Virtual OS/2 International Consumer Education

September 1998

The News Page

There will be a new version of the Win32-OS/2 converter released in early September. Some of the new features include:

• On-the-fly conversion (the app is automatically converted for you when you load it)
  
• bitmap color fixes
  
• Borland EXE fixes
  
• EA's removed (version checking now imbedded in EXE/DLL)
  
• Significant DirectDraw enhancements (Quake II runs full-speed in a window).
  

For more information see the Win32-OS/2 Project web site:
http://www.os2ss.com/win32-os2/

Multiple Recursive Search and Replace (MRSR) v2.0 has been released, this is a command line program for doing search and replace operations on text files. Rather than being limited to a single file at a time, or a single search and replace at one time, MRSR allows multiple files and a virtually unlimited number of search and replace operations at once. MRSR also does BLOCK searches. MRSR will optionally go through an entire sub-directory tree. MRSR allows updates to Web pages and also source code. Version 2 uses English-like commands rather than the obscure single letter commands of version 1.

For more information and to download a shareware version visit:
http://www.bossi.com/utility/mrsr/mrsr.html

CSD 11 for the Graham Utilities (http://www.warpspeed.com.au/graham.htm) for OS/2 has been released. You can download a copy from:
http://www.warpspeed.com.au/u-warp.htm

IBM has released some international releases of FixPak 7 for OS/2 Warp 4:
French (ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/fixes/v4warp/french/xrfm007/)
Spanish (ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/fixes/v4warp/spanish/xrfm007/)

IBM has released beta 2 of Netscape Communicator for OS/2. It and the new PlugIn Pak can be found at:
http://service5.boulder.ibm.com/pcpd.nsf/ocomm40+home

This updated beta includes many fixes and addresses the Java 1.1.6 incompatibilities reported by the WarpCast subscribers. It also includes fixes for the graphics problems and the color palette.

Thank you for your support! Enjoy the updated beta code and look for Netscape Communicator 4.04 for OS/2 Warp's general availability in 4Q98. You will be able to download the GA level code at no charge from IBM's Software Choice in 4Q98 at:
http://service.boulder.ibm.com/asd-bin/doc/en_us/catalog.htm

August 20, 1998 - Gainesville, FL USA

Falcon Networking announced today the acquisition of various assets from Haligonian Media, including the popular OS/2 e-Zine! electronic magazine. Trevor Smith, the founder of Haligonian Media, announced he will step down as Editor-in-Chief of the magazine. Replacing Smith as Editor-in-Chief will be Chris Wenham, currently the magazine's Senior Editor. Contributing Editor Christopher B. Wright will be promoted to the position of Senior Editor. No other changes in the magazine staff are expected at this time.

"We are excited about what the future holds for OS/2 e-Zine!," said Dirk Terrell, President of Falcon Networking and the administrator of the OS/2 Supersite. "At the same time, we are saddened to see Trevor step down. I have worked with him on the magazine since right after its inception and I know the personal commitment he always made to making OS/2 e-Zine! a polished, professional magazine."

The transition is expected to be a smooth one since all the staff remain committed to producing a top quality publication. "This is a great development for OS/2 e-Zine!," said Smith. "The magazine has developed a loyal following and a reputation for honest and useful journalism among the OS/2 community over the past three years. This transfer will give the magazine the resources it needs to grow and guarantee that the next years will be even better than the previous ones."

The transfer of the magazine is immediate and the staff changes will occur with the September 1 issue.

All business inquiries concerning OS/2 e-Zine! should be directed to Dirk Terrell at admin@os2ss.com or by phone at 800-352-1974 or 352-335-9693 outside the US and Canada.

OS/2 e-Zine! can be found on the world wide web at http://www.os2ezine.com.

CD2MP3 PM 1.0 has been released, this is a WAV and CD to MP3 front end. A lot of things have changed since 0.91. Features include:

• CD Drive Auto-Detect
  
• WAV file Drag and Drop
  
• Custom Encoder and CD Grabber Configuration
  
• Nice and Simple GUI
  
• Super Grab
  
• Play/Stop preview for CD
  
• Statistic Information
  
• Auto deselect/removal
  

You can download a copy from http://www.cam.org/~guardia/cd2mp3pm.html.

