2 in the past. But being a Java application I had some doubts on the performance it would exhibit, and just how realistically it could be deployed. Experience with its early betas (and early Java Virtual Machines) were not great.

So to judge it properly, I made it my main e-mail client for about a week, running my usual, native client only once or twice a day whenever I had to. I made J Street run alongside memory munchers like Netscape and Lotus SmartSuite, several smaller programs and a scattering of open folders, continuously up to 7-8 hours or more during the course of average work, dealing with the usual 200-250 emails I get per day (thanks to numerous mailing lists). The experience, to say the least, was an eye-opening one.


Installation

J Street Mailer doesn't come with an installation program of any sort, not even a sampling of CMD or batch files to get you started with. The readme files give you a good idea of how to get up and running, and my previous experience with ICQ for Java was enough to create a CMD file that launched the client. J Street only has one crucial file; innoval.jar. Everything it needs is packed within this file, which self-extracts whatever supplemental files are necessary the first time you run it.

Performance and Stability

This is the part that did all the eye-opening and the one I hammered on the most while testing. J Street is fast for a Java app, surprisingly fast. You'd expect a Java application to be a dog, a hit to the system, perpetually leaning on the swap file. Yet on my machine, an AMD K6-200 with 32 megs of RAM, it was very well behaved as it ran alongside an average workday load. As I write this in Lotus WordPro, J Street is running alongside Object Desktop Pro, Netscape Navigator, an IRC client and a few small utilities and open folders. Once everything has settled down, task switching from one application to another is about 1 or 2 seconds of hard disk activity and screen repainting for a moderate, average workday load. 

I'll be frank; it's slower than a native program, and will probably lengthen the "Long Dark Teatime of the Soul" that your computer goes through whenever there's some heavy swap file activity going on. However, if you only run your client when you actually need to check or compose mail, or you're willing to chuck another $50 of RAM into your machine, you wouldn't even notice that.

J Street Mailer is more than fast enough to be usable in an average work environment, plus, I did not experience a single crash during the time that I tested it. 

User Interface

J Street Mailer isn't a beauty, but it's pleasant to look at, with a frame layout reminiscent of Netscape Mail -- divided into three frames, one for the folder tree, another for the selected folder's contents, and the largest frame on the bottom for the message body. J Street Mailer features a button bar similar to PMMail, but which lights up as the mouse glides over. 

Its color scheme is a drab gray, and unfortunately it doesn't respond well to colors drag-n-dropped from any of Warp's palettes, nor does it have any other color customizing mechanism anywhere.

Features

This is the next pleasant surprise. For a young application it's definitely not short on features, with a spellchecker and support for HTML formatting in e-mail messages. Mail filtering is exceptionally good, with a "Wizard"-like interface and a number of methods from straight boolean comparisons, checking against a list of keywords, or utilizing your own custom filter programs (written in Java, of course).

J Street can handle multiple e-mail accounts, but not like PMMail does. You can switch between accounts easily, but J Street can only periodically check for mail in the current account, ignoring the rest until you switch back to them.

In each message window's corner is a tiny icon of a pushpin, clicking on which will pull up a "sticky note" window for you to jot some notes or reminders into. The note is then kept "attached" with the message for as long as you have it, but doesn't become part of the message should you want to forward or reply to it later.

Folders and nested folders can be created easily to sort and filter mail into, so it's even possible to modify the entries in your address book so that mail sent to a particular address will get filtered into a separate "Sent Mail" box -- something which could be extremely handy to separate business from personal mail. Unfortunately, J Street doesn't support dragging-n-dropping of mail into folders like PMMail does.

Finally, attachments are handled with a reasonable amount of elegance. Again, no drag-n-drop, but the means for attaching is simple enough (a standard file-open dialog), with attached files on incoming messages displayed as tiny icons along the bottom of the message frame. Click on an attachment's icon and you have the option to save, or to view and print if J Street recognizes the format. 

Personas and Virtual Folders

Unique to J Street Mailer are two concepts; Personas, which replace the usual signature files, and Virtual Folders that replace and enhance the search feature.

A Persona, for which you can define as many as you want per account, lets you customize everything from "From" and "Reply-To" addresses, signatures, tagline files, quoting methods and even what folder to put sent mail into. The idea is that with them, you'll no longer accidentally send a mail to a business associate with "Love, Dad" appended at the bottom by mistake.

Virtual Folders bring a new twist to searching and can be quite useful at times. More advanced than a regular "dumb search" you can scan for all unopened messages, all messages sent to or from a list of addresses, between a certain date range, or containing any of a list of keywords in the subject or body. 

The results are displayed in a separate "mini mailer" with its own messages list and message browser pane. One of the first uses I found for it is to list all unopened messages that may be "hidden" in nested folders somewhere - put there by a filter.

To my disappointment, it's not possible to mix criteria yet, such as "Search all unopened messages with this keyword and that is less than 30 days old". 

Help and Documentation

J Street's help section is definitely comprehensive and covers all the subjects well. All the help files are written in HTML (making them easily accessible outside the program itself) and the program includes a handy viewer that divides the content into a short list of main subjects, or a longer list of details. 

I noticed that at the top of the help viewer it listed the current help file in URL format, so for a bit of fun I typed in the URL for the OS/2 Supersite. Imagine my surprise when it not only loaded the page, but also formatted it better than Netscape did (albeit with an awkwardly small font). It doesn't support Javascript (perhaps sensible in an e-mail client) but handled table cell colors and form elements nicely. I suspect InnoVal used a third party library here, but I'm not complaining, and it's the same HTML rendering engine used to display formatted e-mails too.

Potential Show-Stoppers

J Street's most annoying hang-up is when it refuses to close until the current mail fetch is complete. Although it will time-out while contacting the server, once it thinks it has connected it won't let itself close down until it's finished the whole operation -- no matter how many times you click on the close button in the title bar. So if you lose your internet connection, or the server gets clogged halfway through a fetch, you'd better have a task killer handy since there's no way to make J Street abort its operation.

Second is its insistence on popping up multiple dialog boxes after every problem contacting the server. I prefer PMMail's quiet method of simply reporting its problem in the unobtrusive status bar.

The remaining problems are hard to criticize it on, as the beta of the next version claims to fix almost everything I was going to complain about. Chief is that a folder's icon cannot display the presence of unread mail like PMMail does, and second is that it won't let you feed a URL into either its own or an external browser yet.

This Is Java?

Diet Pepsi's current advertising shtick is to show someone taking a swig of their drink, look at the can in astonishment and say "This is diet?" InnoVal could get away with a similar rip-off; "This is Java?" After playing around with slowpokes like ICQ for Java, GetRight and other sludgy utilities, it was a kick in the metaphorical pants to run J Street next to memory hogs like Netscape and WordPro and not even notice it. Maybe I pressed the right button last week, maybe IBM finally found the "Tortoise/Hare" switch in OS/2's Java VM, but if all Java apps were written like J Street Mailer I'd have no problem at all with a caffeinated future. 

PMMail is the only other client in our review that runs in both OS/2 and Windows, but J Street can do that and run in Linux and (potentially) BeOS too. 

In retrospect, I don't know who take my hat off to; Innoval's sharp coding, or IBM's Java VM. Perhaps it's a bit of both. Still, sit up and pay attention, because this is the first application to seriously challenge my preconceptions of Java, and it may just do the same for you.

                         - * -

J Street Mailer: Release One
     by (http://www.innoval.com/) InnoVal
     download from the (http://www.innoval.com/java/jstreet.zip) InnoVal home page (ZIP, 2 megs)
     Registration: US$49

(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.

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

MR/2 ICE	- by Dr. Dirk Terrell

MR/2 ICE v1.40 is the popular e-mail client from Knightware Software. Its popularity with users is evident in the fact that MR/2 ICE has won the OS/2 e-Zine! Readers Choice Award two years running and it also received the 1997 Best OS/2 Program award from (http://www.sharewarejunkies.com) SharewareJunkies.com. Knightware has also received the Readers Choice Award for Best Shareware/Freeware Developer during the same time period. Obviously Nick Knight knows how to build and support applications for OS/2 users, and even a cursory glance at MR/2 ICE proves it.

Installation

Installing MR/2 ICE involves unzipping the distribution file in a directory and running the program. The first time it is started, the program examines your TCP/IP settings and configures itself as much as possible. Missing information is then requested from the user. The only complaint I have here is that you must manually create a program object for it. It would be nice to see a little REXX script that creates the program object for you.

Getting Started

Once you have configured the program with the proper settings for your POP3 and SMTP servers you're ready to start sending and receiving e-mail. The main window  consists of a familiar notebook with tabs for the inbox, outbox, and folders. Messages that have not been read are clearly indicated, and the expected double-click opens a window that lets you read and reply to a message. Throughout the program you will find flyout bubble messages that indicate the function of a particular button on the toolbars (which themselves can be configured to be on any side of the window). 

Use of the right mouse button is extensive in MR/2 ICE. One very useful feature is the ability to place the cursor on an email address or URL in a message, right click, and then launch your web browser or FTP client, or in the case of an e-mail address, send a mail message.

The program supports MIME and UUEncode attachments for mail messages, making it easy to exchange binary files with others. The MIME support is extensive, including automatic message text conversion and Quoted-Printable header fields. The WPS integration with attachments is pretty good, but not as complete as in some other e-mail clients. You can drop files onto outgoing messages, but you cannot drag attachments from a message to a folder. You have to first extract it to MR/2 ICE's Attached folder, and then you can drag the file to the WPS.

MR/2 ICE has an address notebook as well. You can easily add addresses manually, or from the message list pop-up menu by right-clicking on a message from someone whose e-mail address you want to add to the address book. You can also create groups of email addresses, making it easy to send messages to a group of people very easily (like a mailing list).

Multiple e-mail accounts can be set up reasonably easily, but the implementation isn't quite as straightforward as in some other programs. Only the messages for the current account are visible at any given time. It would be more convenient if there were a quicker way to look at messages for several accounts.

There are times when you need a printed copy of an e-mail message and MR/2 ICE offers both a nice, formatted output mode and a quick, unformatted mode for printing. I encountered no problems with printouts and found the quality and performance quite good.

Available as separate (and free) downloads from the author's web site are a spell checker and thesaurus. The program also features a calendar and a pretty good calculator capable of handling hex, octal, and binary math in addition to decimal. An ASCII symbol dialog is a nice touch than makes it easy to insert not-so-common characters into a message. I also liked the program's support for appending data to the clipboard rather than always overwriting. That is a feature I would like to see used more often.

Power Features

MR/2 ICE is easy to use right away. Its interface is clean and intuitive, but lurking underneath that easy-going exterior are some powerful features that more advanced users will find indispensable. You can, for example, build templates to use for reply messages, and the program comes with several examples. 

