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Newsbeat v1.0 Released.
Newsbeat v1.0 has been released today (July 1st). it can be obtained at hobbes.nmsu.edu or:
http://www.cyberbeach.net/~minogue/newsbeat.html
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MD+F SX Paint Released.
July 2, 1997 - Modular Dreams Incorporated today announces the release of the MD+F SX Paint raster-based painting, editing, and image processing tool for IBM OS/2 Warp.
Features of SX Paint include:
Painting and Tools
Paint in 8, 24, or 48 bit using a variety of tools. Paintings support
opaque, fixed transparency, or paint thru alpha modes. Tools provided by
SX Paint are: Line, Rectangle, Circle, Ellipse, Pie, Chord, Arc, true-Star,
Polygon, true-Polygon, and Text. SX Paint tools can draw as solid, a
variety of styles (spray paint, airbrush, chalk, glass, ...) or you can
paint using image processing filters.
Image Processing Filters
SX Paint provides the largest collection of image filtering and
processing modules available on a OS/2 Warp based program.
Image Linking and Layers
Link two or more images through SX's image processing filters and have
your changes in the original be automatically carried to the resulting
image(s) or work on different layers of your image on different windows.
The power provided by combining layering and image linking is unbelievable.
Alpha Channels
Full Alpha support for merging, painting, or layering of images. Image
Alphas can be 8 or 16 bit deep and can be stored separately for formats
not supporting them.
Selection tools
Selecting using the standard rubber band or a combination of drawing
tools and magic wands.
Masking
When you define a mask, all operations are performed through it.
Viewing
Any number of views maybe open on the same image and each view of an image
can be at its own zoom level.
Multitasking
SX Paint is a fully multitasking, multi-threaded, SMP multi-processor enabled
application. All aspects of SX's tasking, ranging from job priorities to
slicing of jobs per CPU can be customized. (Limited due to WebAK
requirements)
Undo
Any user-specified levels of undos are supported. Undo's memory usage can
be custom limited by the number of components, total memory used, or both.
You can also reduce Undo's memory usage by using background Undo
compression if you wish.
File Formats
Import/Export modules currently shipping with SX Paint include: BMP, CE,
DEGAS, FITS, GEO, GIF, IFF/ILBM, Iris RGB, JPEG, Lossless JPEG, MTV,
NEO, PBM/PPM, PCX, PM, PNG, RLE, SUN Raster, Targa, TIFF, TINY,
XBM, XPM, XWD. File exports support the more popular formats such as
GIF, JPEG (including 36bit JPEG, Progressive, and Lossless), and PNG.
Browsing
Browse contents of directories in SX's icon view browsers. SX's browsers,
Editor windows and most other tools provide full drag and drop capability.
Originally released on Sept 18, 1996 as a "proof of technology demo", the SX Paint program has been left untouched for almost nine months but due to recent changes in the OS/2 software market, it is Modular Dreams Inc's intention to bring this program to market and work aggressively to implement any useful features not already available in it.
MD+F SX Paint now ships free with every copy of the newly updated MD+F WebAK 1.1. In addition to the above features, this special version of SX contains the WebAK GIF Animator, Imagemap Writer, Image Tiler, Download Frame Tester, Pattern Generator, C++ Scripting language as well as the Collapse and Resurrect features built into it.
You can get current information about the MD+F WebAK and SX Paint from
Modular Dreams at their website located at http://www.modulardreams.com.
The website also contains usage information and screenshots of the
product. To purchase MD+F WebAK, contact your favorite OS/2 dealer.
The MSRP for MD+F WebAK for OS/2 Warp remains at $69.99. This limited
time offer is also available to current owners of WebAK.
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CPU monitor v1.1 Available.
CPU monitor 1.1 is now available on ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu where I have posted it to /pub/incoming with its final destination being /pub/os2/util/system. The filename is CPUMON11.ZIP.
This is a CPU monitor utility that uses an API call only available in Warp 4 and Warp Server Advanced SMP and Warp 3 plus fixpack 29 or higher. It will not run on versions of OS/2 prior to Warp 3 with fixpack 29 applied.