In addition a new MPG123.DLL has been releaed for PM123 which fixes some bugs in the player, specifically:

• Implemented workaround for bad GUS driver DART buffer timing (it jumps by 250 ms step once in a while instead of incrementing for each buffer). Makes decoderPlayingSamples() work correctly on GUS.
  
• Finally found the proper buffers to flush. no more first buffer trash kludge and now any snap crackle and pop are REALLY only coming from your sound card alone (check the visual plugins if you don't believe me)
  
• Faster seek by boosting priority (oops, forgot this initially :)
  
• Audio engine now fills empty buffers with 128 value instead of 0 for 8 bit playback (removes the clicks, but it still sounds like crap :).
  

You can also download this update from http://www.cam.org/~guardia/pm123.html.

File Commander v2.00 has been released (as of August 16, 1998). For information and download, visit:
http://www.orfin.com/fc/

New Features of File Commander v2.00 include:

• Editor: Undo function
  
• Editor: Bracket Match
  
• Editor: Indent/Unindent block function using Alt-Left/Right arrows.
  
• Associations for view and edit, allows automatic selection of specialized viewer/editor programs.
  
• For the supported archive types, the Archiver programs and command line options to them are now configurable in the INI file.
  
• Code page translation function in Viewer and Editor. Translates from a given code page to the current display code page.
  
• Panel filter supports boolean expressions instead of old, rather obscure syntax.
  
• Boolean expressions extended to support %size, %date, %age, %attrib operators.
  
• Viewer and Editor can have their TAB width set to any value from 1 to 8.
  
• Label edit using Alt-L on Info panel.
  
• Persistent command history.
  
• Physical free memory on Info panel.
  
• File Find made multithreaded, allowing view/edit/browse during search.
  
• New function: Shift-F5/6. Like F5/F6 but default new name never includes the path of the opposite panel.
  
• Added Ctrl-Shift-\ to set current directory to that of other panel.
  
• Once File Find has completed a search, results may be sorted by pressing Ctrl-[F3..F6]
  
• Win32 only: Pressing ALT with Ctrl F,J,Enter,[,] name/path pasting keys now give Windows short file names.
  
• Win32 only: Added ~ modifier for ! operators to give Windows short file names.
  
• Duplicate elimination in command history, only most recent copy is retained.
  
• Text search in command history window, like F7 in view/edit.
  
• Drop down history list added to key text entry fields, activated by Alt-DownArrow or mouse clickable arrow.
  
• The mass tagging keys (Grey +,-,* etc) will act with the Tag directories option reversed if Shift is also pressed.
  
• Whole word option added to string searches in internal viewer, editor and File Find contents search.
  
• Support for ACE archiver.
  

There are also extensive lists of Minor Enhancements and Bug Fixes.

AWE 0.158 has been released.

AWE 0.158 has improved error handling for PLG's and DEF Management works again. For more info on AWE, the Advanced Web Editor, see:
http://www.yoursite.co.uk/os/2/webwriter/

Also, to answer one question, AWE has no screen shot because it's less than 500k all up.

Also:

PowerDale Launches "MailMe AntiSpam Service BETA".

We are sick of being spammed by email robots who look at web pages for email addresses. So we've launched mailme:, the Antispam mailer from PowerDale IT.

We need Beta Testers for this free service (hey, it's clickware).
http://www.yoursite.co.uk/antispam/

Your information is protected under the UK data protection act, and we hold a bare minimum and use no cookies in that section of our web site.

There is a new BubblePad version (V1.01) avaiable which should fix all known problems. With this version the help always disapears when leaving a button or if the drawers are set to autoclose. Go to the BubblePad page
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Sector/5785/bubblepd.htm

and follow the link to the download page. Read the section 'History' for further information. Hope everything works fine now. If there are problems let me know.

BubblePad is a replacement class for the launchpad of Warp 3/4 which offers you fly over help and a customizable size of the pad.

Corrected Bugs:

• Help windows remain visible under some circumstances. After that no more help was avaiable.
  
• Default directory during installation not always accepted
  
• Corrected minor positioning problem with drawers
  

CUSeeMe (http://inet.uni-c.dk/~deckkh/news.htm) version 1.9b is in the works and will be out sometime soon. The following is a list of changes so far:

• Bug sending video with a high MJPG quality is fixed.
  