For people like myself who receive hundreds of messages per day, filters make e-mail manageable. The filtering capabilities in MR/2 ICE are extensive. Simple filters, like searching for a particular string in the subject, or messages greater than some fixed size, or messages containing attachments, are very easy to set up. However, more complex filters are also possible because of the ability to call a REXX program to perform the filtering test. This means that there is basically no limit to what you can achieve with filters in MR/2 ICE.

The program also has a large number of command-line options, allowing you to do things such as creating messages with attachments, and sending them from the command line or a REXX script. You can also use the command-line to control various program settings such as the mail server ports, code page, configuration file, toolbar visibility, etc.

Good programs allow the user to configure them to their needs and MR/2 ICE has a plethora of configurable features. Rather than try to explain them all, I'll just let you have a look at the preferences page and the prompts page from the program's settings notebook. As you can see, there isn't much missing there.

The Verdict

The only real complaints I have about MR/2 ICE are the documentation and the lack of integration with PGP (although there is a third party add-on for PGP support). It's obvious that the documentation needs some additional material and polishing in general. I noticed several instances where pressing the help button on a dialog linked to the incorrect section of the online manual. There were also more than a few places where the section on a particular aspect of the program simply stated that the help had not yet been implemented. The lack of a top-notch help file really detracts from this otherwise very well done program. On the plus side, Nick is well known for his responsiveness to users when they have problems or suggestions. 

MR/2 ICE is available as a fully functional shareware program and the registration fee is a very reasonable $30, with discounts for multiple licenses also available.

                         - * -

MR/2 ICE 1.40
     by (http://nick.secant.com/mr2ice.htm) Knightware
     download from the (http://www.apk.net/secant/nick/mr2i140.zip) Knightware home page (ZIP, 1 meg)
     Registration: US$30

(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.

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

Lotus Notes Mail 4.1.x	- by Ryan Dill

Introduction

Warp 4 comes with a number of CDs besides the base OS; one of them contains drivers for your various hardware, another contains a plethora of OS/2 demo and sample programs. A third CD contains a copy of Lotus Notes Mail for OS/2. As the name implies, Notes Mail is the electronic mail portion of (http://www.lotus.com) Lotus Development Corp.'s Notes messaging software, often used for LANs and intranets.

"So what good is that to me?" you may ask. "I don't have a network running Lotus Notes." Maybe not, but with the addition of a free add-on from Lotus, Notes Mail will also work with Internet email, which gives you two free email clients with Warp 4: Notes Mail and Ultimail. (Incidentally, if you already use Ultimail and would like to switch, Notes Mail includes a migration utility to convert your Ultimail folders and messages into a Notes Mail database; details are available in the help files installed with Notes Mail's Internet Mail add-on)

Installation

Notes Mail installs fine from the CD, but the version of the program on the CD is an earlier version (v4.1) which isn't optimized for Warp 4. This is evident by the look and feel of the program after installation -- Windows and fonts look out-of-place and shoddy. Lotus has a number of updates available which improve Notes Mail's looks and performance under Warp 4, bringing the package to version 4.1.5.

Unfortunately, there's no single update to go from version 4.1 to version 4.1.5; all Lotus provides are 'incremental installers' which each have to be downloaded and installed, one on top of the other. Since the installers are built to update the whole Notes package rather than just Notes Mail, there's a lot of redundant information in the updates, making them all multi-megabyte downloads.

Lotus forces you to wade through numerous web pages at their (http://notes.net/down.nsf/welcome) Notes.Net Download Page, so here are the updates a bit more directly:

o  (http://notes.net/nic_r411.nsf/3381d1767739394c852563950013d25c/b41c739cd162dbe8852563a40059f3cb?OpenDocument) base CD (v 4.1) to v 4.1.1a (*.EXE, 6.5 M)
o  (http://notes.net/nic_r412.nsf/922773b2a1aa121b8525638e0062f29e/67c68edc5920023d852563e700520d53?OpenDocument) v 4.1.1a to v 4.1.2 (*.EXE, 8.5 M)
o  (http://notes.net/nic_r413.nsf/selector) v 4.1.2 to v 4.1.3 (*.EXE, 6.9 M) -- Choose OS/2, North American, Workstation
o  (http://notes.net/incr414.nsf/selector) v 4.1.3 to v 4.1.4 (*.EXE, 4.5 M) -- Choose OS/2, North American, Workstation
o  (http://Web2.notes.net/downqmr.nsf/415lookup/C415ONA?OpenDocument) v 4.1.4 to v 4.1.5 (*.EXE, 2.0 M)

After installing the last update, you should download the (http://www.musthave.com/files/noteinet.exe) Notes Internet Mail add-on. This is a Notes script which, when run from within Notes Mail, will add POP and SMTP capabilities to Notes Mail, allowing it to send and receive your regular Internet email messages. This package contains a readme file describing how to install, and Notes helpfiles for use after installation. As stated previously, it also includes a utility to migrate Ultimail folders and messages into Notes Mail format.

Features

Notes Mail supports multiple email accounts through 'Locations', allowing you to send and receive email from multiple email addresses. To create a new email account, select File->Mobile->Locations -- this will pop up the Locations folder of your address book -- and choose 'Add Location'. This will create the account (Select 'No Connection' under 'Location Type' to tell Notes Mail that you don't use a Notes server to send and receive your email); the actual configuration of the account is performed by going back to the address book and selecting your new account from the 'Service Providers Details' folder. This allows you to enter mail server information, return email address, signature, etc. (If you think it sounds a bit complicated, you're right)

Notes Mail's address book not only keeps track of all people you might send email to, but also all the Locations you use (see above) and contact information for any companies you may deal with. Like some other email clients, Notes Mail address book members can have aliases which you can use in the 'To' field of a new email. In Notes Mail, however, the address database is searched _as you type_ the alias, matching the closest address to what you've typed so far. As you type more, it searches for a better match.

When sending mail to other users on a Notes server, Notes Mail allows for a variety of useful options, such as embedded images, message encryption, spell checking, letterheads, custom stationary, etc. None of this applies when using Notes Mail to send Internet email, however; if you create a message with any of these extras, Notes Mail will automatically trim it down to plain text upon sending, and things such as encryption and authentication simply won't work with Internet Mail. This means that Notes Mail is weighted down with a lot of things that a typical Internet user won't be able to use anyway, which affects its performance (see below).

Like other email clients, Notes Mail can check for and download new mail from your mail server every once in a while, and inform you when new messages arrive. Unfortunately, its options in this area are limited; the only audible notification Notes Mail can give you is a beep from the PC speaker; it doesn't allow you to select custom WAV file like some other clients. Another beef is the fact that the email Inbox isn't updated when new mail arrives; you have to manually refresh the Inbox before you can read the new message(s), be either pressing F9 or by closing and reopening the Inbox. Lastly, there doesn't seem to be a way to easily check mail on-demand; there is a 'check mail' button when you're in the Outbox folder, but none while in the Inbox folder. I don't know about you, but I think it makes more sense to want to check mail while you're in the folder which new mail appears in. (There is a 'Receive mail' option in the toolbox of the lower right of the notes window, but it doesn't work, since it fails while attempting to replicate the Notes Mail Inbox database)

It handles attachments fairly easily; just drag the file you want to attach into the message you're composing, answer 'yes' to the confirmation message, and you're done. The file can be compressed if desired (usually this is the best option), and will be transmitted in the MIME format, so should be able to be handled on the receiving end by most mailers available today. Attachments arriving on your end are also dealt with nicely; double-clicking on an attachment in a mail message brings up a properties box which allows you to view the attachment with Notes Mail's built-in viewers (which even handle ZIP files), open the program using OS/2's default associated program, or save (detach) the attachment to a particular file. (The attachment can always just be dragged out of the message and dropped into a folder, too)

Problems

By far the biggest problem with Notes Mail is its size and speed. Even after applying the latest Notes Mail updates, the program occupies over 10 megs of system memory while simply sitting idle (more when actually doing something), which causes the entire system to slow down considerably. I was running it on a Pentium 120 with 64 megs of RAM, and even with only a few other programs running, trying to get anything done resulted in so much disk swapping it was close to unbearable.

World Wide Web URLs in Notes Mail have a cool little hand appear over them, which implies you can click on them and launch your browser of choice. Alas, it's not to be. Notes Mail is hard coded to use the browser of a Lotus Notes server, so you can't access URLs unless connected to such a server. Your only solution is to copy the URL to the clipboard, fire up your favorite Web browser, and paste the URL in.

There appears to be a cosmetic glitch in Notes Mail when combined with Object Desktop; as you can see, the window controls of Notes Mail's internal windows are a little confused. They incorrectly use OS/2's normal 'minimize' button as the 'close' button for the window, and OS/2's normal 'maximize' button as the 'minimize' button. (the Object Desktop 'maximize' button you see works correctly)

Support

Support for the Internet Mail add-on for Notes Mail is hard to find. The support web site listed in the add-on's own help file ((http://service2.boulder.ibm.com/nov/) http://service2.boulder.ibm.com/nov/) no longer mentions it, and the place where the official IBM page for information on the add-on used to be ((http://www.austin.ibm.com/pspinfo/mailpop3.html) http://www.austin.ibm.com/pspinfo/mailpop3.html) has disappeared; pretty much the only useful IBM site I could find still around is the (http://service2.boulder.ibm.com/yourcall/ProbPop.html) Internet Mail Problem Database, although it does answer some good questions. In fact, it's difficult to find the Internet add-on package itself anywhere on IBM's or Lotus' servers; without third-party sites like Gary Hammer's (http://www.musthave.com) Must-Have, you might not be able to find it at all. (It wasn't even on (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/) Hobbes until I realized this and uploaded it)

As to support for Notes Mail itself, the Lotus site at (http://www.support.lotus.com/) http://www.support.lotus.com/ offers a variety of documents on aspects of the full Lotus Notes package, but since Lotus' support libraries include a LOT of stuff on Notes, finding anything on just Notes Mail 4.1.x for OS/2 is like finding a needle in a haystack. Pay-as-you-play support is always available from Lotus via phone and fax, of course; see the file SUPPORT.TXT on your Notes Mail CD for more details.

Conclusion

Lotus Notes Mail looks nice and includes a variety of features, but most of those related to Internet Mail are simply done better by other email clients on the market. Support for other modern features such as PGP (Pretty Good Privacy, for Internet email encryption) and message filtering are nonexistent in Notes Mail, so despite the fact that its price (free) can't be beat, I simply can't recommend Notes Mail for the typical Internet user. The program is simply too great a resource hog to justify using it just for email. If you're on a Lotus Notes server, I can see where its use would be a good choice, but if all you'll be using it for is Internet email, don't. Spend the money to get a regular email client and you'll save yourself a lot of aggravation.