It does not use an IDLE time thread to soak up all unused CPU. This means it will not interfere with other applications. Coexists happily with the Warp Center CPU monitor and allows both to report accurate results.
Supports up to 16 CPUs.
Configure update interval from 1 to 30 seconds and CPU graphs from a choice of 15 colours.
Added in this release:
The ability to remove the title and menu bar.
Click mouse button 2 on the window to get a popup menu.
The ability to change the background and graph axis colours.
A numeric display in the middle of the X axis scale that tells the current percentage used of each CPU.
A running average window. This can be configured to appear only when the mouse
is over the main window or can be permanently displayed.
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TrueSpectra Releases New Version of Best-Selling Photo>Graphics for OS/2.
Toronto, Canada - TrueSpectra Inc. today announced an enhanced version of their best-selling Photo>Graphics for OS/2, a highly advanced and innovative graphics creation and editing application. The release of Photo>Graphics PRO for OS/2 V2.0 features many important new features, using an innovative object based design for advanced integration of photographic images, user draw and text layout.
Following on the successes of the critically acclaimed Photo>Graphics for OS/2, Photo>Graphics PRO V2.0 builds upon the original creative design with extensive support for additional graphic file formats, TWAIN for OS/2 scanner device drivers and optimized Postscript printing. Included are new features for automation via the OS/2 REXX language, new drawing tools, additional image effects, and even greater support for creation of Web based graphics. The package also contains a royalty-free Image and Clipart library and a 5-user license copy of the product built using IBM's OpenDoc component technology.
Since the original version release in mid-1996, Photo>Graphics has been a Top 10 selling application with exceptional customer reviews extolling the simplicity with which professional quality graphics are created. The release of PRO has generated tremendous amounts of excitement, with orders already pouring in.
Photo>Graphics PRO is built upon TrueSpectra's patent-pending ColorWave Graphics Engine which integrates resolution independent graphic objects with a highly efficient, real-time rendering engine. The result is the ability to create fully scalable professional graphics on existing hardware. Versions of the ColorWave engine and the Photo>Graphics application are preparing for release on other platforms including Windows 95 and Windows NT, Macintosh, and multiple UNIX variants.
Photo>Graphics PRO v2.0 requires a PC running OS/2 Warp 3.0 or later with a 486/66MHz or higher processor, 8MB RAM, and at least 256 color video support (64,000 colors or higher is recommended).
Photo>Graphics PRO v2.0 has a suggested retail price of US $249.95, and is available through retail channels in North America, Europe and Australia. Registered owners of previous Photo>Graphics versions can upgrade for $99.95 until August 31st, 1997.
TrueSpectra can be contacted for orders and product information at 4950 Yonge Street, Suite 802, North York, Ontario, Canada, M2N 6K1; 416-224-0076, fax 416-224-0309, and via the Internet sales@truespectra.com, or http://www.truespectra.com.
A rapidly growing company, TrueSpectra Inc. was founded in 1992 to develop
graphics software and tools based upon the ColorWave Graphics Engine design.
Doubling in size twice since December 1996, TrueSpectra continues to develop
graphics tools around ColorWave technology and the evolving graphic-centric
world of the Internet.
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Home Automation System/2 v1.0 Now Available.
Version 1.0 of the Home Automation System/2 is now available for download from HOBBES in ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/apps/misc/home2.zip
Home/2 is a PM based application you can use to set up an X10 CP290 Home Control Interface Unit. Dialogs for direct control of lights, setting event timers, query events, and setting base codes are easy to understand and use. 128 timer events can be set or cleared. A base house code may be set in the control unit itself so the 8 rocker switches can be used directly. You can save your events to a file and later load them into the CP290 Control Interface.
The CP290 Home Control Interface Unit is an X10 based timer unit that can be used to turn lights, appliances, and other devices on and off. This can be used for home security, or just to have a light on when you come home late at night.
Please feel free to try it out and/or pass it along to friends interested in
home automation or security. You do not need an X10 CP290 unit connected to
go through the various dialogs. Feel free to send me any comments and/or
suggestions about the Home/2 program.
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ONG SoftWare is moving to a new host to offer our customers better service. The new address is: http://www.ongsw.com
our new e-mail addresses are as follows:
Information: info@ongsw.com
These changes are effective immediately, so please make the
changes you need to. Thank you and we are sorry for any
inconvenience this may of caused anyone.
