VOICE Home Page: http://www.os2voice.org

September 2001 [Newsletter Index] [Previous Page] [Next Page] editor@os2voice.org

Opensource Mandates

Greetings,

The article below details a trend worldwide of governments passing laws mandating preference be given to free/open source software. This could have very interesting implications for members of the OS/2 community.

Enjoy - Janeira

------
"Governments push open-source software

By Paul Festa
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
August 29, 2001, 4:00 a.m. PT

Governments around the world have found a new rallying cry--"Software libre!"--and Microsoft is working overtime to quell it.

A recent global wave of legislation is compelling government agencies, and in some cases government-owned companies, to use open-source or free software unless proprietary software is the only feasible option."

Full story: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-6996393.html?tag=tp_pr

DSK4PM 4.20 released

DSK4PM is a PM tool for extracting and generating the wellknown *dsk images

http://dvalot.free.fr/emtcopy.htm

ZxMail updated to v1.0.10

Fixed in this release:

if resolv or resolv2 had only one line the module zxserver would crash. thanks to Erik P. Olsen for the help on that one.

If ran into this problem after installing ZxMail we recommend you update to this version. otherwise you can ignore it.

The error reported would be a sys3175 memory overwrite in module ZxServer.dll if it does not ioccur in your system at startup then you can ignore this update.

Zeryx Software
http://www.zeryx.com
info@zeryx.com

new JJSCDROM

Fixed insufficient 'multisession handling control' IOCtl implementation. Now works correctly (I hoped :-)

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/incoming/jjscdrom_20010828.zip

STHMon

A new version of StHWMon is available at:

http://home.t-online.de/home/stefan.milcke/hwmon_en.htm

It has a new feature to cool down an AMD-CPU.

MfG Stefan Milcke

Single-day Warpstock passes available

OS/2 users looking to attend Warpstock 2001 for only one or two days can now take advantage of the option to purchase single-day tickets. This is great news for people who can't attend all three days of the conference.

Single-day tickets are available for any day of the conference. Each day pass costs $40 (U.S.) and is available only at the door. Since the cost for the entire conference is $120 (if paid at the door), you can attend on a day-by-day basis and not waste any money. Of course, you could also pre-register before September 15, and pay only $90 for the entire conference.

More information on registration is available at http://www.warpstock.org/2001/registration/registration.html

The 5th annual Warpstock conference will be held October 6-8, 2001, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and is produced by Warpstock, Inc., a North Carolina non-profit corporation. The Warpstock annual conference is a gathering of OS/2 users, developers, and vendors from around the world for the purpose of education and advocacy. More information is available at the Warpstock 2001 website, http://www.warpstock.org or its mirror site: http://warpstock.os2voice.org.

File names and attributes checker had been updated.

The file tool called "Names" had been updated. This application checks files on HPFS drives. It is possible to change the case of names, revise differences between file and WPS object names and change file attributes.

Current directory: http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/incoming/names-v13.zip

In future: http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/util/disk/names-v13.zip

Warpcalc 1.9 released

The WarpCalc calculator package contains two scientific calculators, one for the command line (CLI) and one for the OS/2 Presentation Manager (GUI). Both versions share the same core capabilities.

A whole calculation can be entered, reviewed and edited at once.
Plenty of standard mathematical functions built-in.
Seamlessly expandable with user defined variables and functions.
Temporary variables can be created on-the-fly using the assignment operator.
User configurable result formatting (e.g. engineering notation) and precision (upto 15 significant digits).

http://www.visdom.nu/software/warpcalc/index.html

Astrolog 1.0 beta released

Astrolog is a classic when it comes to astrology software. Not only 100 percent freeware, but also one of the most complete and flexible astrological calculation programs ever created!

Note that the beta download below is executable only. Please do not download this version unless you intend to give feedback in one form or another.

http://www.visdom.nu/software/astrolog/index.html

DN/2 beta 1 released

Another free VIO File Commander DN/2, next to XCom/2 and Connect/2, from Russia sees the beta light whilst the well-known (shareware)FC 2.20 rests since more than one year in alpha stage

http://ecomstation.ru/dn2/

BTW. like X-Com/2, DN/2 has a Windows version too

Tonigy v1.4 has been released.