                         - * -

Lotus Notes Mail 4.1.x
     by (http://www.lotus.com/) Lotus Development Corp.
     from Warp 4's Notes Mail CD
     Registration: Free

(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.

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

PMMail 1.95a	- by Christopher B.  Wright

It seems like the longer you're connected to the Internet, the more email you get.  I'm not just talking about Spam, mind you.  I've found, in the scant four years I've been "hooked in" to the internet, the amount of email I receive has increased drastically.  Where I once had a single America Online mail account in a Win-OS/2 session (yes, I started out with AOL), I now have no less than four email accounts, am subscribed to at least 14 mailing lists, some of which deliver over 150 messages a day!

Strangely enough, I'm able to keep up with most of it.  But I wouldn't be able to do it if I didn't have a top-notch, workhorse email application.  That application is PMMail, and it's one of the finest email applications you'll find on any OS platform, anywhere.

OS/2 has been blessed with superior email clients, and PMMail is (arguably) the most popular of the bunch.  If you're looking for a solid email client, capable of handling multiple accounts and complex filters with ease, PMMail is an excellent choice for you.  It has a few quirks and annoyances (which I will describe below), but overall it is a product superior to almost anything out there.

Installation

PMMail uses the traditional IBM install program, so there's nothing out of the ordinary in this experience.  What is out of the ordinary is that unlike many of the programs available for OS/2 today, PMMail doesn't modify your config.sys file at all.  This means that you could, theoretically, move it to a Zip or SyQuest removable disk and carry your email program around with you if you work on more than one OS/2 machine with internet access.  You can also move it to another directory or hard drive without breaking the program's ability to function.

Configuration

Setting up an email account isn't hard, but account information is broken into more than one settings notebook, something I find a bit cumbersome.  After you set up your basic information (what your IP address is for your SMTP and POP servers, your login and password information, etc.) PMMail gives you a great deal of control over your account.  You can specify whether or not the account automatically polls the server for incoming mail, whether or not that mail is stored on the server or deleted after it is downloaded, and how often the server is polled for new messages afterwards (if it is polled at all).

Each email account can have multiple signatures ("sigs") -- tags at the end of every email you send with whatever information you want to include (name, email, some kind of witty comment).  You can set a default sig. that will be used in every message you send, or you can specify which signature you want to use while you are creating your email message.  There are a few add-ons for PMMail out there that can attach signatures at random.

Multiple Accounts

If you've registered PMMail, you can do this for more than one account.  I currently have four email accounts, all of which automatically poll their respective POP servers when the program starts.  Creating a new email account doesn't require any special maneuvering, you go through the same motions as you did originally.  Email accounts are displayed alphabetically in the left-hand column of the main window.

Each account is created from scratch -- you can't "borrow" filters or sigs already created in a preexisting account.  I find that a bit annoying, and I hope this is changed in a future release.

Filters

In basic email programs, you find they'll dump all your incoming messages into one folder and let you sort them out for yourself.  PMMail defaults to this -- when you first fire it up, all messages appear in the "in" directory of your email account(s) -- but you can modify this with the use of filters.

Filters look for keywords in messages, and based on those keywords they do something (copy, move, delete) to the message.  Filters in PMMail are very easy to configure (if you've never had any experience setting them up) and are a powerful way to manage your accounts.

For example, on one of my email accounts I've subscribed to a political discussion list, a mailing list that discusses the literary works of Charles Williams, and about five or six FYI lists (lists from web sites that let you know when the sites been updated, what articles of interest are on each site, etc.)  The political discussion sends over 150 messages a day (not as big as some lists, but still a pain to wade through), and can often drown out the information in the other lists.  I've set up filters that look for the email addresses of the various mailing lists, and send the messages into separate folders.  All messages from the political discussion list are sent into its own designated folder, all messages from the Charles Williams list are sent into another folder, and all "update" messages are sent into a third folder.

The Address Book

The address book stores any email addresses you want to keep track of.  You can configure the entries in the address book so that you can insert them into the "to" field of an email message by right-clicking on the mouse over that field, then selecting the email address you want to use.  You can also set up a nickname for each entry.  For example, when I want to send a message to the OS/2 e-Zine! Staff list, I simply type "staff" in the "to" field and hit the enter key.

Other Stuff

PMMail has some other nice features that don't really fit into any category, so I'm stuffing them all in here.

First of all, if you happen to have the latest version of PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) available for OS/2, PMMail can automatically integrate itself with that, allowing you to encrypt and decrypt messages (as long as you have the appropriate keys).  I don't use this function myself, but I have heard reports that at the moment PGP support is not as complete as some would wish.

PMMail has excellent support for attaching files via MIME or UUencode.  Incoming messages with attached files have a little graphic to the left of the message's title.  Viewing the message displays the attached document at the bottom of the message window, where you can either double-click on it (to open it up) or simply drag it to your desktop to view it later.  Attaching a document is just as easy:  just choose your protocol and drag your document onto the message window.  (If the file you want to attach isn't immediately accessible, you can use the more traditional menu controls).

Quirks, Complaints, And Incompatibilities

While PMMail is a very powerful application, it is not perfect.  There a few features I'd like to see improved in coming releases, and at least one major conflict with software from another third-party vendor.

While PMMail's email filtering abilities are very strong and thorough, the same cannot be said for its address book (where you can store the email addresses of mailing lists and individual people).  The address book is functional, but fairly crude in terms of organizing.  You can create folders to group addresses, but you can't create nested folders -- which I find kind of irritating, because I like to try and keep my email addresses as organized as possible.  For example, I'd like to be able to set up a folder called "OS/2" that contains all the email addresses of all the people and companies I deal with in the OS/2 market.  In that folder, I'd like to be able to sort those email addresses further by setting up a folder for Stardock (with all Stardock email addresses in that folder) one for TrueSpectra, one for OS/2 e-Zine!, one for Compo Software, one for Sundial Systems, etc.  At the moment, you can't do that.

I'd also like to be able to sort the email addresses in the address book. At the moment, emails aren't sorted in any particular order -- they just kind of sit wherever you enter them.  I'd like to be able to view the people's names in alphabetical order, at least -- that would make it a bit easier trying to find them.

I'd also like to be able to change the column widths of the message window on the main screen.  At the moment, you can only modify one column (between the message title and the author's name).

On a final note, there's an incompatibility between the latest version of PMMail and Codesmith's desktop enhancer, Xit.  Xit gives you the ability to configure the third mouse button on a three-button mouse.  If you use this ability while you are working in PMMail, your entire system can freeze solid.  At the moment, the only solution is to configure Xit so that it ignores PMMail completely (you won't be able to use any of Xit's features with PMMail if you do this).

(Editor's Note: Too late to fully consider in this review was the release of version 1.96, which claims to fix this problem with X-It. We were not able to verify this before "press time".)

Final Evaluation

If you're already using an email program like J Street Mailer, or MR/2 ICE, there's no real reason to switch over to PMMail.  All applications are reasonably equivalent in power and flexibility.  I find PMMail to be a very intuitive program to use and incredibly easy to manage, but that's something that is ultimately in the eye of the beholder. 

A plus for PMMail is its support for PGP and SouthSoft's plans for future enhancements of the product, including more support for PGP and some limited support for email sent as an HTML document.  SouthSoft has repeatedly assured their OS/2 supporters that they have NO plans to abandon the OS/2 version of the product and will keep the features as current with the Win32 version as is technically possible (there are more hooks to support HTML in Windows 95 and NT than there are in OS/2, which is why the Win32 versions have support for it and the OS/2 version does not).

PMMail is an excellent product, and despite its few shortcomings (lack of configurability in the address book, the lockups with Xit) it is one of the most reliable applications I use.   If you're looking for a quality email client, PMMail will easily meet your needs.

                         - * -

PMMail 1.95a
     by (http://www.southsoft.com/) SouthSide Software
     download from the (http://www.southsoft.com/bin/pmm195a.zip) SouthSoft home page (ZIP, 1.7 megs)
     Registration: US$40

(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.

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

Post Road Mailer v3.0	- by Richard R. Klemmer

(http://www.innoval.com) InnoVal System Solutions is a company at the forefront of the Java explosion, developing one of the first 100% pure Java e-mail programs with J Street Mailer (see JSM's review in this issue).  However, InnoVal got its start developing for OS/2 with Post Road Mailer, and hasn't forgotten its roots.  At the end of 1997, InnoVal released the third major version of this time-tested program.

Installation and Support

Installing PRM for the first time is very easy.  Just unzip the file into an empty directory and run the enclosed Install.cmd program.  This will create a program object on your desktop.

If you are upgrading from a previous version, you must quit PRM if it is running, unzip the file into your existing directory overwriting all files, then reboot your system if it hasn't been rebooted since the last time you ran the previous version of Post Road Mailer.

The help files and on-line user's guide that come with Post Road Mailer are fairly extensive, helpful, and laid out better in version 3.0 then in previous versions.

You can also receive support for PRM by e-mail or fax.  I've had some good experiences in the past with their e-mail support.  They've been responsive and helpful.  In fact, I've usually received at least an initial reply on the same day I sent the message.

Interface

When you start PRM, the default Inbox is displayed.  The original version of PRM's display had two lines and large icons.  As of version 2.0, they came out with an alternate display with one line which allows you to see more messages in the space provided.  With version 3.0 they've added a toolbar, which replaces the action pad at the bottom of the display.  This gives even more space, as well as extra functionality.  You no longer need to search through menus for many of the functions.  This is probably the most noticeable addition to the 3.0 upgrade.

The new toolbar allows you to do various things, including sending, retrieving and previewing your mail, composing, replying to and forwarding notes, and viewing of  your address book, folders and messages waiting to be sent.  You can also right-click on any note in the Inbox to bring up a pop-up menu with access to many of these functions, as well as letting you file your notes into folders.  Another new addition to 3.0 is the ability to file a note into the most recent folder you were in.  This saves you the duplicate effort of searching through subfolders, which, if you have as many as I do, can be a bit time consuming.

The messages in the Inbox have default icons depending on if they are unopened, have attachments, or sticky notes associated with them.  PRM also has what they call Mood Icons, which are OS/2 icon files that can replace the default icons for messages you send to other PRM users, or messages you have set up a filter to attach a Mood Icon to.  This is useful if you want to distinguish certain messages when you receive them.

All of these functions and more are available with the menu bar at the top of the display.  One of the things I've always liked about PRM is the flexibility.  There is always more than one way to do things, so that whether you prefer a toolbar, pop-up menu, or regular menu, you can get the job done in the way most comfortable for you.

Composing and sending notes

When you compose a note it brings up separate header and text windows, with the header active and all the standard header options.  You can left click on the book icon to bring up the address book, or right click on it to bring up a list of the last 15 addresses you've sent messages to.  This is extremely useful and saves a great deal of time.  Additionally, you can type a subject, modify your default From and Reply-to Address, select a signature or mood icon, or attach a file.  If your message has a file attached, PRM will ask you if you wish to send the attachment MIME or UUEncoded.  If you have multiple attachments, PRM will automatically use MIME.