• Toolbar in the video and main windows with fly over help text.
  
• MJPG Video 320x240 is now supported. (Receive only)
  
• Some bug fixes with regards to the audio support.
  
• Auto arrange of video windows is now also active when a client disconnects.
  
• When chat is bounced , it will be shown in the chat window.
  

I have created a forum at Dejanews for discussion of CUSeeMe/2. The guys at Hauppauge are taking a lot longer to develop a working device driver for the WinCast TV boards than I expected, so WinCast support in CUSeeMe/2 won't make it to this release. I am sorry about this, but there is nothing I can do about it.

BootOS2 v9.15 has been released. The BOOTOS2 program is a utility that allows you to build a BOOTable OS/2 V2, V3 or V4 system using an existing OS/2 V2, V3 or V4 system. The BOOT system can be installed on either Floppy Disks or a Hard Disk Partition. You can download a copy from:
http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-search?key=btos2915.zip

http://www.ctag.de/projects/jpd/index.html

Version 0.84 [of Java Pilot Desktop] is coming soon!!

New Features in Version 0.84:

• Import of Nokia Communicator 9000 data files fixed
  
• INI-Files are now saved in the user.home path (under OS/2 this is the Java-path)
  
• MemoPad, Conduit, Address, Expense and Mail Conduit (full syncronization)
  
• DateBook Conduit (reading from Pilot only)
  
• OS/2 install.cmd and icons
  
• bug fixes
  

A "preview" of it is available:
ftp://ftp.ctag.de/pub/jpd/jpd0839.zip

Come to http://www.polyex.com for more information.

Hopkins: FBI for OS/2 4.0 is now available!

Help Hopkins battle terrorists!

Drawn by cartoon specialists according to the rule book the images in Hopkins: FBI were scanned and meticulously retouched frame by frame to produce high-quality scenes.

Some features of this game include:

• Hand Drawn Animation - Drawn by cartoon specialists according to the rule book they were scanned and meticulously retouched frame by frame to produce high-quality scenes. Very special care was taken to realise the game's introduction and final scenes.
  
• 3D Scenes - Highly detailed, with very studied camera movements, extremely realistic 3D scenes leading the player by the air and under the sea give him incomparable sensations. Fluid full screen SVGA 3D scenes were realised without any perceptible quality loss by the use of an unique compression algorithm.
  
• Extremely Varied Places - First hand drawn by a famous strip cartoonist, Thierry Sgur, they were scanned then retouched and coloured on computer by an international graphics team. They give to the player an uninterrupted pleasure of discovery, leading him from HOPKIN's apartment to a secret submarine base, going through such different places as the FBI headquarters, the very exotic and mysterious Condor Island, an hidden universe where the dead can talk, and so on...
  
• More Than... - 50 Characters, 100 Places, 400 MB of Cinematic scenes, and 1000 scenery animations.
  

The system requirements of the game are:

• Pentium class machine
  
• OS/2 Warp 4.0 (no fixpacks are required)
  
• 16 MB RAM
  
• 18 MB Hard Drive Space
  
• Display capable of at least 640x480x256colors
  
• DIVE compatible Video card (Most Video cards)
  
• DART compatible Sound Card (Most Sound Cards)
  

Please note: This game should run fine under Warp 3.0, with the hi-res timer and dart installed, but has not been tested on that platform.

HOT! - By popular request - Coming soon - Priority Master II Version 2.4 with dynamic prioritization for OS/2 PM programs. Automatic priority update in the target main window and CTRL+ESC Task List and more! This is scheduled to be released on Sept 1,1998.

You can get a list of the new features here:
http://www.prioritymaster.com/preview.htm

WPTools has been updated to version 2.3 (8/15/98):
http://www.os2ss.com/information/kelder/

WPTOOLS is a collection of OS/2 specific tools. Some tools in the archive are:

CHECKINI - Checks Workplace shell related stuff in the OS2.INI and OS2SYS.INI, mainly intended to keep the INI-Files clean and (relatively small) and thus have the best performance while using the workplace Shell;

WPSBKP - Make a backup of most workplace shell objects in a text file. This text file can be used to restore a customized workplace shell after the desktop has be reinstalled or to port parts to another machine;

WPSREST - Restores a backup made with WPSBKP;

RESETWPS - Resets the worksplace shell without rebooting;

WPTOOLS.DLL - A dynamic link library that, amongst other things, can be used from REXX to query object settings. This DLL is also used by WPSBKP to query object settings. As far as I know this is the only tool in the world to query setupstrings.

