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Good news, bad news

An editorial view from Christian Hennecke, Editor in Chief of the VOICE Newsletter.

March brought both good and bad news for VOICE, and it should not go unnoticed.

Our new admin, Ken Kirchner, has been a busy bee. The latest news items from the VOICE News mailing list are now available via the VOICE home page, too. Furthermore, there now is a web form for you to submit news more easily.

Over the years, people have repeatedly asked us to implement a search facility for the Newsletter. The master index offered a Java applet, but it was dead slow and not very good. Experiments with a REXX-powered search machine called Search Maestro failed. Well, again it is Ken to the rescue! Our new search page allows you to execute a full-text search on the complete VOICE archive. In this context, VOICE archive means the VOICE Newsletter feature articles, the OS/2 tips, news announcements from the VOICE News mailing list, and even the back archive of the old WarpCast news service. Each part of the archive can be included or excluded at your whim.

Where there is light, there is shade. This is also that time of the year where I again ask for help with the creation of the Newsletter, mostly regarding proof-reading and translation. (But if you have great ideas for a re-design of the Newsletter, you are welcome, too.) For some persons on the team, the last months brought changes in their work schedule, resulting in less spare-time for the Newsletter. This also includes myself. With the additional work caused by handling both English and German issues, there is now little time for me to actually work on translations. So, if you have profound knowledge of English or German spelling and grammar, or you are capable of translating from English to German or vice versa, please consider joining the team.

Finally, you may have read about our plans and investigations regarding possible Spanish and Russian editions of the Newsletter. We had an interesting offer for a Spanish version and judging from what our contact reported, Spanish users were quite enthusiastic. But alas, we haven't heard anything from that project since January. A few weeks ago, VOICE President Walter Metcalf posted a request at the ecomstation.ru site to find out, if enough people are interested in doing a Russian version. I have only heard of two replies so far. So much for our attempts at breaking the language barriers.
Well, as the saying goes, "postponed is not abandoned". If you are interested in filling the gap, please contact us.

We are always interested in your thoughts and views on subjects related to OS/2, and would like to see opinion/editorial pieces as well as hardware/software reviews and HowTo articles. If you have an idea for an article, why not write one. It's one of the best ways, short of programming native OS/2 applications, that you can help the OS/2 Community. And anyone can do it. Few of our writers are professionals. They are just OS/2 users trying to help other OS/2 users. Please send me your ideas or better yet a draft of an article to editor@os2voice.org. Please note our guidelines for submissions to the VOICE Newsletter. There you will find suggestions for topics, hints on content, structure and formatting, as well as the legal stuff.

VOICE Online Update: This month the general member meetings are scheduled on Saturdays April 3 and 17 at 3PM EDT (20:00 GMT). Everyone interested in OS/2 or eComStation is invited to attend either or both of these sessions in #VOICE on the Webbnet IRC network. For more information on attending online VOICE IRC meetings please see the VOICE Meeting Information page - http://www.os2voice.org/meetinginfo.html.

If you have an idea for a Speakup event, please submit it to liaison@os2voice.org, and we will try to schedule something. As always, please be sure to check out the updated VOICE Future events Calendar in this newsletter or on the VOICE website at http://www.os2voice.org/calendar.html for more details on future VOICE events.

This month Thomas Klein returns with part twelve of his series How I learned to stop worrying and love REXX. Thomas concludes the foray into REXX basics.

We continue with our article series about using MySQL. Wolfgang Draxler shows that it doesn't always have to be PHP and that REXX gets along with this database quite fine. Read more in In close collaboration: MySQL and OS/2. Part two deals with console and SQL commands.

Digital radio hasn't been used in broad context so far, despite using a relatively mature technology. But there are efforts underway that are going to make it more wide-spread. If you are interested in archiving such broadcasts, have a look at Per Johansson's article Digital radio recordings.

Many XFree86/OS2 users need it to run ported graphics software like The GIMP, or GRACE. However, XFree86/OS2 only comes with a limited set of standard fonts, not all of which are suitable for graphics design, and the task of installing new fonts can be confusing for the end-user. In Installing fonts for XFree86/OS2 version 4 Christian Hennecke tells you how to do it step by step.

Hardware routers and print servers have become very popular in the SOHO environment. However, there are situations where a different approach is required. Frank Wochatz looks into using a Barebone PC as router, print and file server.

Finally, we have our OS/2 Tips and Letters, Addenda, Errata pages. If you have any OS/2 or eCS tips you've uncovered, please send them to tips@os2voice.org. If you have any comments or suggestions about the newsletter or articles in it, please send them to editor@os2voice.org.

Upcoming articles include more in the series on DrDialog by Thomas Klein, and on MySQL and OS/2 by Wolfgang Draxler, as well as the last part of Walter Metcalf's series on remote printing and an in-depth article on home networking by Chris Clayton with some very interesting bits.

That's it for this month.

Christian Hennecke, Mark Dodel, Marckus Kraft and Jason R. Stefanovich
VOICE Newsletter editors

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