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File Hound for OS/2 Released.
I am pleased to announce the availability of the first public beta of File Hound for OS/2. What is it? File Hound is a document indexing and retrieval system capable of rapidly searching hundreds or thousands of documents using various search criteria. Unlike the "Seek and Scan" and "Find" applets included with the operating system, File Hound builds an index of significant terms in documents, allowing it to scan thousands of documents within a couple seconds. And the index overhead is only 5% to 8% of the input documents!
File Hound has user-friendly interfaces for indexing, searching, and viewing search results. It also has notebook-style configuration interface for dozens of customizations and server management. It is multithreaded and thread-safe, so you can search and update the index simultaneously.
File Hound is designed to operate across a network, allowing multiple clients to access a server at the same time, but it works just as easily on a stand-alone computer.
Some of the more enticing features are:
* Search documents for words, exact strings, patterns, or
proximity between words.
* Restrict searches to groups of documents.
* File filters display popular document types.
* Launch user-defined applications on found documents.
* Save search results.
* Drag and drop with Desktop.
* Maintain multiple indexes.
* Customize indexing rules, stop words, and excluded documents.
* Automatic periodic indexing and re-indexing.
* Multithreaded indexing and searching.
* ZIP file support.
* Transparent access to remote server objects across a network.
* Remote administration of server objects.
* Restrict access using password authentication for multiple
access levels.
* Future toolkit support for building your own client tools,
file filters, and file store facilities.
For more information and updates, check out the File Hound web site: http://www.spacestar.net/users/gaalswyk
Besides the File Hound web site, the software has also been uploaded to
http://hobbes.nmsu.edu and ftp://ftp.cdrom.com. Version 0.2 is in a file
named flho0020.zip.
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Connectix Quickcam Driver Campaign.
Connectix Corporation, manufacturer of the popular Quickcam, provides drivers for Windows and MacOs only. If you want to use your digital camera with OS/2, you have to use a driver written by third party developers.
You may have heard that Connectix does not want to give these third party developers any information about the colour quickcam's VIDEC compression (also known as "thousands of colours" mode).
I am trying to change that and started a little campaign to convince Connectix that VIDEC should be a part of third party drivers. The developers of the Quickcam driver for OS/2 have joined the campaign. If you own a Quickcam and wish to support this effort, please sign up at http://www.kabel.de/~hmueller/qc/
Among the supporters of the campaign are NASA scientists, university professors, professional website designers, internet providers, astronomers... The automated value counter shows that they own more than 77.000 US$ worth of Quickcams.
Please note that this is not a boycott call against Connectix. By signing up,
all you say is that you want full support of all the Quickcam's features with
your favourite operating system.
--Top--
All are welcomed to attend the upcoming Soundoff with Netscape event, to be
held on July 18,1997 - at 8:00 p.m. eastern standard time. The event will be
held on IRC, in Undernet channel #os/2, and will feature guests from
Netscape's Communicator for OS/2 project team! For more information, visit
http://www.gt-online.com/~tandie/soundoff.html.
--Top--
Well summer is here in North America. People are spending more time outside
and less time online. To accommodate that trend the VOICE board has decided to
forego the 2nd Saturday monthly meeting and the 4th Wednesday of the month
meeting as well. Starting in July VOICE will only hold meetings on the 1st and
3rd Wednesday of the month. These will be at the usual times (8PM EDT -
00:00GMT). Feel free to drop in and join our meetings. For more information on
VOICE, WEBBnet and IRC checkout http://www.os2voice.org.
--Top--
Warpstock '97 Location Finalized.
OS/2 Community to Convene in Los Angeles, CA
Oklahoma City, July 1, 1997 -- At a highly charged internet IRC meeting last week, the Warpstock event steering committee selected southern California's South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) to be the host of the 1997 OS/2 Warpstock convention. Commonly known as Warpstock '97, the inaugural event will be held October 25-26, 1997, in Diamond Bar, California. The event kicks off promptly at 8:30am Saturday and ends Sunday at 6:00pm. Over 50 events in multiple tracks are scheduled for the SOHO user, the individual OS/2 user, and for officers of OS/2 user groups. Presentation modules are also scheduled for OS/2 developers and those users interested in programming applications for OS/2. Hardware vendors, OS/2 ISVs, OS/2 user group officers, and IBM representatives will all be on hand to help OS/2 users get the most out of their investment in OS/2 software applications.
