the Beta File - by Ryan Dill

elcome back to the Beta File, your source for the latest breaking news in OS/2 beta development. Every month we scour the OS/2 world to bring you interesting news of OS/2 software in development. If you have a product that you're sure is going to be the next killer app, or you want a little free exposure for your beta test, drop us a note!

We'll start off this month with a few updates to beta programs e-Zine has previously mentioned...

Panacea Software's newsreader, ProNews, (mentioned in our July issue) has just had its fourth public beta (ZIP, 1M) released. Nick Knight's newsreader extension for the MR/2 ICE e-mail program (aka MR/2 News), mentioned in June's issue, has also been updated -- the latest release is beta 38 (ZIP, 1M). More information can be found at the newsreader beta page. IPAD, also mentioned in our July issue, has been updated again; this time to version 0.4.00 (ZIP, 550k).

Also note that MainConcept, makers of the popular MainActor/2 animation software for OS/2, are seeking beta testers for the next version of MainActor (see the review of MainActor/2 in last month's issue of e-Zine!). If you think you could be a help, e-mail beta@mainconcept.de and let them know.

Mikael Wahlgren of Ridax programutveckling (makers of OS/2's PM2You and OS2You remote control software) has announced upcoming beta testing of a new product. Called PM2Web, it grants the ability to remotely control an OS/2 computer, like PM2You and OS2You do, but with a catch: you can do it via the WWW. Simply load up your favorite web browser, and you'll be able to monitor and/or maintain your OS/2 machine no matter where you are. Because of limitations with the Web itself, PM2Web can't control your system fully like PM2You, but it will allow you to monitor your OS/2 machine and grant some limited remote control. PM2Web will complement the full PM2You package nicely.

Programmed with a large reliance on PNG graphics (for more efficiency in Web transfers), PM2Web will work best in a browser which can display PNG graphics -- unfortunately, no PNG plug-ins yet exist for OS/2's Netscape or WebExplorer. But do not worry. For non-PNG browsers, PM2Web can also operate in a BMP mode, where it uses normal bitmap graphics instead, with some loss in speed. Therefore, you can use WebExplorer (Netscape doesn't support BMP images) to control your OS/2 computer. Until someone comes up with a PNG plug-in for Netscape (hint, hint, developers..), that'll have to do. (Of course, if you have a browser from another platform (Windows, UNIX, Mac) which supports PNG or BMP, PM2Web allows you to control with it as well.)

Expected to cost a little less than US$70.00 by itself, PM2Web will also be included for free in Ridax's PM2You (and its Windows counterpart, Win2You) product. If you're interested in beta testing PM2Web, send an e-mail with a description of your system, networking configuration, and any special requirements to Mikael, letting him know you're willing to help. Ridax is also in the process of working on Java-based clients for their PM2You and Win2You products, which will allow full control of your OS/2 (or Windows) Desktop, no matter where you're trying to access it from.

On the server front, a new FTP daemon by the name of FtpServer is now available in its fourth beta. FtpServer supports most of the common FTP operations, including the 'reget' feature made use of by some OS/2 FTP clients such as NcFTP. (If a download is interrupted, the user can log back in to the FTP site and resume the download where it was left off, rather than starting the whole download from the beginning again.) Security features are as expected in any decent server, allowing you to give users access to only what directories you desire. If you want, it can also be set up so that users can have access to multiple drives on your machine.

FtpServer is freeware, and may be downloaded either from Hobbes or the OS/2 Supersite (soon to move to /os2/apps/internet/ftp/server/). The author, Peter Moylan, has tested the program with all the FTP clients he has available, so he'd like it to now get some wider testing -- any questions or bug reports should be sent to him. As new versions of the software become available, they'll be uploaded to his own server first, then to Hobbes.

Illya Vaes has ported Tcl v7.5 and Tk 4.1 from UNIX to OS/2, and has made his first public beta available for download. For those unaware, Tcl is a scripting language used for programming on a variety of platforms, while Tk is a toolkit for using the Tcl language. (John Ousterhout, the creator of Tcl, gives a good explanation of the difference between scripting languages and mainstream programming languages such as C++.)