New in this release:

CHECKINI slightly modified;
WPTOOLS.DLL slightly modified.

The August 19, 1998 edition of Focus on OS/2 is now online.

Continuing our series on large hard drives, our guest author John Edwards, explains the procedure for installing OS/2 and Windows 95 release C on the same hard drive.

As usual our new edition features a number of new links, including information on a brand-new refresh of Java 1.1.6, a thought-provoking article on how OS/2 users need to find for support from IBM, information on yet another lawsuit for Microsoft, this time over Windows 98, and much more.

Focus on OS/2 may be read at http://os2.miningco.com.

Walter Metcalf
os2.guide@miningco.com

Arcane Technologies are proud to announce the first release of their port of Magician to OS/2 Warp V4. Magician allows developers to write portable, high-performance OpenGL applications using the Java programming language. Magician interfaces directly with existing OpenGL installations to deliver high-performance and hardware-accelerator-aware 3D capabilities to Java. Developers can use many advanced Java features, such as multi-threading, in conjunction with Magician to deploy sophisticated applications and applets with ease. Built-in profiling and tracing support makes debugging and optimizing OpenGL applications simpler than ever.

For more information see http://www.arcana.co.uk/products/magician.

There are new Java 1.1.6 update files at ftp://ftp.hursley.ibm.com/pub/java/fixes/os2/11/116. They are dated Aug 18, 1998.

Here are the APAR's listed since the last update (07/28/98):

Sydney, Australia. (18 Aug, 1998). Fortify for Netscape now supports the recently released preview version of Netscape Communicator on OS/2. This is version 4.0b1 (980731).

This functionality is available immediately, as part of the fn126os2.zip distribution. You can download this from the Fortify web site, at http://www.fortify.net/, or from the Fortify mirror FTP sites (after propogation is complete).

Farrell McKay

Good News! Master of the Empire (MOTE) is complete!

We over the course of 1997 fixed up all of the problems that MOTE had incurred through our development. Some of the changes include: a vastly revamped ai (utterly merciless!), new menu structure, some minor changes to the World Builder (still considered a development tool....), a new diplomacy engine, a new economic system (closed system) and a TON of play changes to make MOTE a better playing game.

The Real World steps in. The problem we have right now, is this; MOTE is a product that can not recoup our investment. We'd really like to release it but, there is not a strong business case to do so. To actually produce CD's manuals, would cost us thousands of dollars more, and I personally cannot see investing any more money into a situation that has so little potential for return. Just monitoring this newsgroup and observing OS/2 sales alone make me very skeptical. Let me explain.

When Jon and I wrote Master of the Empire, it was to be a masterpiece. We believe MOTE succeded on many fronts, but it also failed on some issues. MOTE was designed to be a beer & pretzels type game, but during the development, all issues basically degenerated into a design by committee. You cannot create games this way. If there is not a guiding hand that is not money driven, your game will become something you don't want it to be. MOTE is a case in point. I believe in soliciting input, and ideas but what happened basically caused numerous & at times unbelievably horrible playabilty problems. We spent 2 years programming what we consider the ultimate OS/2 game. Strategically, graphically, & along with addictive nature of MOTE make me think we've succeeded. (At least with the work continued in 1997 on MOTE.)

We've kicked around the ideas of different distribution means, but again it comes down us spending more money on MOTE. MOTE is not dead, but the tombstone has been carved and it's just a matter of time before it finds a grave in the software graveyard. How soon, I really don't know.

Master of the Empire is a game I still play , the randomnly generated worlds are without equal. The new ai makes the game utterly ruthless. Diplomatic treaties are a must for your empire to survive long enough to develop a cohesive base of military operations. For a strategy game, MOTE is definately addicting. Not many game designers/programmers can still play their game after 3.5 years!

So I'm open to suggestions. But also note my time is limited as I am involved with other products.

