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GhostView, the front end needed for viewing and printing Postscript and PDF-Files with Ghostscript 5.99, has been updated to 2.74 Beta:

ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/ghostgum/beta/

The Keller Group has updates for all its products to ver. 3.2. Also, there is a new Faxworks Light 3.2 for free download and PMfax 4.0 seems to be available soon. See:

http://www.kellergroup.com/

Some of you might remember the a native paint program for OS/2 called SXPaint 2 by Modular Dreams. It had potential but was very sluggish.

Modular Dreams is now working on the Marauder 3 project, which includes SX Paint IV. Best of all, it is going to be a multiplatform program, including Java and OS/2. You can check their web page at:

http://www.modulardreams.com

IBM has a new Epson printer driver out (3.6 MB in size) supporting some of the newer or more recent models:

Stylus Color 640, 740, 900
Photo 750, 1200

ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/os2ddpak/

file: EP2EN.ZIP (09/29/99)

IceCQ demo version 2.0.01a is released and available from:

IceCQ home page:

http://www.os2.ru/projects/icecq/index.en.shtml

Hobbes incoming:

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/incoming/icecq_201a.zip

Eventually it should be at:

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/apps/internet/chat/icecq_201a.zip

IceCQ is a nice ICQ client clone (not freeware). It's OS/2 native, small, and has a PM interface. The demo version have some limitations.

Currently the following basic functions have been supported:

New user registration;
Flashing icons;
Messages send/receipt;
URLs send/receipt;
Contacts (from Contacts list) send/receipt;
"You are added" message send/receipt;
User authorization send/receipt;
User authorization ask (Auth. Request) send/receipt;
Authorization refuse send/receipt;
WWPager messages receipt;
E-Mail Express message receipt;
User search by name, surname, nickname, UIN or E-mail
User information view;
Personal information changes;
Password and authorization status changes;
Invisible / visible list support;

Service functions:

Messages, information, etc. recoding (Cyrillic codepages support);
Multiuser support, personal setting for every user;
Message history with text-mode logs save (optionally);
Preferences notebook;
POP3 Email box check, Email client start at new message receipt;
Sound schemes (separate sound for every event);
Incoming messages indication in contacts list (previously they just popped up)

Sorry for so short english documentation in this release.

In Styler/2 version 1.2 after startup, the program enhancements were applied even to the programs listed in the exceptions pages.

To fix this you can download smw122.zip (50 KB) from:

* the incoming directory

ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/incoming/smw122.zip

* or later the new directory of hobbes

ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/new/smw122.zip

* or from my web site at ghostbbs

ftp://ftp.ghostbbs.cx/pub/os2/os2team/alcant/smw122.zip

* or at tin.it

http://space.tin.it/scienza/acantato/files/smw122.zip

Styler/2 is an user interface enhancer for OS/2 warp 3 and 4. Both the aesthetics and the behavior of various OS/2 Presentation manager windows and controls can be easily modified to meet your needs. You will be able to use bitmaps or shades as titlebar backgrounds, choose any bitmap (of appropriate size) for window buttons and force all dialog windows to use your favorite font.

http://acsoft.ghostbbs.cx

http://space.tin.it/scienza/acantato

A number of people have reported that Windows 2000 release candidate 3, as well as Windows 2000 have a problem that they destroy the boot manager partition on each boot such that boot manager is unable to start afterwards. Since boot manager can't boot, the system is unbootable, you can't even start Windows 2000.

This is not the same as the previous known problem that the Windows install would disable Boot Manager by marking its own partition active. With this new problem, after each boot and shutdown of Windows 2000 you have to boot from OS/2 floppies, delete the boot manager partition, reinstall boot manager, and add all your operating system choices back in.

Having helped someone with this problem, and done extensive testing, it appears that this is a problem with the checkdisk routine that Windows 2000 runs at startup, and no matter whether you do or don't do the repairs it recommends, it wipes out Boot Manager.

So please, take caution installing Windows 2000 on an OS/2 system with Boot Manager, make SURE you have a set of bootable floppies that work.
January 14

This week's edition of Focus on OS/2 is now online! This week we are continuing our series on:

SETTING UP A SOHO PEER NETWORK - Installation and Configuration of TCP/IP Services

Setting up TCP/IP for multiple computers can be tricky. See how to do it right. Read or download the feature at:

http://os2.about.com/library/weekly/aa010500a.htm

In addition to dozens of great features, Focus on OS/2 currently contains 1112 links. All this material can be found at:

http://os2.about.com

We have made a few changes at PillarSoft and have updated a few programs. Here is the skinny...

1) After the addition of the code for the PillarSoft Suite key we have had to update SFX to fix its registration awareness. In the last build, the setup tool was not properly relaying registration information to the installer.

2) The Status Center (PSC) was updated to allow for some "Swappath" irregularities. The "irregularities" may be rare but are possibilities nonetheless that are allowed for now and are either taken care of internally or a graceful solution is employed.

3) We have also added a help file for WarPaint which previously had none.

Of course this means that the Pillarsoft Suite has been updated with all the changes as well. We won't go into a sales pitch this time (does that make this a bad press release?) but invite you to visit our web site for more information, screenshots and fully functional copies of most of our software. It's all available at:

http://www.pillarsoft.net/

I am proud to announce that the Preview Edition of MIDI Station Sequencer 2.0 is now available!! A lot of work has been put into this release including:

1) A brand new audio engine that allows for direct-to-hard-disk recording and playback

2) Full audio editing capabilities

3) Complete audio sequencing with full integration with MIDI sequencing

There have been a whole host of other improvements and performance enhancements that are too numerous to list here.

For those of you who don't know what MIDI Station Sequencer is -- it's the most advanced MIDI/Audio MIDI sequencer available for the OS/2 platform!!

You can download the latest version at:

http://www.dinosoft.it/~midistation/index.html

I look forward to hearing your feedback and comments.

Christopher Hodges

Author of MIDI Station Sequencer