• Unresolvable problems in creating and killing the WPS


• Lack of information on the side of IBM - I'm waiting now about nine months on documentation about file access control

Just an update regarding the project: Last week the team got WinZip running on OS/2, including standart installation! Opera/2 is doing very well, still some bugs in it but we hope to fix them within the next two month. So thinks are getting bether and bether and a binary release will be ready in the next few weeks!

BLUEPRINT SOFTWARE WORKS, INC. ACQUIRES PMMAIL SOFTWARE FROM SOUTHSOFT, INC. RELEASES NEW VERSIONS FOR ALL PLATFORMS.

New Version of Product Line Available October 15, 1999

Wilmington, NC - October 15, 1999, - Blueprint Software Works, Inc., a newly formed software development and publishing firm, recently acquired the PMMail software package from Southsoft, Inc. Both companies made the
announcement today. An updated version of PMMail, one of the most powerful email clients available, will be released on October 15th, 1999 immediately following this press release distribution. The latest OS/2 version (2.10) is available on Hobbes or at http://www.blueprintsoftwareworks.com

The PMMail product line is one of the most versatile email software packages available. This powerful and flexible email application provides extensive support for emerging Internet standards along with a user-friendly interface.
PMMail is a multi-platform application supporting OS/2 as well as Windows NT/95/98/2000..PMMail offers users a way to manage unlimited email accounts, providing a cost-effective, timesaving communication tool.

'We are excited about the acquisition of the PMMail product line. Southsoft has developed an email application that is in a class by itself,' said Thomas Bradford, President, Blueprint Software Works. 'The PMMail feature set is packed with everything a customer needs to manage email and the interface is displayed in a logical and intuitive manner. The program is designed for easy navigation, setting PMMail apart from other email programs.'

'We created PMMail over four years ago,' said Robert Novitskey, lead developer and President of Southsoft, Inc. 'Yet even today, no product has come close to PMMail's power and feature set.'

'In the past six months it became apparent that Southsoft could no longer provide the level of quality in service, support, breadth of features and timeliness of upgrades that our customers deserve,' said Novitskey. 'As such, we searched far and wide to fine someone to take over the reins and continue in the tradition that we have set forth. We are pleased to have found a partner (in Blueprint Software Works) who shares the same desire to see PMMail continue to grow and astonish customers.'

Blueprint Software Works is a privately held firm located in Wilmington, NC specializing in software development, as well as publishing and marketing services for independent developers. The aquisition and launch of PMMail announces Blueprint Software Works' official entrance into the software development and publishing market. Negotiations with leading developers in the Internet and multimedia market are currently under way as well and Blueprint Software Works will be announcing these agreements as they are finalized."

"The big news for Warpstock 99? We will be releasing TWO new solutions for OS/2 users!

Our newest application should be of interest to personal and business users alike. It is tentatively called 'Data Shield' and provides secure deletion of all sensitive data. It is important to know that merely deleting data does not actually remove the information from your hard drive. It can still be recovered and your sensitive information may be compromised.

Data Shield offers to overwrite selected data before deletion so prying eyes will not see what you don't want
them to see. It offers a choice of overwriting X number of times before deletion or delete to DOD specification. Data Shield will handle all freespace on a drive, a complete drive, TMP & TEMP directories, \DELETE directories, individual files, individual directories, directory trees, as well as cleanup of the Netscape cache and its history trails. Screenshots of Data Shield and some of its skins are available.

As is the norm for most PillarSoft applications, much of
Data Shield's work is point and click, saving you the
drudgery of locating your "TMP" directory or Netscape.hst", for example, manually. As much work as possible is ferreted out by Data Shield automatically when the user asks for it.

Data Shield will be available for $25 for personal use and will be discounted at Warpstock ($20). Site licenses will also be available.

