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July 2000
editor@os2voice.org


June 23

The following is a link to IBM's recent statement for their OS/2 Strategy for 2000 and beyond.

http://isource.ibm.com/cgi-bin/goto?on=naa5sw0633


June 24

A new release of Warpzilla is out, and it's FAAAAAST! Give this one a whirl and be sure to report any bugs you find directly to the Warpzilla team as M17 is due out soon.

See:

http://www.mozilla.org/ports/os2/

for more information.


June 22

I have made some little change to the OS/2 Emulation page:

- I put the file size on every dowload link -on request-

- Change of the OS2world.com logo

-SpiceWare is going to change to his own server soon! Good luck Darrell!

Thanks to everyone for the feedback, I really apreciate it.

The OS/2 Emulation site is at

http://www.os2world.com/emulator/


June 22

Bill Nicholls has written a multi-part report on WarpTech. It can be found at:

http://www.byte.com/column/infielder/BYT20000613S0002

I'd like to refer readers to one particular section:

http://www.byte.com/column/BYT20000613S0006

Nicholls writes generous comments regarding Wise Manager's robust support for Managed Clients, even Win32 clients.


June 21

After publishing StarOffice 5.2, which is not available for OS/2 anymore, Sun Microsystems has made an End-of-life Announcement for StarOffice 5.1 which also applies to StarOffice 5.1 for OS/2.

This is what it says (the page can be found at Sun's web site under http://www2.sun.com:80/products/staroffice/5.2/eol.html

"As of June 20, 2000, Sun announces the end of life of StarOffice 5.1 software. StarOffice 5.1 software will made available for 90 days ending September 20, 2000. Customers have the opportunity to either download StarOffice 5.1 software or order the product kit (available until stock has been depleted).

June 20, 2000 -- Sun support offering will be available for three full years. Customers can be assured of getting high quality technical support until June 20, 2003.

June 21, 2003 to June 20, 2005 -- Support for StarOffice 5.1 software goes on a time and material basis only, after which support will no longer be available from Sun."

So, if there's anyone who has no copy of StarOffice 5.1 for OS/2 yet, you can order the media as long as there are still some available, or download it until September 20.


June 21

I have uploaded dhfilt01.zip to Hobbes. It can be found at:

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/util/misc/dhfilt01.zip

This update adds the filter XFWRD3.EXE to the package.

Have you ever received an email message that has some information worth saving, but has been mangled by mutiple forwarding and various windows based email programs? You could load the message into your favorite editor and manually edit the text, but why bother when you can use one or all of my text filters to fix most problems caused by email programs.

Filters are system utilities that intercept data from the standard input device (STDIN), process it, and send it to the standard output device (STDOUT). Filters can be used with a pipe.

XFWRD.EXE is a simple filter that removes all ">" characters at the start of a line. It only removes the ">" characters at the start of a line and stops when any other character is found.

XFORM.EXE is a simple filter that removes the new line characters from lines that are more than 1 character long. Thus it will turn each paragraph into one long line suitable for importing into a program that provides word wrapping.

XNEWS.EXE is a filter that attempts to remove MIME formatting characters, "smart quotes" and other "smart" formatting characters that are left in text that was created or modified using Microsoft products.

I wrote the programs to use with my Command line Clipboard Access (CCA) utilities which are command line programs (fclip2 and toclip) that provide access to the OS/2 clipboard.

You can find out more about CCA on my web page at:

http://www2.southwind.net/~dwhawk/clipboard.html

You can find a trial version of CCA on my web page at:

http://www2.southwind.net/~dwhawk/share.html

Don Hawkinson , author of CCA, DH-Grep-PM, PMStripper, Pastry Box, and DH_ClipSave/2 http://www2.southwind.net/~dwhawk dwhawk@southwind.net


June 21

Re: the WarpCast announcement on Sun's StarOffice, I sent them an e-mail asking if they could release the source code so that OS/2 users could (potentially) support the program themselves. I received a response from their support group, indicating that Sun does still intend to release the StarOffice source code, although no time frame has been set. Obviously, it has been many, many months since their original announcement that source would be released.

The address to respond to at Sun is "SCSL Customer Service scsl_customer_service@sun.com".

The text of their message is:

"As part of the long-term planning for StarOffice, Sun has assessed platform demand, momentum in the marketplace, the cost of porting to those platforms, as well as the business case for adding or dropping platforms.

Based on this analysis, Sun will no longer release future versions of the StarOffice Suite on OS/2. Version 5.1a will be the last version of StarOffice on OS/2. Sun will provide a range of support and transition assistance to OS/2 customers. StarOffice software will continue to be available on the Solaris operating environment, Linux and Windows 2000/98/95/NT.

Sun will be releasing the StarOffice source code in the future through the Sun Community Source Licensing model. Please check the sun.com/staroffice web page for the latest information. No release date is set yet."


June 21

We have been surprised to learn that OS2 Warp 4 is available in the new monthly edition of Australian Personal Computer Magazine for free! Has IBM finally got the hint?

For those supporting OS2 Open Source this is great news. The only problem is that the Warp 4 distribution on the accompanying CD is the original and therefore installation can be troublesome. This is evidenced on the http://apcmag.com site where an OS2 forum highlights the problem. Such a pity this small issue couldn't have been fixed in the APC distribution.