In addition to the built-in message editor, you also have the option of using the external editor defined in your settings.  If you have Spellguard for PostRoad Mailer, you can also check the spelling of either the entire message or selected text before it is sent. This is configurable to ignore quoted text, FTP & HTTP file references, e-mail addresses, HTML and IPF tags. This is a fairly decent spell checker, although it requires the purchase of additional software.  However, according to InnoVal, this will likely be built into the next non-maintenance release.  All of these features are available when you reply and forward mail as well.

Features

PRM lets you create multiple address books, with up to five e-mail addresses associated with each nickname. This is very useful for me, since most of the people I converse with have multiple addresses.

PRM's filters are powerful and useful tools for processing your mail before it reaches your inbox.  It has all the standard capabilities, such as delete notes, move and copy notes to folders, send out automatic replies, forward the message, etc.  Also, it allows you to attach a mood icon, so that the message will be more noticeable in your Inbox among the spam that didn't get filtered out.  If you wish, you can also run REXX scripts against any of the messages that were retrieved.  

Currently the filters are rather limited on what you can search for.  At this time you cannot use regular expressions, nor can you combine any of the searchable areas (header elements, message body etc.).  However, InnoVal has promised these abilities for future releases of PRM, and claim they're among the highest priorities.

Double-clicking on a URL in the body of a message will send the address to your browser (starting it if it isn't already running).  Plus you can double click on a FTP link and download the file with the built-in FTP capabilities.

PRM lets you attach a sticky note to a message with comments or reminders.  This can be attached to any note in the Inbox or other folders.  You can also indicate that you wish to follow up on this note, then later you can search by date for notes with a follow-up indicator.

Search for Notes and Search for URL

PRM has a powerful and flexible search function with the ability to scan your Inbox and any or all of your folders. PRM will then display the found messages in a "virtual folder", carrying all the standard forward, reply and delete functions.

You can also search for a URL, similar to searching for a note, but in the list of notes that are found you have a "View a URL" option. When you double click on the note, Post Road launches your default browser and takes you to that location.  This can come in handy when you remember a site listed in a message from some time ago, but can't remember which one.

Preview Mail

The Preview Mail feature lets you see what messages are on your server so that you may selectively retrieve or delete them without having to download the whole note.  You can see the Subject, Date, and Size, and new in version 3.0, you can also see the To:  address of the message.  

Select-a-file Dialog

One feature I especially like is PRM's Select a file dialog.  Whenever you need to select a file for import, select or save an attachment, or specify a file for any other purpose, PRM brings up its custom dialog box, instead of the standard (and limited) OS/2 'open/save as' dialog.  With PRM's dialog you can specify speed lists so that you can jump to specific directories with a single click, file options such as copy, move, delete, create directory, etc., and edit or view the selected file with the editor specified in your PRM settings.  This gives you capabilities similar to the program X-File, which makes life much easier.

Other new features in version 3.0

InnoVal has made some other key additions to version 3.0 that I find useful.  They've added the route function to let you forward one or more messages without going into the compose window first.  Now you can also resend a note without going to the compose window.  This way you can resend multiple notes at once, which is much quicker.

One last addition that I like is the option to file sent notes into a Current Month folder that is automatically created by PRM.  This is similar to the way PINE files sent notes, and makes it easier for maintaining.

Drawbacks

The inability to send multiple UUEncoded attachments in one message is a bit of an annoyance, but most e-mail programs handle MIME these days, so it's a minor one.  The fact that you have to purchase and install a separate program for spell checking is inconvenient too.    One last drawback is that the mail messages are stored in plain ASCII text.  Even though you can password protect your Inbox, anyone can view your messages by looking at the files in your directory. InnoVal says that they will likely fix this for J Street Mailer and possibly port the capability to PRM, but they haven't received much interest in this from PRM customers.

Conclusions

Post Road Mailer is definitely worthy of some consideration if you are looking for a native OS/2 e-mail program.  Although I suspect that upgrades to InnoVal software will come out for their Java products first, they are still committed to their OS/2 products as well.

                         - * -

Post Road Mailer v3.0
     by (http://www.innoval.com) InnoVal
     download from the (http://www.tiac.net/innoval/post300.zip) InnoVal home page (ZIP, 1.8 megs)
     Registration: US$25

Richard R. Klemmer has been an OS/2 user since January of 1995.  He is a computer programmer for the Department of Agriculture during the day, and a partner with (http://www.webtrek.com/) WebTrek L.L.C., a Internet Consultant and Web provider, during the rest of his waking moments, and some of his sleeping ones.

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

Lotus SmartSuite for Warp 4 - First Looks	- by Chris Wenham

At long last, just when it seemed our only other option would (and did) enter yet another phase of perpetual beta testing, (http://www.lotus.com) Lotus Development released SmartSuite for Warp 4 - a real office suite with real applications and real features on par with its Windows counterpart. In this issue we'll have our first looks at the suite, and in a later issue we'll offer a complete, in-depth review of all components. 

SmartSuite's five components, WordPro, Freelance Graphics, 1-2-3, Approach and Organizer are all well integrated with a common look and feel, scripting language and data sharing. For example; you can paste a Freelance presentation into a WordPro document, and update cells in a 1-2-3 spreadsheet with values from an Approach database. 

Installation, Documentation and Support

Installation from the CD-ROM takes just under 20 minutes from start to finish, depending on how many options you select in the customization process (an easy, default install is available too) and takes about 165 megs of hard drive space. An interesting addition that wasn't in the beta is a registration and survey program that looks suspiciously like the old "Dancing Elephant" that came with Warp 4. Similar to the elephant's behavior, SmartSuite will add the program to your Startup folder to sit and wait for a few months, when it will pop up again and try to ask you a few more questions. This can be deleted safely, however. 

The printed documentation, 7 booklets in all, is little more than an introduction to each program's features. The real documentation is contained online in the help files. In addition, SmartSuite also installs a copy of the Adobe Acrobat reader for OS/2 (the full package, including Netscape plug-ins) so that you may read the manuals in Acrobat PDF format. 

Phone support is free for a 60 day period (beginning when you like, so as soon as you pick up the phone and dial their number - that's when the clock starts ticking), after that you'll have to start paying for every incident. Apparently we must have been the first to get a copy of SmartSuite for Warp 4, as when we called with a question the support technician didn't have a copy installed on his computer, and actually had to install the beta while we waited on the phone. Follow-up was very good, however, and the technician called us back some days later to make sure we'd resolved our problem. 

WordPro

If there's one thing that can be noticed about all the programs in the suite, it's that they're considerably faster than they were during the beta period. WordPro snaps open quickly, presenting a list of recent documents or SmartMasters to begin with. It doesn't look much different from earlier versions, but some of the newer features have added a bit more Desktop Publishing power to the program, such as booklet printing and the ability to flow text from one linked frame to another. 

Internet support is still a little weak, with the ability to FTP documents to and fro, saving in HTML and copying in-lined images if necessary. 

As introduced in earlier versions of WordPro, the "Ask the Expert" option in the help file is extremely useful for learning new features and figuring everything out. Type in a plain-English question such as "How do I publish to the Internet?" or "How do I change the background color?" and the Expert will locate the correct page in the help file, as well as related subjects, that tell you exactly how to do what you want. 

1-2-3

The classic spreadsheet just keeps getting better. Some of the most significant new additions are the Assistants, used for stepping through complex tasks, improved graphing, and an outlining mode that makes it easy to collapse and thus simplify parts of the spreadsheet.

Old DOS 1-2-3 fans will appreciate the presence of the "Classic" 1-2-3 menu structure, accessed the traditional way with a tap of the forward slash key ("/"), but will be disappointed to find that no printed manual of the spreadsheet's function library made it into the package.

Approach

The database of the suite, Approach, is in many ways similar to Microsoft Access, but definitely not a "clone" thereof. If you are used to the "Access" method of working with databases, copied by DBExpert for OS/2, then you might not like the way Approach hides a lot of details such as the underlying table and query structure. Once you've defined the fields of a database, you need to sniff around a few non-obvious menu options before you finally find the right dialog to edit and add more fields later. 

Advertised as needing no programming, Approach is a relational database based on the dBase IV format and is flexible enough to put together quite complex and powerful applications with it. You can of course "program" it if you're familiar with LotusScript or SQL. It can call several databases together into one application, giving you tools to design input forms, reports, and all the other things you'd expect from a database. 

But like the rest of the suite, it isn't very powerful in regards to internet publishing. You can export any particular view to an HTML file, send and retrieve files over FTP, but has no features in place for establishing a serious database-driven web site.

Freelance Graphics

This presentation graphics package has long been popular for it's "Click here to enter headline" simplicity. While it's possible to create a presentation from a blank template, Freelance's main power is clearly in its huge stock of SmartMasters - designed to tackle everything from boring annual sales reports to involved competitor analysis and quality improvement tasks.

This version introduces some enhancements in the text support, such as new effects, greater control over spacing, and the ability to globally change the font across an entire presentation. Freelance also comes with an improved drawing palette, with predefined shapes to complement its large clip-art collection.

Organizer

Out of the printed documentation that comes with SmartSuite, Organizer claims two of the booklets. One is a normal introduction and user guide, another is a print layout guide, showing examples of printed schedules and address books that fit a number of Avery, Day Runner, Day Timer and Franklin blanks. 

The PIM's performance has improved some since we reviewed its beta back in December, but is still not quite the thing I'd want to leave running all the time without another RAM upgrade. Otherwise it does an excellent job of keeping track of your calendar, address book, ToDo notes and whatever else. Disappointing is a lack of utilities to connect with any of the popular handheld devices like the Palm Pilot or IBM WorkPad, even though Lotus is now shipping these in the Windows version of Organizer. 

Summary

One of the first concerns you may find, as you wander through the customization options during the install process, is that there's a high degree of redundancy and spotty consistency. Each application has its own spell checker files, for example, and while one component will support 4 or 5 languages, another will support only two. There's also a disparity in regards to features you'd expect to see in all components, such as WordPro's applaudable "Ask the Expert" which only appears in one. It leads me to suspect that the developers of each component are a little more isolated from each other than it may seem.

But not to be unfair, SmartSuite is a stellar package. Perhaps while the suite itself, taken as a whole, is a little immature, each of its separate components stand as veteran masters of their niches.

                         - * -

SmartSuite for Warp 4
     by (http://www.lotus.com/smartsuiteos2) Lotus Development Corp.
     MSRP: US$379

(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.

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

March '98 Reader Survey Results

Our monthly surveys usually elicit many comments from our readers, but few have elicited as many as this month's.  Specifically, many readers wrote to complain that our March Reader Survey was poorly worded and poorly thought out.  Many of you pointed out that it was unreasonable to believe that the average reader of OS/2 e-Zine! would have the technical expertise required to be able to judge which operating system was best for a given task.

