Bringing OS/2 vendors to a show like WarpTech takes a bit of research. There isn't any "industry directory" we can check to get their phone numbers and email addresses. Instead, we have to poke around the Internet to find them.

Some are listed on sites like Indelible Blue and BMT. But we've found that there are many OS/2 software providers who simply set up their own web sites and don't use distributors.

The big OS/2 vendors, of course, are easy. Sundial Systems is coming to WarpTech and they're bringing their Warped Jeopardy! show that many of you have never seen. It's a live game show with a panel of experts, a multimedia screen above them and lots of sound effects. Plenty of audience participation and prizes too (probably selected from the Sundial product line of Mesa 2, DBExpert, Junk Spy, Rover Pack, Relish and Clearlook).

It's the little vendors, often just one person, that we really have to work hard to find. Perhaps they have a few small apps that they wrote for their own use and then found that others wanted to use them too. Maybe a college or business project resulted in a product that simply isn't available elsewhere.

Whatever the situation, each vendor wants to know if an exhibitor booth at WarpTech makes sense businesswise. We carefully explain the costs and ask them how many software pieces they must sell so they at least break even. They're usually quite happy with the prospects once they see the answer -- "just a few".

So we hope you'll see some software at WarpTech that's a whole new experience for you. Over the next nine weeks our Vendors page will grow as these software providers sign on. And that's good for you.

If you've been busy yourself writing OS/2 software and want to market it at a three-day show (more chances to sell, hint hint), email our Marilyn Pizzo.
She'll send you all the info you need.

And if you'll be one of our guests at WarpTech, take a look around our web site. We're always adding something new.

See you Friday to Sunday, May 26-28, at WarpTech 2000!

1. Styler/2 is no longer available through BMT Micro. As soon as I find a new distributor I'll let you know.
2. A minor update of Styler/2 (which will extend the trial time of further 60 days) will soon be available on my web pages.
3. Nationalized version of Styler/2 1.6 should be available within a couple of weeks (at the moment: Russian, German, and a better English version)
4. I'm still working on version 2. Unfortunately it will take still some weeks before a first release will be available.

Creating an international OS/2 technical conference is turning out to be a lot of fun. We're getting a chance to meet some of the really great people who use Warp, and every one of them is delighted that WarpTech will be three days long.

WarpTech will include sessions that delve into OS/2's deep technical side. For example, IBM is sending Scott Garfinkle to talk on The OS/2 Programming Model and Problem Determination Tools In OS/2, and IBM's Jeff Kobal will cover the single input queue.

David Azarewicz will speak on Designing A Home Network and Randy George will cover Managing A Server-Based Environment. WarpTech will give you lots of OS/2 networking info and plenty of network tuneup tricks.

Take a look at the WarpTech Travel page to see what air and hotel discounts are available from your home town. Plus, since part of your Memorial Day Weekend will be at WarpTech, turn it into a full vacation in what's called the Valley of the Sun! The special low hotel rate -- almost half the regular rate for the resort -- is available for additional days before and after WarpTech. By the way, if you're really budget conscious Joyce Clarke is our Roommates Coordinator.

See you Friday to Sunday, May 26-28, at WarpTech 2000!

----------------------------
In the following you will read about a project which aims to help people in porting and writing portable software on OS/2.

Current Situation:

While most commercial software development for OS/2 has stopped (except important server-only and large-scale solutions) the "open source" movement currently gains momentum. For most remaining individual OS/2 users and developers it is essential to profit from this momentum in the best possible way.

For many years EMX has been the work horse here: Not only because of its gcc port. Essentially because of its highly portable, largely open standards conformant C Library. This one has proved reliability and excellence. Let us try to extend it slowly, implementing those interfaces _we_ have always been missing without reducing stability, slickness and performance. Like EMX itself it should well serve as an example of good software engineering. In the following we outline an approach which follows a well known theorem from physics: the "least action principle": in our opinion the rather low resource demands makes this project likely to succeed!


The idea:

Our idea focusses on three independent steps:

• Collect already existing ported APIs and subsets and make a quite usable and well documented extension library of it, that can be improved upon and heavily tested, independently from emx.
• Create a Posix-conformant file-system wrapper using a _posixRedirRoot()-function very similar to the existing __XOS2RedirRoot() interface of XFree86 as well as a BSD-Unix-style () mechanism for remapping hardcoded path-names. Other ideas (not necessarily from the authors here) include an "emx.dll" internal database to simulate symlinks and perhaps one should have a look at TVFS here.
• Merge all those efforts into a single distribution that is upwards-compatible to already existing emx-software and that would (eventually) pass all tests for official Posix-conformance. We would not limit the scope to POSIX.1 but include a selection of system calls from The Single Un*x Specifications (Unix 95/98) as well as traditional SYSV and BSD interfaces.

What to do:

As a first step we'd like to know from each other if people want to contribute here and if so what they have to 'offer'. Let us set up a mutual coordination of past individual efforts to merge them to a quite usable single library. Many complicated work has alread been done, namely to support the forthcoming XFree86 4.0. You might already have implemented other complicated and missing api's. Contribute them, please! And feel free to criticise and to stress test what we already can offer.