June 20

I am about to create a tool, kTaskMgr, for displaying information about processes, threads, executable modules, open files, memory map, queues, shared memory*, semaphors*, ... (* = not implemented yet). kTaskMgr is also able kill processes. I've just released a new alpha/preview of it.

One of the new features is information about OS/2 queues.

It's of course available from Hobbes. Currently located in the incoming folder:

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/incoming/ktaskmgr003.zip

But it will probably end up here:

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/util/process/ktaskmgr003.zip

It can also be found at:

ftp://kTaskMgr.sourceforge.net/pub/kTaskMgr/kTaskMgr003.zip


June 20

A new virus definitions signatures file dated June 19th (av30fu.zip) that includes the new "Stage" virus can be find at Symantec:

http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/download.html


June 20

Since months, we're discussing the topic of ATM with Warp. Since IBM Hardware Group doesnt seem to do them, and Fore discontinued their OS/2 support, we looked around for a new solution.

Relying on some infos, we started to talk to another IHV/ISV. They are currently doing a good support for OS/2 on their ISDN-Cards and they have a ATM Card.

I talked to the CEO and he stated, that they would do an OS/2 support, if there's interest in the marketplace and only, if IBM is going with them.

So, if you know customers asking for ATM with OS/2, let me know: Customer name, Number of Cards acceptable price for Card/Driver (remember Fore is at ca $700-800) Support included or sep. Contract (price ?)

Please email information to:

Oliver Mark
o.mark@de.ibm.com
Tech Lead OS/2, IBM Germany


June 19

A refresh of Dialog Enhancer has been made available on the developers site:

http://www-student.lboro.ac.uk/~mcrsc/ostrans.html

after a long period of silence. (University calls...)

This release is a test version compiled with the latest version of the Speedsoft Sibyl compiler, and no functionality has been added. It is simply there to test the new units and to check for incompatibility. This is the first of a few updates as development ramps up again.


June 19

V2GB is a new solution for OS/2 users who have trouble running legacy DOS and Windows program on OS/2 when disks are very large. Problems occur because disks with more than 2GB of free space can be interpreted as disks with negative free space.

V2GB fixes this by limiting the amount of free space returned. No files are created to use up the space; it's just the reporting that is changed.

V2GB.SYS is an OS/2 virtual device driver, so it doesn't occupy any real space in the DOS session.

For more details, and for download:

http://www.tavi.co.uk/os2pages/v2gb.html


June 19

The OS/2 Emulation Site is Up !!!!

http://www.os2world.com/emulator/

OS2World.com is hosting my OS/2 emulation site - Thank you very much KIM!

On this site I store every native OS/2 emulator that I can find on the web. The "OS/2 Emulation Site" has a little review and comments of every emulator. I'm planning to make regular updates on this site to keep including new emulators version and some extra files. My site is also a resting place for every old-discontinued emulator.

I also had upload every file to hobbes so it can be easily accessed by anyone.

For the moment I got 10 console ~arcade Emulators:
MGL SNEs9x
Retroarcade for OS/2
SNES 9X for OS/2
Stella for OS/2
VGB XFree86
VGB for OS/2
Colem/2
Colem XFree86
MAME for OS/2
Master Gear for OS/2

11 computer emulators:
UAE XFree86
UAE for OS/2
Bochs2
fMSX/2
fMSX XFree86
Frotz for OS/2
VICE/2
Vmac for OS/2
X128 Spectrum XFree86
X128 Spectrum
XGS-XFREEOS/2

and 2 in the Other Emulators section:
Copilot/2 - Palm Pilot Emulator for OS/2
HP48 - HP calculator emulator

Also I got an "extra files" section with:
IBM GRADD drivers
SDD SE drivers
Scitech Display Doctor Shareware
IBM joystick Drivers
Enhanced joystick Driver
Enhanced gamedd.sys Driver
links to EMX for OS/2
links to XFree86 for OS/2

The good news are that all the emulators are freeware, the bad news are that not every emulator works or behaves as it should.

Every emulator had its link to the authors web page, except from the discontinued ones or the ones that has no web page.

It is very probably that I'm missing some emulators, so please send any information you have about OS/2 emulators to martiniturbide@email.com, so I can publish it on my web page. It doesn't matter if the emulator is old or its on an early stage, just send me the info.

To every Emulation Porter that give me information, THANK YOU!

To every Emulator that is Discontinued, REST IN PEACE!

To everyone else, VISIT MY WEB SITE!!

bye
Martin
martiniturbide@email.com

-Every Comment is welcome-

http://www.os2world.com/emulator/

There are no ROMs in my web site, so please don't ask for it.


June 18

The Large OS/2 Customer List has been updated.

http://rover.wiesbaden.netsurf.de/~meile/los2cl.html

Thank you for your help to improve the LOS2CL.


June 18

Hethmon Brothers Software is pleased to announce the widespread beta of Hethmon Ftpd 2.0. The beta version is available from:

ftp://w3.hethmon.com/pub/testcase/ftpd-beta38.zip

Anyone interested in the next generation of FTP servers is invited to download and give it a test drive.

For any questions: support@hethmon.com



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