Tonigy v1.4 has been released. Tonigy allows to access tracks of Audio, Video and Data CD as ordinary files. With Tonigy you can work with files of CD-I disks easily. In addition, new Tonigy v1.4 represents the boot image of an ISO track as a separate file.

http://www.tonigy.com

From: Deffie Group tonigy@defgroup.com

JSCDROM.DMD updated

JJSCDROM.dmd is a modified version of OS/2 CD-ROM / CD-RW / DVDs device manager driver (OS2CDROM.DMD), based on the latest OS/2 DDK on-line source code.

Takayuki 'January June' Suwa has updated JJSCDROM.DMD so it can be used together with UDF.IFS and CD-RW Writers. Hopefully some more writers will work than with the original os2cdrom.dmd.

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-search?sh=1&button=Search&key=jjscdrom_20010827.zip&stype=all&sort=date&dir=%2F

Here a small part of the readme (part History).

build JJ20010825 - August 25th,2001
1.Rebuilt. Now based on DDK_000821 source, thus CD-RW / DVD writing and formatting, and USB connection support are also included.
2.Added NEC-46x multisessioning method enforcing feature
3.Included GNU-diff'ed informations files from the original DDK on-line source code.
4.Included symbol informations file for debugging. build JJ20010827 - August 27th,2001

1.Added new 'multisession handling control' IOCtl, category IOCTL_CDROMDISK (0x80) function CDROMDISK_MS_CTRL (0x4a).
2.Added bit 28-29 to IOCTL_CDROMDISK - CDROMDISK_DEVICESTATUS device status.
3.Added new bit FEATURE_MSCTRL_SUPPORT (0x00008000) to feature IOCtl category IOCTL_CDROMDISK2 (0x82) function CDROMDISK2_FEATURES (0x63).
4.Included lxLite'd version.

New game for OS/2 ~ecomstation

I have just released the game Blocks in an early beta version.

Blocks is a strategy game, with some elements of tetris (i.e. falling blocks).

As this is an early beta release, I would like your input on the gameplay and functionality of the program.

You can get the latest version at :

http://inet.uni2.dk/~kimfoder/blocks/blocks.htm

Kim Foder

kimfoder@inet.uni2.dk
kim@foder.dk
kif@crosswinds.net

IBM's OS/2 Gambit

A Special Report has been posted at OS/2 Headquarters http://www.os2hq.com/ reviewing IBM's long-shot gambit to replace Wintel with PowerPC running OS/2 -- and how the failure of the PowerPC version of OS/2 led to IBM's current internal division over OS/2's future.

FTE

New FTE build 2001-08-19

FTE is a free (licensed under the GNU GPL) text editor for developers. It is really powerful, yet very easy and intuitive to use.

Ports that can be compiled from the current source tree include OS/2, Win32 console, DOS, Linux console and an X port for many UNIX'es, including Linux, AIX, Solaris and Cygwin. An incomplete UNIX terminal port (using s-lang) is also available.

Download: http://fte.sourceforge.net/

There are .exe only! You'll need a complete packeage from hobbes http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-search?key=fte if you don't have FTE up and running.

WarpIN and XWorkplace have both been updated to V0.9.14.

1. WarpIN V0.9.14 has been released.

WarpIN is intended to become the new universal OS/2 installer. It is becoming more and more popular among OS/2 developers because of its flexibility and ease of use. It has full system configuration (CONFIG.SYS, WPS classes, WPS objects) and can fully undo all the changes to your system again.

V0.9.14 has more fixes and introduces self-installing executables support to finally solve the download problems many people have been having.

2. XWorkplace V0.9.14 is out also.

XWorkplace is the most feature-rich freeware Workplace Shell enhancer on the planet, and even better, it is OpenSource. XWorkplace is the successor to my popular XFolder utility and has become a Netlabs project.

For details, please refer to the download address below.

V0.9.14 again fixes quite a number of bugs. In addition, some new features were added.

Note: To install XWorkplace V0.9.14, you also need WarpIN V0.9.14 or higher, since XWorkplace now comes as a self-installing executable.

To get the new WarpIN and XWorkplace, please go to:

http://www.xworkplace.org

WarpIN and XWorkplace are Netlabs projects, released under the GNU General Public Licence. The source code is available on the Netlabs CVS server. See http://www.netlabs.org/nosa/ and the above address for details.

We have created four mailing lists at groups.yahoo.com:

-- warpin-user
-- warpin-dev
-- xworkplace-user
-- xworkplace-dev

for WarpIn and XWorkplace users and developers, respectively.

We are grateful for feedback on these mailing lists.

Have fun!

Ulrich Moeller