This is a fair criticism.  However, as always, it's what our readers think that we are most interested in.  We prefer to leave it to the supposed "experts" at consulting and research firms to tell us which operating system is best.  Our surveys are aimed at discovering what the average person's opinion is.

With that in mind, last month we asked our readers, "How do you use OS/2?".

Answers to our survey were accepted from March 16th until April 13th.  We had a total of 1,576 replies to our questionnaire with 133 "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 1,443 valid replies.  The results were as follows:

What is your primary use for OS/2?

When we founded OS/2 e-Zine! it was because we saw a real need for an end-user oriented OS/2 publication, and our core readership remains the home user.  Almost half our readers last month (49.9%) told us their primary use for OS/2 was general home or personal use.  This was certainly no surprise, except maybe to the non-OS/2 world who has been insisting for years that no-one uses OS/2 as a "kitchen-top" operating system.  Obviously, we thought different and your responses confirm our beliefs.

What is the best platform for medium or large scale business use?

After dispensing with the initial question of OS/2 usage, we got down to business.  We were curious just what our readers' opinions of various operating systems were, so we asked what you thought was the best platform for big business.

Probably IBM will be happy to know that their advertising dollars are well spent, because the majority of our readers (61.5% -- most of whom have been exposed to more than a few IBM advertisements in these pages) felt that good old OS/2 was the best OS for the job.  In fact, with the scads of big banks, insurance companies and others using OS/2 to keep things running smoothly, we would have been shocked to find our readers thought anything different.

There weren't really any surprises here.  Unix (other than Linux) and Windows NT were the only other notable contenders for our readers' confidence, with 11.4% and 7.3% respectively.  A fair number though (13.6%) admitted that they just didn't know what would make the best big business platform.

What is the best platform for small office / home office (SOHO) use?

The question we were most curious to see the answers to was which OS our readers would recommend for a SOHO setup.  In fact, the numbers here were very similar to our previous question, with OS/2 capturing the majority of your "mindshare" (64.0%).  There was one significant reversal in answers between this question and the previous one though: almost no-one felt that Unix (other than Linux) was a good solution for a SOHO business but a significant number (17.5%) thought that Win95 was.

What is the best platform for Java?

Another question that IBM may be eager to hear the answer to is what readers perceive as the best Java platform.  Probably not surprisingly, considering the admittedly biased sample of OS/2 e-Zine! readers, not to mention the money IBM has been spending to convince people, you overwhelmingly told us that OS/2 was the best Java platform.  More than three quarters (77.7%) of you thought so.  In fact, there was no other real contender in our readers' minds, with the only other significant category being those who admittedly did not know (14.0%).

What is the best platform for Games?

Finally, we asked what the best platform for games is.  Again, not surprisingly, OS/2 did not win the minds of our readers, despite their obvious bias for that operating system.  Almost half our readers (44.6%) feel that Win95 is better than any other platform as far as gaming is concerned.  Apparently, IBM isn't the only company getting through to their target market.

A significant contender though, was the venerable DOS operating system.  Though its life span should have ended years ago (and Microsoft has certainly tried to end it), almost one in four (24.7%) of our readers still think that it is the best platform for games.

                         - * -

That's it for this month.  Don't forget to fill out this month's questionnaire and check back in May 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 March '98 Survey Results

What is your primary use for OS/2?

Category				Count	Percentage
Academic				100	6.9%
Games				7	0.5%
General home / personal use	720	49.9%
Medium or large scale business	97	6.7%
Programming / development		184	12.8%
Small office / home office		307	21.3%
Other				28	1.9%
I don't understand the question	0	0.0%
TOTAL				1,443	100.0%



What is the best platform for medium or large scale business use?

Category				Count	Percentage
Amiga				0	0.0%
BeOS				0	0.0%
DOS				2	0.1%
Linux				34	2.4%
Macintosh			2	0.1%
OS/2				887	61.5%
Unix other than Linux		165	11.4%
Windows 3.x			3	0.2%
Windows 95			19	1.3%
Windows NT			105	7.3%
Other				27	1.9%
I don't know			196	13.6%
I don't understand the question	3	0.2%
TOTAL				1,443	100.0%



What is the best platform for small office / home office (SOHO) use?

Category				Count	Percentage
Amiga				0	0.0%
BeOS				0	0.0%
DOS				4	0.3%
Linux				19	1.3%
Macintosh			37	2.6%
OS/2				924	64.0%
Unix other than Linux		4	0.3%
Windows 3.x			20	1.4%
Windows 95			252	17.5%
Windows NT			95	6.6%
Other				3	0.2%
I don't know			82	5.7%
I don't understand the question	3	0.2%
TOTAL				1,443	100.1%



What is the best platform for Java?

Category				Count	Percentage
Amiga				0	0.0%
BeOS				0	0.0%
DOS				0	0.0%
Linux				23	1.6%
Macintosh			2	0.1%
OS/2				1,121	77.7%
Unix other than Linux		45	3.1%
Windows 3.x			0	0.0%
Windows 95			21	1.5%
Windows NT			20	1.4%
Other				7	0.5%
I don't know			202	14.0%
I don't understand the question	2	0.1%
TOTAL				1,443	100.0%



What is the best platform for Games?

Category				Count	Percentage
Amiga				33	2.3%
BeOS				9	0.6%
DOS				356	24.7%
Linux				4	0.3%
Macintosh			16	1.1%
OS/2				143	9.9%
Unix other than Linux		0	0.0%
Windows 3.x			11	0.8%
Windows 95			643	44.6%
Windows NT			8	0.6%
Other				27	1.9%
I don't know			190	13.2%
I don't understand the question	3	0.2%
TOTAL				1,443	100.2%

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

April '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/v3n04/survey2.htm and check back next month to find out how "normal" you really are!

                         - * -

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

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


                         This month's topic: You and Your Computer


Notes:
1. Only one entry per reader will be counted.
2. All questions must be answered to be counted.
3. Information must be received on or before April 30, 1998.

Complete results of this survey will be printed in our next issue (May 2, 1998).

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

"How Can We Improve?" Survey Results

Last month we asked some simple questions of our readers to determine what direction you want to see OS/2 e-Zine! go.  This survey was obviously done mainly for internal purposes but we thought that many of you might be interested in what others had to say.  So we present to you here, the complete results of our questionnaire.

Answers to our survey were accepted from March 16th until April 13th.  We had a total of 776 replies to our questionnaire with 70 "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 706 valid replies.  The results were as follows:

How frequently would you like issues of OS/2 e-Zine! to be published?

OS/2 e-Zine! has followed many print magazine traditions since its inception, but in reality, there is no firm reason why we have to.  Many Internet web sites have blurred the line between magazines and other information sources.  Some popular sites publish articles weekly, daily or even constantly.

However, it appears that you would like OS/2 e-Zine! to stick to its roots.  While it's obvious most readers would like to see more frequent issues, a very small percentage of our readers asked for "constant" or "real-time" updates to OS/2 e-Zine!.  (But don't forget (http://www.warpcast.com/) the WarpCast News Service which does do a great job of "real-time" OS/2 news updates.)

What one change would _most_ improve OS/2 e-Zine!, in your opinion?

There were no surprises here; we expected readers to ask for more of what sets OS/2 e-Zine! apart from other Internet resources -- original content -- and you did.  More than three out of four readers told us that more articles would be the best way to improve our publication with only handfuls of people choosing each of our other suggestions.

Would you like OS/2 e-Zine! to begin using Netscape's "frames" feature?

Frames have always been a touchy subject on the Internet.  When Netscape first introduced them, many immediately began using them obsessively.  Perhaps this overuse is what soon caused an equally fervent anti-frames movement on the Web.  In our earliest days, OS/2 e-Zine! was limited to providing content easily readable with IBM's WebExplorer (which can not decipher frames), and we have always stuck to that commitment.  Even now, with the vast majority of our readers using Netscape Navigator for OS/2, the majority still prefers a no-frames e-Zine! experience.  However, a growing number (more than a quarter) would like to see frames incorporated.  This is something we will try to address in the coming months.

Should OS/2 e-Zine! feature more screen shots mixed in with the text of articles or continue to only provide links to most screen shots?

Another long-standing practice here at OS/2 e-Zine! has been to provide ample screen shots in our reviews to give readers a good idea of products.  However, because of the congestion on the Internet and out of concern for readers with slower modems, we have always tried to include links to screen shots instead of just pasting them into the body of articles.  This means that readers who want to see how a program or feature looks have the opportunity, but readers who are not interested or who have slower connections can still have a speedy reading experience, without turning "graphics loading" off in their browsers.

In this age of ever-growing bandwidth, it seems there may be a movement for more in-line screen shots (one third of you said you would like to see more).  However, the majority still prefers things as they are (not everyone is as fortunate as those in Canada where ADSL or cable modems will be available to most of the population well before the end of this calendar year).  Since 58.6% of our readers asked us not to include more in-line screen shots, we will definitely stay the course, but we'll be keeping a close eye on bandwidth trends and definitely revisit this question some time soon.

                         - * -

 


                         Complete Survey Results

How frequently would you like issues of OS/2 e-Zine! to be published?
	

Category	Count	Percentage
Publish less than once a month	5	0.7%
Continue publishing once a month	177	25.1%
Publish every two weeks	471	66.7%
Publish every week	38	5.4%
Publish more frequently than once a week	6	0.8%
I have no opinion / I'm not sure	9	1.3%
TOTAL		706		100.0%



What one change would _most_ improve OS/2 e-Zine!, in your opinion?


Category	Count	Percentage
More articles	551	78.0%
More screen shots	39	5.5%
Improved layout	14	2.0%
Improved decorative graphics	5	0.7%
Improved navigation features	40	5.7%
I have no opinion / I'm not sure	57	8.1%
TOTAL		706		100.0%



Would you like OS/2 e-Zine! to begin using Netscape's "frames" feature?


Category	Count	Percentage
Yes	200	28.3%
No	402	56.9%
I don't know what "frames" are	6	0.8%
I have no opinion / I'm not sure	98	13.9%
TOTAL		706		99.9%



Should OS/2 e-Zine! feature more screen shots mixed in with the text of articles or continue to only provide links to most screen shots?


Category	Count	Percentage
Yes, provide more screen shots in the body of articles	233	33.0%
Don't change anything	414	58.6%
Put even fewer screen shots in the body of articles	37	5.2%
I don't understand the question	0	0.0%
I have no opinion / I'm not sure	22	3.1%
TOTAL		706		99.9%

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

OS Wars	- by Brad Wardell

Our story so far...

It was a time of operating system civil war, as the empire of Microsoft looked to squash out the rebel operating systems still thriving on the edges of the computer market's rim...