Then we might have to discuss the license issue: A license more liberal than (L)GPL would be nice, since we don't want to limit usage more than necessary. This does not exclude a non-liability-disclaimer and individual copyright notices. If possible we might agree on a having an unique license for the whole package. At least the small collection we are offering in a package called 'libextensions' (working title) is Public Domain, except some (L?)GPL stuff. This will be removed eventually.

Finally we have to address the topic what to do with our work: as explained it may not simply be added to the public EMX distribution ...


What we have:

We have already collected a few implementations for "frequently missing APIs" upon porting: including math and random number functions, g/sitimer(), dlopen(), etc. To be prepared for possible future enhancements we meanwhile also provide stubs for functions which have no real counterpart on OS/2 yet. This clearly superceeds the approach of #whatunixhas (0) /* and we on OS/2 don't have at all:-( */

An important statement:

Since we marked our code as Public Domain it should be clear that 'we' do not intend to make advertisement with your hard work claiming it would be 'our' effort (only ;-). The goal is only to get EMX or any similar project ready for porting more software out of the box!

Organizational stuff:

We're primarily looking for people which actually will contribute code. Especially since this little project shouldn't go 'fully public' (i.e. upload to a site like Hobbes) unless a certain level of quality and quantity is reached. No, not the full Unix98 API list has to be done before ;-)

Since we've learned from many projects that users (like on xfreeos2@) get upset when too much technical stuff is discussed we have set up a new mailinglist: posix2@borneo.gmd.de is available for discussing this project. Send subscribe requests to majordomo@borneo.gmd.de (they will be forwarded to the list owner for approval)

Thanks and Bye,

--
Arnd Hanses,
Alexander Mai,
Holger Veit
----------------------------

We've been just a little bit busy since our WarpTech announcement a week and a half ago. Vendors, speakers and attendees have all been signing up and, quite frankly, it's been a humbling experience to have so many OS/2 folks planning to show up for WarpTech.

Esther Schindler is taking care of the session planning and Marilyn Pizzo is busily getting in contact with vendors. We want to have more technical content than you've seen at any other OS/2 show and that means Esther and Marilyn have to work, well, "overtime" to bring you some great presentations and some great OS/2 exhibitors.

IBM has agreed to send a large team of OS/2 specialists to speak at WarpTech. Look at our Sessions page and you'll see what I mean -- there's technology in OS/2 that people have asked questions about for years, and now the "inside" guys will be on the outside where you can hear them speak and ask them questions. Some of these specialists have never before spoken at an "outside" OS/2 conference.

We have four people working on the WarpTech web site to keep it up-to-date; make sure you visit it often. WarpTech is three full days, not two or one, and that means you'll have many more sessions to choose from. Take a look right now -- we already have about 30 sessions listed -- and pick out the ones you want to attend.

And take a quick peek at our Registration form so you'll know how little it costs for three big days of OS/2.

See you Friday to Sunday, May 26-28, at WarpTech 2000!

• Module helper functions (EXE and DLL)
• PM control helper functions
• System helper functions
• Error helper functions
• File helper functions
• Date and time related helper functions

• Settings and details manager functions
• Extended Attributes manager functions

• IBM C Set ++ Version 2.1 with nmake support
• IBM VisualAge C++ Version 3.0 with nmake support
• gcc of emx V0.9d with GNU make support

• the IBM Toolkit for either OS/2 WARP 3 or WARP 4
• a HPFS partition for being able to compile the toolkit library, sample programs and online docs.

1. The OS/2 Netlabs homepage
2. The homepage of the "Netlabs Open Source Archive Client".


If you use plain CVS, point your CVSROOT to www.netlabs.org:d:/netlabs.src/wpstk and login as "guest" with password "readonly". The recommended way for CVS beginners is to use the Netlabs Open Source Archive Client though.

Send comments and suggestions to: wpstk@netlabs.org


What's next ?
-------------

As soon as the forthcoming homepage of the Workplace Shell Toolkit is up, a binary distribution will be made available on internet FTP servers (like Hobbes etc). This distribution will already contain the library compiled for all supported compilers and the compiled online help and thus be ready to use.

In addition, we of course search for programmers wanting to share their special WPS code with us, that could be of use for other WPS prgrammers as well. Do you have a particular useful function or a good idea of how to encapsulate a complex task in a really simple set of APIs ? Then don't hesitate to contact us at wpstk@netlabs.org.

The toolkit is for you programmers, and you can help us most to make it the way that you and all of the OS/2 Workplace Shell developers can get the most benefit out of it.

-> comments: 2 [ Version for printing ] [ Send via eMail ]

WebMail/2 is a 'hotmail.com-style' system for OS/2. At the moment it's still in beta and not all the features have been finished.
I need admins to test the beta version and give me feedback to improve it.
WebMail/2 runs along with your existing pop3/smtp server, and it can read the user database of Weasel, IPS and soon Inet.Mail.
Please contact me for further information at: sehh@altered.com