So let me know what you like and IF we get a substantial response, we may take the time and $ to produce a few copies for resale.

Thanks alot, Michael Ramsey
Programmer Master of the Empire

Contact:
Gwen L. Veneskey, Director
Marketing/Communications
(412)488-9730 glvenes@ibm.net

Friday, August 18, 1998

AVIAR ANNOUNCES the release of OS/2 CMMS software.

Pittsburgh, PA -- Aviar announced today that it has released the Oz. of Prevention System for the OS/2 and WorkSpace on Demand platforms. Oz is the first fully voice-activated and speech-driven CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) available. This new product has all of the capabilities of Aviar's award-winning DOS CMMS, OOPS! The Ounce of Prevention System., which will run under OS/2, but in addition, Aviar has tapped into the wealth of cutting-edge technology available through the OS/2 operating system to make this package "software for the next millenium."

Oz, under development for almost three years, was written in Object REXX, uses DB2 and was designed specifically to utilize OS/2's built-in speech. "Oz. is 'quality software, built with quality tools, for a quality operating system. Businesses of all sizes need software which is reliable, stable, powerful, flexible, convenient and ready for real-life mission-critical application. We believe Oz. fills that need in the CMMS area." says John J. Urbaniak, Ph.D., President and founder of Aviar, Inc. "Since Oz is fully customizable and fully internationalizable, it can be used anywhere maintenance is performed to help companies, large and small, track labor, parts, costs, equipment history, downtime and more."

Oz is featured on Aviar's web page:
http://www.oops-web.com/

and is being sold as a turnkey system directly through Aviar's Sales Department.

Aviar, Inc. was founded in 1984 by Dr. Urbaniak to provide top-quality PC software for commercial and industrial users. Aviar's OOPS! was first released more than 10 years ago and is still in use by companies around the world.

Aviar is an OS/2 shop and development by the company during the past several years has been mainly in the area of "voice-activated, speech-driven" systems. In addition to Oz. they have also developed several other voice-activated systems, including: a database query package, V Trex: Information . . . at your COMMAND!; a drug review and analysis testing package for use by MROs (Medical Review Officers) to track employee drug test recording procedures, and a billing software package for Octel-based voicemail systems. Aviar also published "Object REXX by Example" (331 pages), ISBN Number 0-9652329-0-5, a book on the object-orientd programming language, Object REXX.

We are looking for OS/2 beta testers for NortonAntiVirus. Can you help with this?

Please see our web site at:
http://et.symantec.com/

See the Products section, User Id: OS/2 and Password: IB835 There is a short survey, with 6 questions. If you complete that we will be able to keep your information and sign you up for beta testing probably in October sometime.

Thank you.
Sheelagh

Five new DIVE modules has been uploaded to:
http://www.powerutilities.no

to be used with PowerUtilities Screen Saver. These include fireworks and plasma animation.

PowerUtilities Screen Saver is a screen saver supporting both GPI and DIVE mode.

After the US and the German releases, the seventh FixPak of Warp 4 is now also available in French.

You can download it at:
ftp://service.boulder.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/fixes/v4warp/ french/xrfm007/

In Charge v1.02.44 has been released. You can download it from Spitfire Software's web site:
http://rampages.onramp.net/~landeck/

In Charge! is a full-function personal and small business financial system for OS/2.

An updated version of the FREE config.sys tool configinfo can be downloaded at:
http://www.buntspecht.de/files/cfginfo5.zip

It's the 'old' Configinfo 4.0 with an updated Dat-file that contains all the new information for Warp 4 and Fixes.

There is an fully functional PreRelease of Hermes/2 now available. Hermes/2 is a utility to control US Robotics message modems (plus and pro) under OS/2.

Hermes/2 is only for the US Robotics 56k Message Plus and US Robotics 56k Message Pro Modems. No other modems are supported. The Free Software is needed if you want to control the so called 'selfmode' of these two modems and you don't want (for whatever reasons) the Phone-Tools delivered with these modems. As the software isn't ready, it is only for experienced users, but should be worth a short mail to aglaja@ibm.net to get the software. Hermes/2 is developed by Rossen Assenov with my slight support.