PillarSoft Status Center (PSC) was originally an 'in-house' tool to track dll's loaded for each running process. As needs arose, the application gelled to provide most info pstat gives in an easily browsed format as well as adding a switch list, process killer, swapfile size, free RAM, total available virtual memory, machine uptime, zombie processes, the list goes on... Because of the important utility it has shown here, we are making it available to you. A "squished" screenshot is viewable.

PSC will be priced at a moderate $15 for personal use and we will be offering a discounted $10 price at Warpstock. Site licenses will also be available."

"I talked to some people from StarOffice at Warpstock Europe and they told me, that they have a serious problem with the OS/2 port of it. Until now they used to compile the code with VAcpp 3.65 on OS/2 but now
they use "namespaces" in the code and because VAcpp 4.0 does not support commandline compiling, they can't compile it on OS/2 anymore (the project is simply too big for the VAcpp 4.0 workframe). On Linux they use the Pentium optimized version of the GNU compiler and they
tried the same on OS/2. But unfortunately there is a problem in the OS/2 port:

(Taken from)

'Known bugs:

emxomf now traps (sometimes?) when compiling with -g (debug) switch. This is due to new format of debugging info (DWARF2). I do not know how to fix this. Use A.OUT format (no -Zomf) for debugging and pmgdb.

Solution: This happens because pgcc uses new stabs format (-gstabs+) while emxomf understands only the standard stabs debugging info. I've partialy fixed this by adding a tiny command-line preprocessor to gcc.
It scans argv[] and looks for both -Zomf and -g# where # is a number. If it finds one, it replaces -g# by -gstabs#. This doesn't always help, however.
---'

As you can see this is a limitation in EMX, we now have to find people who are able to fix this (which will not be an easy task I think). We are already in contact with Eberhard Mattes but we need more support. If you think you are able to fix this, please get in contact with
Oliver Braun.

Please JUST reply if you really think you can help StarOffice.

A StarOffice without debug informations can not be tested and if noone can fix this limitation, Sun can not provide a new version for OS/2 ! So you see this is important for the future of StarOffice on OS/2."

Hi! Tired of the comets from Netscape? You can change them! The Throbbers archive is now online.

We have converted the animations of the famous
WebExplorer animations (150+) and are awaiting your
creations. You can find it http://www.os2forum.or.at/TeamOS2/English/Special/Throbbers/
-> comments: 0 [ Version for printing ] [ Send via eMail ]

"In this month's issue you will find:

The Editor of VOICE speaks out: Through the Looking Glass Yet Again
The Revised Young Person's Guide to Hacking the Stardock
bject Desktop 2.0 Windows 95 LNF, 2nd Edition, By: The Rev. Andrew Graham
'Back side of the Moon', By: Timur Kazimirov
One Man And One Step At A Time: Worldwide Communication
At Warp Expo West, By: Peter Skye
Warpstock Europe 99 - A Review, By: Christian Hennecke
Installing Warp on a Toshiba 2545XCDT Laptop, By: Mark Dodel
And of course letters, addendums, Tips and the compiled monthly OS/2 news!"

"Actiontec Electronics is offering internal (PCI) and external 56k modems that support call waiting. These models support DOS, Win 3.1, 95, 98, NT, OS/2 and Linux. Call Waiting Modems let you answer incoming calls while maintaining internet connection to your PC. Th same company also offers an internal PC Card reader with OS/2 drivers."

OS/2

Current status: Progress +2
Latest Update: 05 October

We got the Windows sourcecode from version 4.0 (which is not yet released) and one of the developers, was able to compile it without SSL and mailsupport under OS/2 with Odin32-APIs. The executable is not yet working and there are still bugs in Odin32; this is what we must fix now.

A third developer has been added to the team and we think that the OS/2 version is not that far away! Of course, we cannot say how long it will take until it is working but progress is better than ever before.