"I'm quite pleased to announce the details of Warpstock '97 at this time. We've been swamped with requests for information ever since Warpstock '97 was conceived and announced in April" said Paul Hethmon, president and CEO of Hethmon Brothers, an internet tools provider and chairman of the Warpstock steering committee. "We hope to address the most critical questions regarding dates, location, and registration fees with this announcement", Hethmon added.
"We've worked hard to make this event affordable for everyone, while packing the event with as much usable information as a multitasking, multithreaded OS/2 user can take" said Judy McDermott, a Warpstock steering committee member and head of volunteer registrations and assignments. "At the same time, we recognize 'All work and no play' make OS/2 users go banannas, so we're planning tours of local attractions which the whole family can enjoy", McDermott said.
Attendee Registration Individuals may sign up for a single day or for both days of the event. Attendee registration is $40.00 for both days or $30.00 for a single day through September 1st. Registrations received after September 1st are $60.00 for both days or $45.00 for a single day. Online registration and traditional phone and mail registrations will be handled by BMT Micro, Inc. via any of the following methods:
800-414-4268 - Voice / USA-Canada
910-350-2937 - Voice / Outside North America
800-346-1672 - Fax / USA-Canada
910-350-2937 - Fax / Outside North America
internet: http://www.bmtmicro.com or https://secure.falcon-net.net/BMT/order0262.html (case sensitive; secure browser required)
All attendee registrations received prior to September 1st will automatically be entered into a special drawing for attractive "Early Bird" prizes.
The Warpstock '97 planning committee is negotiating with AQMD to provide child care facilities during the event. AQMD is conveniently located near a wide variety of amusement parks and other family oriented attractions, so OS/2 users are invited to bring the whole family and make a vacation around Warpstock '97.
Exhibitor Registration
Exhibitors may register through September 1st for $300.00. Exhibitor
registrations received after September 1st is $450.00. Exhibitor registrations
will receive two complimentary show passes; additional show passes are
available for $40.00. All exhibitors will be allocated 10' x 10' booths.
Hardware vendors, software ISVs, user groups, and shareware authors are all
invited to attend. Shareware vendors may share a single booth to reduce
expenses; however, each shareware author must register as an attendee in order
to qualify for the booth sharing arrangement.
Travel and Lodging
The Warpstock steering committee has negotiated special travel arrangements
with Ship to Shore Travel (Toll free: 888/447-1333 or 405/ 447-1333; please
ask for James Kruger and mention the Warpstock '97 event). Warpstock attendees
flying to Warpstock '97 may save money by scheduling airfare, lodging, and car
rentals through Ship to Shore Travel. A group of hotels in a wide range of
prices near AQMD (21865 E. Copley Drive, Diamond Bar, CA 91765) have been
reserved to accommodate Warpstock '97 attendees. Ship to Shore travel is
located at 1932 W. Lindsey St, Suite E, Norman, OK, 73069.
Warpstock 97, a major conference for OS/2 small office/home office (SOHO) and individual end-users, is an excellent opportunity for OS/2 SOHO and individual users and OS/2 vendors to identify this market segment's product requirements and to exchange ideas. The idea of an "OS/2 love-fest" was conceived as one result of The OS/2 Marketplace, a highly successful OS/2 vendors conference held recently in Phoenix.
Discussion about the event is ongoing on the internet's comp.os.os2.misc newsgroup, on commercial on-line services, and with centralized discussion on an Internet mail list. For more information, visit http://www.warpstock.org and join the Warpstock listserv. To subscribe to the Warpstock listserv, send an email to warpstock-request@warpstock.org with no subject and the words "subscribe" in the message body.
Further announcements about Warpstock will be forthcoming as planning for the
event continues; updates will be posted to the Warpstock '97 home page.