I'm uploading the first public beta of Smart Windows to Hobbes:
http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/incoming/smw080.zip

the definitive path will probably be:
http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/util/wps/smw080.zip

This beta version expires after about one hour. You will have to reboot your machine to re-enable Smart Windows features. A version for registered users will be made available as soon as possible.

This version features:

• shade or bitmap as titlebar background
  
• 3D effect for titlebar text
  
• selectable bitmaps for the window controls (you can change them at run time: no DLL patching required)
  
• selectable position for the window close button (left/default/win95)
  
• titlebar hiding/mouse sensitive pop-up
  
• titlebar context menu
  
• 9.WarpSans font for all dialog windows (8.Helv for warp 3 users)
  
• window rolling
  
• Frame drag
  
• Entry fields automatic text selection (you can choose which mouse event selects the whole entry field content)
  
• Automatic (sliding) focus (works with WinOS2 windows as well)
  
• Mouse pointer hiding
  
• Mouse button double click emulation
  
• Easy-to-use PM installer/uninstaller
  

more features coming soon!

Please report any bugs, problems, wanted features to my email address:
alexcant@tin.it

AWE 0.156 has been updated.

AWE, the Advanced Web Editor, has been updated and now includes a new concept called PLG's (Plugs).

Rather than providing "hard coded" features, AWE now has the ability for anyone to write a small PLG file to provide functionality in the AWE web editor.

Technically, PLG's are Rexx code that is loaded from file, interpreted and run as part of AWE.

AWE 0.157 will also have improved PLG support, DEFinition support, AWE also has programmable keys and a PAR'ts rack of html components and hopefully DDE control of Netscape.

For complete details see:
http://www.yoursite.co.uk/os/2/webwriter/

I've just created a mailing list for users of Stardock's Object Desktop 2.0. The list is intended for the Early Experience testers of the product to discuss features/problems/etc, but is open to everyone who is interested in the product.

People can subscribe by sending an email to od2os2-subscribe@makelist.com. You can also find an archive of all messages sent to the mailing list by going to http://www.findmail.com/list/od2os2/.

Entrepreneur v1.3 is out of beta and available for download. You can get a copy from:
http://www.stardock.com/update/update_ent.html

I wrote an enhancement to the Launchpad of Warp 3 and above. Bubblepad v1.0 gives you flyover help for the buttons and reduces the size of the pad by reordering the buttons. The utility consists of a replacement class and fits seamlessly into the WPS. Full online help is provided. NLS for English and German. The program is released under the GPL, so full source code is included. You need the EMX runtime libs for running the installation program. Find further information:
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Sector/5785/bubblepd.htm

Virtual Publications is pleased to anounce the availability of TarGz-PM for beta testing. The file can be downlaoded from:
http://users.powernet.co.uk/vpub/

in the projects section, though you will need to email me to get a key to unarchive the file....which is in zip format.

TarGz-PM is a front end program for creating and unarchiving tar.zg files.

It is, and I stress, a very early beta. Though I have made it so it works on copies of the file, not the file itself so it should be reasonably safe. This file will not be available from Hobbes (V1.1 will however).

A new revision of the text-editor Kon has been released, and has been uploaded to Hobbes (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu).

Kon has also changed its home page URL. The new URL is:
http://www.bmtmicro.com/kon/

The current version is 1.13 rev. 1066.

Two major fixes are included (These have been available since Rev. 1063 from June):

1. Kon versions between 1058 and 1062 were too generous with it's CPU time, so users with medium to low-end machines (with concurrent tasks running) could have experienced situations where Kon didn't catch up with the keyboard. The new version fixes this problem, and also allows the user to set the priority of Kon.
   
2. When editing text within multi-line comments, Kon could also operate very slow. This was probably most noticeable when editing Java-scripts in an HTML-document.
   

A number of other optimizations and fixes has also been done, mostly to the screen display routines, see Kon read.me.

New features are (Some of these were available in 1063 in June):
----------------------------------------------------------------

• A repeating command or macro halts when a cursor move fails, for example when trying to move past the end of the file.
  
• Possible to assign keyboard shortcuts to keys which are occupied by system accelerators, i.e. Alt-F5-F11, F10..
  
• An option to display the end-of-file visually.
  
• Found words are higlighted.
  