In 1992, Microsoft faced its most serious challenge yet: IBM's OS/2. Up to this point, Microsoft had only to contend with DR DOS, which failed to gain any sort of widespread acceptance and, in the end, was only a DOS clone that had to be compatible with Microsoft's standards. The other primary threat came from Apple but MacOS was trapped in a totally different hardware dimension. Apple had been content to sit on its laurels, and its current market share meant it was never going to be a serious threat.

But OS/2 was different because it was not only compatible with DOS and Windows -- and arguably ran DOS and Windows better than Microsoft's offerings -- it also advocated its own native application development. If successful, it meant that Windows would be at a severe disadvantage.

Luckily, a combination of poor marketing and management by IBM and ruthless (and allegedly illegal) competitive practices by Microsoft ensured that Windows would win the great 32-bit battle. Its key to victory was ensuring that Windows came preinstalled with almost every single PC on the market. While OS/2 was a superior product to Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, Windows achieved the all important "Good enough" rating that discouraged people from actively looking for an alternative if their machine already came with Windows. If the OS you got free with your computer is "good enough", why go out and pay $100 for something else?

That brings us to 1998

To paraphrase Star Wars, "The tighter you make your grip, the more operating systems that slip through your fingers..." While Windows 95 rules supreme, Windows NT has won the high end OS market, and Windows 98 is poised to succeed Windows 95 in a matter of months, there are still numerous other operating systems now available that show some promise.

BeOS

BeOS got its start on the BeBox which, from my perspective, was an extremely promising route to success. Finally, a machine designed and built from the ground up that would be affordable and bring the power and performance that many users had been looking for. A Super-PC that had multiple processors as standard equipment. It could have been like a modern day Amiga without the horrible marketing and limitations.

But Be ran into some problems. It looked for awhile that Apple might buy Be and integrate it into the Apple OS and many people, including myself, felt that this would be a great idea since System 8 is still behind the times technologically. But Apple pulled the plug on third-party licensing of the Apple hardware which really took a lot of steam out of Be's Macintosh plans. Be therefore made the decision to come over to Intel (which must have been quite a setback).

Most people take it for granted today but the PC, underneath the nice looking cases, is a complete mess from an operating system vendor's point of view. Hard core PC users get ticked off that their latest 3D card has crappy Windows drivers. That's only the tip of the iceberg. Try starting from scratch from a device driver standpoint. Imagine having to support all those wacko video cards, hard drive types, modems, sound cards, BIOS's, etc. What a complete nightmare it must be to try to support this! It's taken Linux and OS/2 years to provide adequate support and they have had extremely strong device driver support from developers (some may disagree but trust me on this, it takes a huge amount of work to even hope to keep up).

This trend to take hardware support for granted works in BeOS's favor at first because people forget about the bad old days. But a few days with BeOS will quickly bring reminders of those days. Given the Intel version isn't even out, except in developer release form, it's hardly fair to complain about this. Indeed, I'm not complaining, it's just a simple fact that if you take the BeOS route, be prepared to custom-make your PC to fit it, just as people did for NeXTStep for Intel before, and OS/2 before that.

But the look of BeOS is quite striking and definitely appeals to a number of people. On the other hand, looks alone should not make you switch OS's. [Evil Plug Alert] Stardock's own Object Desktop for Windows (in beta) can radically change the look and feel of Windows. Here's a screen shot  of our BeOS theme (beta):

In the end, BeOS has a definite uphill battle to fight, and I am not sure it's going to make it. I really hope it does but having learned from my OS/2 experiences, software is what makes OSes successful. OS/2 had the added advantage of being demonstrably superior in a vast number of areas over Windows (user interface, multitasking, mulithreading, crash protection, 32-bit, cheaper, etc.). It had all those things going for it and yet did not become mainstream. Today, all operating systems have decent user interfaces, multitasking, crash protection (well, at least some), are 32-bit, etc. So what will BeOS do to carve out its niche?

Linux

I have a dream. This dream involves being able to simply purchase a couple of really, really powerful PC's and then let me hook them up to the network and allow fairly wimpy PC's connect to them and run applications off them where the application executes on the powerful PC but displays itself on the wimpy PC.

I'm in an office that is full of Pentium 75's. Many of these PC's are just used for doing general office work (data entry, word processing, email, technical support, etc.). But now, we're looking at having to upgrade these PC's as newer and newer versions of our applications seem to require ever more hardware to run decently. Who would have ever thought that an email package would bog down a Pentium? Stick with old software and get out of touch, go with new software and upgrade your machines.

But for me, Linux offers an alternative via X-Windows. Yes, X-Windows has been around for years and people still don't understand the promise it holds. Much of the JAVA fanaticism you see out there is misguided because these people basically just want to do what X-Windows has been doing for years. You know the typical conversation:

   "You see, if we have an internal Intranet and a couple of servers
   running JAVA applications, then our thin clients, old PC's and such can
   connect to those servers and run the JAVA programs."

JAVA has some great strengths (which I'll get into in a different article) but what I think many corporations want to do is the same thing I want to do:

They want to have a couple of really powerful PC's that have the bread and butter applications running on them and a bunch of "thin" clients (read: older PC's that we're too cheap to upgrade) that can connect to them and run that software remotely. I'm writing this article on a Pentium 120, which was a pretty powerful machine once. But running Corel PhotoPaint on it today is extremely painful. Wouldn't it be great if I just had a P2-333 with 256 MB of RAM in the main lab that I could just hook up to and run Corel PhotoPaint on it but have it display on my machine? I'd get the speed (or pretty darn close) of the fast machine while being able to continue using my Pentium 120.

Recently, a company in Great Britain released a program called VNC which allows people to remote control other PC's. This is nothing new of course but the kicker is that it's free! Anyone who's used that program probably has the same hunger I do. Still, it's a fine program but not quite the same as X-windows which lets you seamlessly run programs that are on other PC's.

The problem with Linux is the same problem BeOS, OS/2, and other non-dominant operating systems have: applications. To the ultra-techie, the programs on Linux are fine, but for the majority of users, there's no alternative to PageMaker, or Corel PhotoPaint, or Corel Draw (the current version), or Office 97. Like it or not, people like these slick, bloated, feature-overkill applications and we're not going to do without them. We'll never use 90% of the features but, doggone it, we want them all there and we want the cute icons.

Linux is also a pain to install for casual users and adding hardware can be difficult. It's getting a lot better but it still has a ways to go.

Its user interface is also lacking. It's not bad but for many people, user interface is the key. For example, anyone using OS/2 today would probably name its user interface as the #1 reason why they're sticking with it.

Hardware support is also problematic. It's not bad, mind you but it's not 100%. When you buy something, odds are that the best-case scenario driver-wise is to scour the Internet for it. Smart Linux users will buy hardware with Linux in mind.

But Microsoft knows how to take advantage of this. You get your PC with Win95 or NT already on it, and that makes it a pretty tough case to convince someone to "upgrade" to Linux. Linux offers superior stability and vastly better performance, especially in multitasking, but to the average user, that's not enough and it's a problem that will get worse over time. You buy NT, it comes with a web server. We got in trouble with some of our users because our web site runs on NT. Why? Because we got a free copy of NT server and it was a 2-minute job to set it up and that meant that we could allow someone nontechnical to do it, leaving our precious developer/technical resources free to do other things. (The main reason though was because we had a PowerPC sitting around and it was either AIX, which we'd have to buy and learn, or NT, which we already had.)

But I think Linux's greatest strength is its ability to bring X-Windows to the masses. If there was a central marketing force for Linux, they could probably convince a lot of schools, a lot of companies, and a lot of government agencies to switch to Linux purely for the reasons I've mentioned. And this is happening to a degree already, just not as quickly or as widespread as it could be otherwise.

Rhapsody/MacOS

If you're not a Macintosh devotee, the Rhapsody/MacOS issue is pretty confusing. It essentially boils down to this: Steve Jobs talked Apple into buying NeXT instead of Be. So now Apple has this wonderful (if slightly long in the tooth) OS called NeXT that has Unix underpinnings on top of the Mach micro-kernel. It also has a well established (if not even more long in the tooth) OS called MacOS.

From a casual user perspective, MacOS is the best OS there is (as long as it comes with the Macintosh hardware). With that said, MacOS is still far behind technologically. I'm no fan of Windows 95 but saying Win95 = MacOS '89 is not only a bit conceited, it's just plain wrong. MacOS 6 (from circa 1989) did not have memory protection, had no real multitasking, no mulithreading, some pretty serious "init" issues, and was kind of ugly by today's standards. MacOS 8 improves much on this but not nearly enough. It's amazing how Apple just plain dropped the ball and allowed Microsoft to catch up.

For me, the strength of the MacOS has always been the vision of turning the PC into an appliance. People don't put a lot of thought into how their microwave oven works, they just know it works. Macintosh really was the computer for "the rest of us" (well, not me per se but for the general consumer). It is the computer that you buy, plug in, and it works like a simple appliance.

As time has gone on, Apple has moved further and further away from that. MacOS 8 is not nearly as simplistic as System 7 was and this is both good and bad. And Rhapsody is... well, it's powerful, but a far cry from the simplicity of the traditional MacOS.

Right now, it seems Apple's plan is to continue along with MacOS and slowly roll out Rhapsody as it matures. It's hard to say how compatible with traditional Macintosh applications Rhapsody will be, or how seamless that compatibility will be but Apple does have the third party support. For graphics designers, casual users, educators, and soon power users, the Macintosh/Rhapsody combo gives a pretty compelling story.

But over the long term, what will Apple be able to bring to the table that you can't already do with Windows? Gag I hate saying that but the Microsoft "rip off ideas, then implement them half-baked" approach to things seems to be working pretty well for them.

And it's hard to really advocate MacOS or even Rhapsody from an objective perspective if you're not already a Mac user. Linux holds out some unique promises, Be is at least different, but Rhapsody/MacOS are simply alternatives that are pretty comparable to Windows 98 and NT. This is good but the question will then just come down to market share, can Apple, armed with an Intel version of their OS, get their OS preloaded on machines? This will be the key.

OS/2

Speaking of comparable alternatives, OS/2 is what happens if you fail to get pre-loads. OS/2's installed base of end users grew rapidly during the time frame when OS/2 was clearly superior. In 1992, 1993 and 1994, OS/2 was unquestionably a better OS. But when Windows 95 came out and when Windows NT improved to 4.0, the debate turned into an argument over technicalities. All the flame wars in the world over shortcuts versus shadows are not going to convince many people to give up all that Win32 software and jump over to OS/2.

Today, OS/2 is a viable alternative to Windows 95/NT but it gets tougher each year to give a good reason to switch when Windows 95 or NT came with your computer. It doesn't have the software support that MacOS has, it doesn't have X-Windows built into it like Linux, and it's not "hot and new" like Be. So OS/2 continues to be used by people who were already using OS/2.