Opera/2 is part of Project Magic from Opera Software, who are porting their (10 Mb) web browser from Windows to OS/2, MacOS and other operating systems. For more information about Project Magic, Opera/2 and Opera Software, go to:



Odin32, now under the administration of The OS/2 Netlabs, is a project that aims to convert Win32-apps to native OS/2 code. For more information on Odin32 and The OS/2 Netlabs, go to:

• TeamOS/2 Köln/Bonn, http://www.teamos2kb.de/
  OS/2 Computer Museum; from v1.3 (on a PS/2-565X!), through v2.0, v3.0 connect, v4.0 up to v4.5 (WSeB) all on own hardware has been shown. Additional informationen about Y2K (Millenium Bug) and scanning under OS/2 was shown also.
• OS2.org / Netlabs
  Well, anything can be looked up 'here' of course. Also we presented our admin-tool for the webserver. All about the future of OS2.org and Netlabs will get an extra article.
• Information/Registration (TeamOS/2 Deutschland) http://www.teamos2.de/
  You could find information about the exhibition itself, buy a handout-cdrom (most of the presentations are saved on it). T-Shirts, buttons etc. At the registration desk you could register yourself of course :-) and attended at the raffles on Sat and Sun.
• Coffee bar
  no comment :-)
• EPSON Deutschland http://www.epson.de/
  Presentation of the actual inkjet-printers, scanner, digicam and beamer. All presentated under OS/2 of course. Just they used for now inoffcial drivers. but EPSON Deutschland is very engaged to support all (even actual) products with OS/2 drivers.
• HelpDesk (TeamOS/2 Deutschland)
  At several boxes there were direct help for people. Also they showed just some possibilities on OS/2 like CD burning and XFree86/OS2. The stand was always crowed, so I cannot tell more, if I missed something to report here, please send me an email.
• TeamOS/2 Trier http://www.teamos2.ipcon.de/
  Team Trier finished their Team Trier Collection Vol. 5 just on the last second. But it is BRANDnew now! :). FixPak 12 for v4 and FixPak 42 for v3, Netscape 4.61, XFree86/OS2 3.3.5 and MUCH more on it. Striking fact: the FP and XFree is direct installable from CD! Great job!
• Computer & Literatur http://www.cul.de/
  Especially the book 'Warp Server for e-business' was sold very often for a special price. At some time I thought it was for free, cause anybody carried it :). Oliver Mark also did a very interesting presentation about Aurora - as said, there will be a seperate article about the presentations.
• Mensys http://www.mensys.nl/
  presented a LOT of software for buying, and sold a lot too. Always happy faces there :)
  At least the pre-orders for a possible OS/2 Aurora client were pushed up to 9390! Mensys liked the event very muched and had an overwhelmed response to their expectation.
• Norman Data Defense http://www.norman.de/
  Norman showed an online virus scanner for OS/2. There were free demo versions, many discussion and even anough sale.
• S&T Systemtechnik http://www.s-t.de/
  presented a network capable radio clock with (of course) OS/2 support and had also enough traffic and sales.
• Deckarm & Co. http://www.dco.net/
  DCO showed their actual sales program and LOTS of older software which was sold for crazy prices (LAN Server for v1.3 and later for ONE deutschmark) and even gave away some stuff for free in the end. It was always very funny there :-).
• R.O.M. logicware http://www.rom-logicware.com/
  R.O.M., well, Papyrus should be known by anyone :). The office package and the seperated ones were sold at special offer (Office 222,-DM). Unfortunatly I was not able to ask R.O.M. about their sales but the traffic at their stand could really result in enough sales.
• C.-E.-Fischer http://www.cefischer.de/
  was not able to come to the exhibition, but left some informational papers and some 'OS/2 Only!' at the registration desk. So also no news about Xelia.
• WSoD
  short timed there were some people from IBM USA at our stand and showed Workspace on Demand, this will result in a special report also.

• Resolutions of 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1600x1200
• Support for all color depths
• Refresh rates from 60Hz to 85Hz
• DDC Plug and Play monitor detection
• Full hardware 2D acceleration
• Hardware cursor