• All buffers are scrolled when scroll lock is active.
  
• All bitmap font sizes are selectable, regardless of screen resolution.
  
• Screen horizontal and vertical scroll units can now be set.
  
• Variable width and outline fonts are now supported.
  
• Drag and drop of fonts and colors can now be done.
  
• Word wrap has been improved some. There is now also a soft-CR mode available which can be useful when editing readme files, mail messages etc.
  
• A stream edit mode has been added.
  
• some more...
  

----

Kon is shareware and the registration fee is US$20. To download and for more information, point your browser to:
http://www.bmtmicro.com/kon/

The new Warpzilla 0.005 is out.

Warpzilla is the working title of the port of Netscape Communicator 5 (Mozilla) to OS/2 Warp. The main Warpzilla page is:
http://thor.cam.ac.uk/~mjf35/warpzilla/

Team OS/2 Italy announces that the new issue of JustWarp!, Italy's most widespread electronic magazine, is now available online at:
http://www.mclink.it/mclink/teamos2it/justwarp/index.htm

or on its mirror at:
http://volftp.tin.it/TEAMOS2/jwarp/justwarp/index.htm

This issue features:

• Aurora and WarpNT FAQ
  
• PMmail
  
• HotCorners
  
• MaxBase
  

...and many others.

Looks like there is another Lexmark printer with OS/2 drivers now. In OS/2's Device Driver Pak Online site:
http://service.software.ibm.com/os2ddpak/html/printers/lexmarki/index.htm

there are now drivers for the Lexmark 3200.

Information regarding this inkjet printer is a little scarce. It's 1200x1200dpi, prints 6pgs black per minute, and has a dual-cartridge system (one black, one color).

Regarding the earlier announcement (http://www.os2ss.com/warpcast/wc1928.html) about a new page with freeware OS/2 utilities in German only, today I made an English version so it should be more useful if you don't understand German.

You can find it at:
http://www1.stuttgart.netsurf.de/~kevers/warp_eng.html

Again, the German version is at:
http://www1.stuttgart.netsurf.de/~kevers/warp.html

In Charge v1.02.43 has been released. You can download it from Spitfire Software's web site:
http://rampages.onramp.net/~landeck/

In Charge! is a full-function personal and small business financial system for OS/2.

A new version of Gismo has been released (version 2.10). Gismo is a tool to help choose colors for HTML pages.

You can download it from:
http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~qw6k-knst/software/software.htm

It is also available from my site (http://users.powernet.co.uk/vpub) in the local Download Directory, where you will also find a a macro to launch Gismo (and kHTepm14.zip) from your epm editor version 6 (with some instructions and warnings in the same dir) along with other epm macros. Note the EpmHtmlBar2.zip is more recent than the version available from Hobbes and includes a Gismo bitmap for your toolbar, with instaructions.

HOUSE/2 (Home Automation & Security for OS/2) has been updated again. Version 1.5 is now available from the Warped Code Cellar at:
http://home.att.net/~ASchw

HOUSE/2 is an OS/2 Warp 3.0 and Warp 4.0 program to control the home automation interface model CM11x/CM12x made by X10.

New with version 1.5 of HOUSE/2 are:

• Support for Two-Way modules, find out the ON/OFF/DIM status of a module by requesting status.
  
• Reports burnt-out bulbs if using LM14A modules.
  
• Thermostat support.
  
• Single page module and macro edit windows.
  
• External module database.
  
• Support for resolutions up to 1280x1024.
  
• Many additional enhancements and suggestions implemented.
  

Visit the URL listed above to get more information on home automation using OS/2.

The new version has been uploaded to the incoming directory of BMT Micro, Hobbes and Compuserve's GO OS2BVEN. It may be a few days until it is moved to the regular locations and available through the links on my homepage.

Although I am not connected in any way to X10, I would like to point out that X10 appears to have perpetual sales on the CM11A starter kits. These systems are great bargains, easy to setup and use and fully supported by OS/2 native software. You can get more information at:
http://www.x10.com/

StarDivision (http://www.stardivision.de/) has announced that StarOffice v5.0 will be available in September, this includes the OS/2 version. For more information you can see the release plan (http://www.stardivision.de/office/news_releaseplan.html).