And OS/2 does continue to thrive in corporate environments, largely because it can be run without a GUI and remain a 32-bit multitasking, multithreaded, protected operating system. IBM is trying to position OS/2 as the ultimate JAVA OS, though no one is sure to what end. IBM's strategy for network computing is relatively sound from a certain perspective but end users trying to stretch that strategy to fit their needs is not. There is no compelling reason to write a JAVA game. There is no compelling reason to write a large scale JAVA application. Sure, I could get a JAVA mail reader or news reader but to what end? How many people can't find a better native alternative? Am I going to buy a JAVA office suite when my computer probably came with Microsoft Office? Even if it didn't come bundled with Office 97, would I go with a slower, feature-poorer office suite?

With this in mind, what is IBM hoping to do with OS/2? Their plan is largely to create a plethora of JAVA applets that allow information to be handed around easier. Intranets running JAVA applications that allow clients to do their data entry more easily. Or JAVA applets that allow remote users to easily access needed data. This is all well and good but why OS/2 then? Sure, the benchmarks show it runs JAVA faster, but in reality does anyone notice?

Ironically, IBM has largely given up on the parts of OS/2 that really could have made OS/2 grow in more market segments -- object oriented technology. They could have continued forward with DSOM and integrated OS/2 truly into the Internet. Not in some half baked way like Microsoft's "active desktop" but by making the Workplace Shell truly Internet/intranet aware. They could have also made it so that OS/2 could remotely execute programs a la Linux. Workspace on Demand has some of this but it's not enough, and IBM continues to market it to only certain segments. The problem with OS/2 at IBM is that IBM isn't sure what exactly to do with it.

If you're already an OS/2 user, there's not a lot of reason to move away from it at this point. OS/2 continues to get pretty good hardware support, application support is still there, from Lotus for example, who just released a new version of SmartSuite for OS/2. Where OS/2 does suffer is in grassroots development support. One developer I talked to said, "OS/2 users are takers. They cry 'gimme, gimme, gimme', but never do anything to give back." Upon reflection, this is true of certain parts of the community. Many OS/2 users only try out freeware but they themselves aren't willing to give a stab at trying to contribute anything back to the "community" (i.e. lots of freeware users but few freeware developers). This is in stark contrast to the Linux and BeOS communities that are jumping over themselves to write software for free for the OS. Nowhere is the problem more visible than in the VNC porting. As mentioned earlier, VNC is a free remote control package that runs on several OSes. The source code is freely available and already there's versions for Linux, Mac (I think), Windows 95/NT and even a BeOS port on the way. But where's the OS/2 version?

That's not to say that there's nothing going on in terms of grassroots development. The Win32-OS/2 project is succeeding beyond anyone's expectations -- it's a program in which you simply run a converter on a Win32 executable or DLL and it converts it to an OS/2 EXE or DLL without even a significant performance loss. Truly amazing. When our company came out with a Map Creation utility for our game Entrepreneur, we only had a Win32 version. But an OS/2 user managed to use the Win32 converter on it and turned it into an OS/2 converter. That's amazing. Naturally there's been no mention in the press since the press, which now lamely complains about Microsoft's dominance in the OS market, still shuns any discussion of OS/2.

Despite OS/2's problems, I can't help but wonder exactly why someone would use an OS such as BeOS over OS/2. It has to be a perception issue. In fact, I asked a group of BeOS users this very question and they said that the difference is that they feel like IBM doesn't care about OS/2 and that it's stagnating while BeOS is up-and-coming.

IBM is certainly not the master of end-user perception but in reality, OS/2 continues to get updates on a regular basis. There have been 6 significant updates to OS/2 just in the past year. While many BeOS users may not agree, I just can't see why they don't use OS/2. It's already a powerful multitasking mulithreaded OS with a great user interface, pretty decent software application support, and good device driver support. I think in the end, OS/2's biggest problem is perception and that is what is holding it down.

Windows 95

One can't mention perception affecting reality without talking about Windows 95. Microsoft is the king of making a good first impression. On the surface, Windows 95 has plug and play, its shortcuts allow for an almost object-oriented working of the system, it has a registry for keeping good track of your programs, and it is just plain slick.

I don't want to make it sound like Windows 95 is junk -- it's not. As an engineer, I just hate seeing inferior technology win. Windows 95 isn't bad but it's a far cry from being the best choice out there strictly from a quality standpoint. As you run Windows, you tend to discover that the registry gets into trouble and the system becomes less and less stable. Programs can hang the system, causing you to have to reboot.

But overall, Windows 95 works and does the job adequately and key preloads have ensured that it, and Windows 98, will be the dominant OS. Indeed, the OS Wars could be considered over with all that are left being bandits in the hill sniping at Windows 95 and NT.

Windows NT

Windows 95 may have dealt the deciding blows to the competitive OSes but it's Windows NT that benefits. After its disappointing start with Windows NT 3.1, NT continued to steadily improve. NT 3.5 was quite decent if you could ignore the user interface and NT 4.0 has become the mainstream choice of power users. People who dislike Microsoft will often slam NT for its problems; problems that do exist, but that frankly don't really affect most people. NTFS has problems with fragmenting, for instance. But how much does this affect the average user? Hardly at all. NTFS also has the ability to seamlessly compress directories which is pretty nice. Microsoft, always looking to eliminate competition, has also ensured that it comes bundled with pretty much everything. The microwave oven and stereo that NT 4.0 came with, while now in my kitchen and living room respectively, are arguably meant to be part of the OS and those who disagree are just sorry losers who obviously just envy Microsoft.

But NT disappoints me and here's why: Microsoft has succeeded in ripping off good ideas but they continually implement them half-baked and now, most professional PC users are stuck with a Microsoft solution. But cool features like the ones I mentioned in Linux or in OS/2 are just not there in NT. Microsoft just implements the easy-to-see features. They clone much of OS/2's Desktop for their GUI (sorry Mac users, it was OS/2 that Win95's UI was largely based on, not MacOS -- of course, OS/2's Desktop was derived much from the Mac, but there are a lot of key differences) but Microsoft only implements it halfway and so much of the elegance of OS/2's Workplace Shell is lost in NT.

Also NT tries to claim to be "multiuser". However, without an X-Windows type system integrated into NT, NT is not multiuser in the traditional sense.

NT's multitasking also leaves a lot to be desired. Processor intensive apps, particularly Win16 ones, can really bog down the system's responsiveness unless you manually change the process's priority (and how many people know how to do that?). On OS/2, I used to do a lot of rendering in the background and never even noticed the impact of it. On NT, the system gets quite sluggish and it still takes it just as long to finish the rendering.

But NT is very solid and rarely crashes in its normal use. Given that Windows 98 is going to be the last of the "regular" Windows line, for most people, Windows NT is the future of the PC OS.

Conclusions

I read a recent article in one of the trade magazines where the author felt that now was the time to create an alternative OS to what's out there, that Windows 95 and NT had too many flaws and was ripe for some good competition. The new OS would just need to avoid the "mistakes" IBM, Be, and Apple have made such as lack of apps, bad driver support, and an unclear marketing message.

I couldn't help but think, "Well DUH!" Like those companies weren't aware of those problems. As if some new company could just wave a magic wand and not make these "mistakes". Kind of ironic for a columnist in a weekly trade magazine to complain about lack of choice after they spent years deriding non-Windows OSes for pretty suspect reasons. The lack of foresight by many in the media has lead to an industry where the magazines are now getting thinner and thinner (how thick are the weekly trade magazines these days, for instance?). Those who have spent much of their time advocating AmigaDOS or MacOS or OS/2 or Linux or BeOS can at least see the irony that those same magazines that spent just as much effort trying to ensure that it is a Windows world, sowed their own destruction (or at least their own downsizing).

So the war has pretty much ended, the remnants of the rebel forces have taken to the hills and prepare for the future when the dominant OS is ripe for attack again. And while Windows 95 and NT are far from being the ideal OSes we'd like them to be, they're not too horrible.

But the alternative OS's are so much better now than they used to be that you really don't lose out by trying out Linux or OS/2 or BeOS or MacOS (if you can afford it).

Resources:

(http://www.orl.co.uk/vnc) VNC, a free remote control software product.

(http://www.stardock.com/) Object Desktop, a desktop environment that extends the
features of an OS.

(http://windowmaker.org/) WindowMaker, an enhanced shell used by Linux users.

(http://www.be.com/) BeOS, a new alternative operating system with some unique
design concepts.

(http://www.os2ss.com/win32-os2/) Win32-OS/2, a program that converts Win32 programs to
OS/2 programs.

                         - * -

(Bwardell@stardock.com) Brad Wardell is the founder and President of (http://www.stardock.com/) Stardock Systems, one of the leading developers and publishers of OS/2 business and leisure software.

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

MP3 Authoring in OS/2	- by Lief Clennon

After my review a few months ago of WarpAMP, OS/2's own mp3 player, I was deluged with emails requesting information on how one can create mp3s. It is a simple (although tediously long) process. You need four things: a CD-ROM capable of digital transfer, a utility to do the actual transfers, an mp3 encoder, and a lot of patience. The utilities I mention in this article can be obtained from the links at the bottom of the page.

Digital transfer means that instead of the CD-ROM sending the audio data through the little two-wire cable to the sound card, it sends the pure digital data on the CD through the IDE or SCSI cable. This results in zero quality loss because the data doesn't go through any line-out processing. Most recent CD-ROMs have this feature; 1x through 4x probably won't work, 6x or 8x is a toss-up, 10x or better is nearly guaranteed to be OK.

The best OS/2-native CD ripper (as CD-ROM digital transfer utilities are called), is Alfons. It's missing a few features of DOS/Windows rippers; most notable are batch operations and sector synch, the latter of which helps to reduce errors when reading the CD (which show up as clicks or scratchy sounds in the output file), but for the most part these errors aren't too common.

The only mp3 encoder available for OS/2 is l3enc. It's actually got more features than most DOS or Windows encoders, although it tends to be slower, partly because it uses higher-quality encoding schemes and partly because it uses older methods. l3enc exists for several platforms; the OS/2 version is actually only version 1.0, but it's not missing much in the way of functionality, and the only bug I've found is that WAV file input doesn't work. (Because Alfons can output PCM files, this isn't a problem) Additionally, l3enc requires registration on other platforms, but the OS/2 version comes with the registration code.

Alfons and l3enc are both command-line utilities, so the first step is to open an OS/2 prompt. l3enc requires its registration file (l3encregister.inf) to be in the current directory when it is run, or it will ask you to enter the registration code. For those who like to muck about with background processes, I've discovered that if you "start /c l3enc" it will ask for the registration (just type what's in the l3incregister.inf file), and from then on any session of the program begun with start (but not detach) will not need the code. (It must be storing the code somewhere, but I can't find it. Sort of a Bermuda triangle effect.)