Warpstock '97 is an ALL-VOLUNTEER effort; anyone committed to promoting OS/2
is invited to sign up and volunteer their time and skills to make Warpstock
'97 a success. Volunteers should join the listserv to obtain information on
available slots.
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Stardock Releases PlusPak: PMINews 1.01 for OS/2!.
First update to top selling OS/2 news reader!
Canton MI -- Stardock Systems, Inc., a leading OS/2 software vendor, released an update to the second product in the PlusPak series -- PlusPak: PMINews. PlusPak: PMINews is the result of several months of close collaboration between Stardock, OS/2's leading commercial software vendor, and SouthSoft, OS/2's leading shareware company.
Version 1.01 addresses a wide variety of performance, stability, and usability concerns reported by customers. The initial 1.0 release had considerable compatibility problems with a number of servers along with other problems found by users once it came into wide spread use.
Stardock and SouthSoft have labored to quickly address those problems and believe 1.01 is rock solid.
PlusPak: PMINews was designed from scratch to be "the ultimate newsreader" and contains many features designed to appeal to both the casual Internet user as well as USENET news junkies.
Some of the features include: Multiple Server Support. Users with access to more than a single news server can now combine the power of those news servers for their own use. PlusPak: PMINews integrates multiple news servers into a single master list of all available newsgroups.
Multiple GroupLists. If you read a significant number of newsgroups, multiple GroupLists are likely to be one of the most useful and unique features of PlusPak: PMINews. Users can have different sets of newsgroups in each GroupList. Each GroupList can also contain its own settings, such as different email addresses, signatures, custom filters, etc.
Advanced Filtering and Searching. Users can filter out particular users or entire threads they do not wish to not see again with only a couple mouse clicks. PlusPak: PMINews' search features allow users to search any portion of a post or newsgroup filter the results based on a particular attribute. Boolean relationships can be used in searches and filtering. For example, a user could create a single filter that searches for posts that are cross-posted into ALT. newsgroups AND has the word "money" in the subject. For true newsgroup power users, PlusPak: PMINews also comes with its own filtering language. PlusPak:PMINews example filters, when activated, can help weed out SPAM and filter binary newsgroups to only display messages with actual attachments. Few newsreaders on any platform can even remotely compare to PlusPak: PMINews anti-SPAM features, all of which are user viewable and customizable to help make your newsgroup experience less of a hassle.
Offline support. Rather than forcing you to stay connected to the Internet while browsing messages of interest, PlusPak: PMINews includes extensive off-line support to minimize your time online and maximize your newsgroup viewing experience. After marking the messages or threads you wish to view, simply let PlusPak: PMINews download them to your machine to view at your leisure. You can even create filters to automatically download messages that are of interest to you!
Spell Checking. The spell checking features of PlusPak: PMINews help ensure that your posts do not go out with a bunch of unnecessary spelling mistakes. The spell checker's dictionary is dynamic and highly configurable. The more you use it, the better it will be at correcting your mistakes.
Integration with the world's best selling OS/2 mail program. Because PlusPak: PMINews has been developed by SouthSoft, it integrates seamlessly with PMMail. If PMMail and PlusPak: PMINews are both installed to the same directory, address books and drag-and-drop can be shared between the two products.
Excellent binary news group handling. Users who download images, shareware, sounds, and other binary files from Internet newsgroups will be pleased to find that binary posts are treated as actual files. These files can be dragged and dropped to the desktop or even manipulated right from the post itself. Moreover, PlusPak: PMINews also handles multiple-part binary postings.
A ton of usability features. The number of convenient little features in PlusPak: PMINews are too numerous to articulate. Developers at both SouthSoft and Stardock have years of experience using Internet newsgroups and sought to bring to OS/2 a news reader that supplied the vast majority of feature requests from the various newsreader wish lists that have ever existed.
PlusPak:PMINews is currently available from Stardock's on-line commerce
server. PlusPak: PMINews lists for $34.95, but it
is only $29.95 off the commerce server. Users can also order by phone
at1-888-STARDOCK or 313-762-0687. PlusPak: PMINews will soon be available via
Stardock's reseller network, along with other PlusPak products. A special
bundling of PMMail and PMINews will be available from Stardock later this
week.
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