Since it's ported from UNIX, Tcl/Tk for OS/2 requires you have the EMX runtimes installed on your machine, level 0.9b or higher. (You can get level 0.9c from Hobbes or the OS/2 Supersite.) At the moment, only binaries are included in the Tcl/Tk package, but Illya says that upon finishing beta stages, source code will be provided as well. Any comments, questions or bug reports with the OS/2 port of Tcl/Tk should be sent to Illya, while any more information desired on Tcl and Tk in general can be found at the SunScript home page at Sun Microsystems.

InnoVal Systems Solutions is seeking beta testers for the upcoming release of NetExtra 2.0 for OS/2 (see e-Zine! 's October 1996 review of NetExtra v1.0.5). One area this series of beta tests will be focusing on is NetExtra's ability to copy web sites onto your own computer for you to browse at your leisure while off-line (aka page mining). According to InnoVal:

The most significant new features in NetExtra version 2.0 are as follows (these features parallel similar features in WebWilly Webmaster, the Windows NT/95 equivalent of NetExtra):

1. Web Page Info: A tiny floating window that you can invoke when using the Netscape Navigator or the IBM WebExplorer to show the age (and optionally, other information) for the page that's currently being viewed in your browser.

2. Results Tree: Shows you the results of a page mining operation in tree form; with each link's title, link text, original URL, and the URL of the resulting page on your hard drive.

3. Significant Site List: A window which ranks the web sites you visit the most. You can click on entries in this meta-bookmark to quickly load your most often visited web pages into your browser.

4. Edit URL Source File: If you are a webmaster, this is a very useful feature. It allows you to seamlessly and automatically download an HTML file, edit it with E.EXE, EPM (or other OS/2 editor) and automatically FTP it back into place on the server.

In addition to these, there are a variety of smaller enhancements and bug fixes. If you're interested in beta testing NetExtra 2.0, it's requested you get in touch with InnoVal as soon as possible, as they plan for the beta testing cycle to be short and sweet. To apply, send an e-mail to Marianne Roderus at innoval@ibm.net. No word yet on the final price of NetExtra 2.0, but given the new features just announced, I would expect it to cost a bit more than NetExtra 1.x, which currently has a suggested retail price of US$59.95. For more information on NetExtra, see its home page at InnoVal.

Finally this month, a new 'beta' version of BootOS2 has been released, bringing the product to version 8.50. BootOS2 is a useful piece of IBM Employee-Written Software (EWS) which has been around since 1992 and has been enhanced all the while. It allows you to create another bootable OS/2 system. Why would you want to bother? Well, imagine for a second that while fiddling around with OS/2's INI files, you change something that you shouldn't have and now OS/2 won't boot any more. Since you can't boot OS/2, you can't get back into the INI files to repair them, so you're stuck with booting from your OS/2 installation disks (you remember where you put those, don't you?) and trying to fix things from there. This is slow.

BootOS2 allows you more power than booting from your installation disks, because unlike booting from them, BootOS2 also allows you to boot with a copy of the Workplace Shell, OS/2's object-oriented GUI. (The installation disk boot-up is text-only.) In addition, BootOS2 not only allows you to boot from a floppy, but also from the hard disk -- you can elect to save the 'backup' copy of OS/2 on a small maintenance partition, so the time it takes the system to boot is much faster than if you were using floppy disks.

The last 'official' release of BootOS2 was v8.00 (the last beta version was v8.45), since then a number of bugs have been addressed. In addition, the program now supports the new 32-bit version of IBM's Chkdsk (CHKDSK32) and various Matrox display drivers. You can either download the program directly from the author's FTP site, or from the /incoming directory at Hobbes (soon to move to its final location). No word yet on when the next official release (v9.00) will be, but since it's been IBM Employee-Written Software for so long, BootOS2 will no doubt remain freeware.

Ryan Dill is a student in Computer Science at Acadia University in Wolfville, NS and e-Zine! 's technical editor. He is reported to be relieved that, with the advent of Warp 4, talking to your computer is no longer considered a sign of mental instability.