Create a directory to do your work in, and move there. You'll need about 12M of work space for every minute of the song(s) you want to encode: 11M for the raw data, and 1M for the resulting mp3 file. For each track you want to encode, give the command "alfons x: p g #" where x: is the drive letter of your CD-ROM and # is the track number on the CD. The p means to use a PCM output file rather than WAV, which is required for l3enc. The g simply means "get" the track number given as the next argument.

Once you have the track you wish to encode transferred to your hard drive, use "l3enc infile.PCM outfile.mp3" to do the encoding. infile.PCM is the Track#.PCM file that Alfons outputs, while outfile.mp3 is whatever filename you wish to give your mp3. This will cause l3enc to use certain defaults (128kbps encoding rate, stereo, 16bit, 44kHz), all of which are desirable in this case. Should you wish to use different settings, documentation is given in the manual.txt file that comes with the utility.

The actual encoding is the longest part of the process, but once it's done the work is pretty much complete. Delete the PCM files, move the mp3s to wherever you prefer to keep them, and you're done.

                         - * -

L3Enc
by (http://www.iis.fhg.de/audio/) Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft IIS-A
download from the (http://www.os2ss.com/archives/hobbes/os2/apps/mmedia/sound/convert/l3en4os2.zip) OS/2 Supersite (ZIP, 72k)
     Registration: Freeware

Alfons
by (http://www.algonet.se/~mikkje/alfons.html) Mikael Kjellstrom
     download from the (http://www.algonet.se/~mikkje/files/alf096b.zip) Alfons home page (ZIP, 28k)
     Registration: Freeware

(liefc@asis.com) Lief Clennon is a computer hobbyist and Team OS/2 member currently residing in Albuquerque, NM. He can usually be found badgering his friends on IRC.

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

GRADD: Technology of the Week or the Future of OS/2 Video Drivers?	- by Colin Hildinger

Let me start this out by saying this: GRADD is the future of OS/2 display adapter drivers, and every OS/2 user should read this article.  I'm sure some of you are thinking, "OK, whatever, we've heard IBM talk about new technology before, but they always seem to abandon it.  IBM's flushed more good technology down the toilet in the last 5 years than any other company has created in the last 20."  Well, you're right, but this time it will be different.

GRADD is not only a good technology, it's IBM's only hope that there will be display drivers for future versions of OS/2 (Workspace On Demand or whatever new technology of the month they come up with).  In their infinite wisdom in abandoning the individual user, IBM is slowly being abandoned by the hardware vendors they had just convinced to support OS/2.  If the hardware isn't used by a company with 10,000 seats of OS/2 installed, don't look for new device drivers.  There are, of course, exceptions, and I don't mean to sound doom and gloom-ish, but IBM is slowly running people off -- with one exception: IBM has convinced all the major video chip vendors to write or co-write GRADD drivers for OS/2.

The Concept

The idea of GRADD (GRaphics Adapter Device Driver) is to have an object-oriented device driver that supports the functions that video cards use to accelerate video.  GRADD drivers have a common code base and the GRADD itself merely contains code specific to each video chipset.  This allows chip manufacturers like ATI, Trident, Matrox, S3, and Cirrus Logic to write far less code than they did using the traditional "the hardware vendor does it all and tries to meet the spec" method.  It also ensures a level of compatibility across devices, as well as providing a common code base where bugs can be fixed by IBM, the people who actually know the OS.  GRADD also allows IBM to make performance enhancements in the base code that will apply to anyone using GRADD drivers.  Finally, GRADD is extensible, which means that future API sets (perhaps hardware OpenGL?) can be implemented by simply extending the base GRADD code and making small changes to each GRADD.

Each function in GRADD can be implemented strictly through IBM's software routines or through hardware acceleration, so it's at least conceivable that if IBM does things right, any card with 3D acceleration would make some OpenGL gains by making some small additions to their GRADD.  I think this is really killer technology.  If IBM extends GRADD to include OpenGL, an industrious OS/2 programmer could create a GRADD which supported OpenGL for any video card on the market.  This could be a revolution for OS/2 gaming, but I'm not holding my breath.

The History

Most people probably heard of GRADD for the first time when they installed OS/2 4.0 or the Merlin beta for the first time.  There was a VGA option and a VGA GRADD option; there was also an S3 864 GRADD and a GENGRADD driver.  Of course, most people just picked whatever driver was specific to their card and went on, not bothering to look at the GRADD options, some of which were slightly buggy if I recall some of the complaints I heard.  This wasn't really the beginning of GRADD.  GRADD is actually one of the few good things to come out of the now defunct OS/2 for PowerPC project.  GRADD was the display adapter device driver model for OS/2 PPC, and was eventually ported to OS/2 x86.

GRADD finally began to come into its own (in my opinion) with the release of FixPak 5 for OS/2 Warp version 4.0.  FixPak 5 made significant performance improvements to GRADD, especially in the area of OS/2's Java Virtual Machine.  With a GRADD driver IBM claims that Java performance sees a significant enhancement.  With FixPak 5 we also saw a taste of what's to come in the way of GRADD drivers.  We got early drivers -- you have to download the package from IBM's FTP Site ((ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/drivers/video/graddbb.zip) GRADDBB.ZIP -- 1.1meg, requires OS/2 Warp 4 with FP5 installed) -- for ATI Rage II/Mach 64, Chips & Technology 6555X, Matrox Millenium/Mystique, S3 864/TRIO, S3 Virge/Virge VX, and a SVGA GENeric GRADD (GENGRADD) that works with ANY video card that supports VESA in its BIOS.  That means OS/2 now has display adapter support for every video card made in the last several years.  This is an amazing development for OS/2 users and one which should go miles to keeping OS/2 a usable platform for years to come.  While the GENGRADD driver existed in the base release of OS/2 Warp 4.0, it didn't work that well, and neither did GRADD in general.  The code was still fairly buggy and slow.

So Why Am I Not Running GRADD Drivers Already?

Frankly, GRADD is still not perfect.  I've heard of some annoying bugs in some of the GRADD's that don't exist in the standard device drivers, but performance is generally improved.  If you're running VGA mode because you just don't have a video driver for your card, or you want to show OS/2 to a friend and can't get a driver to work with his hardware, make sure and try out the new SVGA GENGRADD.

Performance

After about 10 hours of trying out various GRADD drivers on my ATI Rage II+ card, I'm not convinced that the performance improvement is as dramatic as IBM has claimed.  I was going to create a table with all the data from benchmarking with Sysbench, Benchbeans (Java benchmark), and Caffeinemark 3.0 (another Java benchmark), but frankly, the data wasn't much to see and didn't seem to show any trends.  A rough breakdown shows that the ATI GRADD driver was about 10-20% faster on a few benchmarks when compared to the stock ATI driver, but it was also 10-20% slower on a few.  The GENGRADD driver kept up in Sysbench's DIVE benchmark but couldn't come near matching the performance on the PM benchmarks, which was expected, since the GENGRADD driver doesn't support accelerator chip features.  Some things are noticeably slower to repaint using the GRADD driver, but on my system (Cyrix 6x86MX PR200, ATI Rage II+ 4 meg SGRAM) performance was certainly acceptable.  The one acceleration feature whose absence was most obvious was the hardware cursor.  Without the hardware cursor the cursor flashes when placed over a repainting video image.

Conclusions

GRADD is a truly well-thought-out technology that IBM can't afford to abandon and will not abandon as long as OS/2 is running on something similar to today's PC platform.  GRADD is (to my understanding) a better model than exists for other platforms and gives IBM a true advantage that they should make use of.  A small team of OS/2 device driver developers could create GRADD drivers for every modern video card in a short amount of time.  Perhaps those who have worked on drivers for XFree86/2 will consider taking up the challenge?  To find more information on programming GRADDs, see the (http://service.boulder.ibm.com/ddk/document/gradd/toc.htm) GRADD section of IBM's OS/2 Warp DDK.

Addendum

After this article was written a newer release of the GRADD drivers (v.071) became available from IBM.  This version fixes some of the bugs from the previous release but is still not perfect.  (The link in this article points to the new version.)

I have also been able to confirm that IBM is working on extending GRADD support to include hardware OpenGL.  Sample code should go to developers sometime next quarter and it is conceivable that we will begin to see OpenGL GRADD's for the most common OpenGL accelerators this year.

                         -  *  - 

(http://www.ionet.net/~colin/) Colin Hildinger is an 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.  He maintains (http://www.ionet.net/~colin/games.html) The Ultimate OS/2 Gaming Page and the (http://www.ionet.net/~colin/awe32.html) AWE32 and OS/2 Page in his "spare" time.

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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.

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o  BMT Micro

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.

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March's Top Selling Apps from BMT Micro


This	Last	Product			Developer
Month	Month		
1	3	InJoy			F/X Communications
2	1	ProNews/2		Panacea Software
3	4	PMView			Peter Nielsen
4	2	Dialog Enhancer		Richard Castle
5	5	PMMail			SouthSide Software
6	6	ZOC			EmTec
7	--	FTP Browser		Jason Rushton
8	--	SIO			The Software Division
9	10	HomePage Publisher	JBC
10	--	X-File			CodeSmith Software

                         -  *  - 

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

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March's Top Selling Apps from J3

This	Last	Product			Developer
Month	Month		
1	1	Smartsuite OS/2 Warp 4	Lotus
2	2	TidalWave128 [sound card]	Crystal Computer
3	6	FaxWorks Pro v3 Upgrade	Keller Group
4	--	Seagate Backup Exec	Seagate Software
5	10	ColorWorks V2		SPG
6	--	Hobbes CD		Walnut Creek
7	--	IBM Desktop Antivirus	IBM
8	7	Partition Magic		PowerQuest
9	--	Drive Image		PowerQuest
10	9	In Charge		Spitfire Software
11	5	Getting to Know OS/2 Warp 4 [Book]	
12	8	System Commander		V Communications
13	--	Unite CD-Maker		Cirrus Technology
14	--	BitStream 500 Font CD	BitStream
15	4	LinkWiz			PCX

                         -  *  - 

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

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March's Top Selling Apps from Mensys

This	Last	Product			Developer
Month	Month		
1	4	Partition Magic		PowerQuest
2	5	DriveImage Professional	PowerQuest
3	7	DriveCopy		PowerQuest
4	8	DriveImage		PowerQuest
5	10	Entrepreneur		Stardock Systems
6	--	OS/2 Warp V4 Upgrade	IBM
7	--	Warp Connect No-Windows US	IBM
8	--	Hobbes			Walnut Creek
9	1	Object Desktop		Stardock Systems
10	--	Process Commander		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.

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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.

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Copyright 1998   -   Falcon Networking
ISSN 1203-5696