New offerings of eCo Labs

2007-06-17 01:05:56 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [ecomstation.ru]

1eCo Labs is a fund aimed to attract new developers to eComStation. We are trying share the income with developers; stimulate the development of new PM-controls and libraries. Moreover, we are going update the portal for developers and enrich it with links and libraries.

DW2007 -- calculate the expenses

2007-06-07 22:37:54 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [ecomstation.ru]

Developers Workshop 2007 is coming

You are right, the cost of the trip to Amsterdam may be very high for you. 300 EURO.. 500 EURO.. 1000 EURO.. or more.

What is the reason to spend so much money?

1. Read the list of presentations. Are you ready invest the money to learn new technologies and obtain this knowledge?

2. Are you going make a presentation?

The workshop is a good chance to

• share your libraries with other developers;
• learn new eComStation technologies and share the knowledge with other developers;
• present own concept of OS development;
• inform developers which software and drivers should be created;

3. Moreover, the visit of the conference gives you:

• Intercourse
  • You are meeting with other users and developers from different countries, different cultures;
  • If you are a developer, then you are meeting with your clients. Ask them what do they need;
  • Meet the users from your city and region. The conference may help you create Local User Group;
  • Get fresh news and secret information while chatting.
• Income
  • The visit of the Netherlands is good for your experience, you can see how dutch people are working, why they are so productive.
  • You are collecting information what is the trend of OS/2 development. This helps you safe the efforts and don't spend then time to fake goals after return to home.
  • If you are a designer then watch the design of dutch houses, clothes, banners
  • Improve your english(/deutch/dutch), no need to buy tutorials of english language
  • You are mobilizing while preparing for the conference. You are generating more ideas, more code while preparing for D-Day.
  • Present your program to sell it
• Vacations
  • If you don't have a report then interpret the trip as short summer vacations
  • Amsterdam is a good place for shopping

The history of developers workshops

2007-05-29 13:13:10 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [ecomstation.ru]

The Developers Workshop 2007 is coming. Book the hotel today, inform the organizers which report are you going to present?

Help us remember the history of meetings of eComStation and IBM OS/2 Warp developers.

• DWS2006, gallery
• DWS2005, gallery
• IBM Warp Community Update Workshop, review with photos (russian language)
• ???

Full list of conferences

New eCo Labs offerings

2007-03-26 01:26:42 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [ecomstation.ru]

There are more offerings for russian developers. We ordered development of some drivers, WPS-applications and PM controls. eCo Labs fund differs from other organizations and funds because thirdparty developers are working in conjuction with eCo Software developers.

We removed some tasks from the queue because no need in this projects:

• WPS Todos (WPS folder which shows all objects from Desktop) -- no use in such toy
• Small web-server to publish photos -- no reason because eComStation includes Web/2 web-server already
• USB Audio adapters -- all resources should be concentrated on Uniaud development
• DART2UNIAUD (make DART interface work via Uniaud API) -- all resources should be concentrated on Uniaud development

Results of polls

2007-03-17 16:15:12 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [ecomstation.ru]

We closed some polls:

• Capacity of eComStation market
• Do you need support of HASP HL security keys in eComStation?
• Do you need hardware OpenGL? (read comments)
• Do you use a firewall?
• Does OS/2 community need IEEE-1394 support? (read comments)
• Do you need WarpVision as a plugin for Mozilla?

Results of poll "Capacity of eComStation market"

2007-03-13 17:51:04 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [ecomstation.ru]

Imagine that 100 shareware/commercial applications are developed during the year. How much money are you ready to invest in new usefull applications for eComStation?

What is the purpose of this poll? It allow see:

• You can see how users value the software
• You can see how much euro users assigned for OS/2 in their pockets
• More optimistic users (those which are ready invest much miney) push other to invest more
• Those, who never purchase applications, can see that other users do this

Some conclusions:

• The major part of users is ready invest into software for eComStation
• 3/4 of users are ready invest 50 .. 300 EURO. (Let's accept that small shareware application costs 15 EURO, expensive - 50 EURO, as you can see users are ready purchase 3 .. 20 cheap applications or 1 .. 6 large expensive shareware-applications)
• What do users need? Usually they need native software, not Odin. Users need: ICQ, Accounting software, graphical editors, drivers, multimedia players, software for syncronization with mobile devices.

This poll covers shareware only. Users spend more money to eComStation software because update subscriptions, sponsor to open-source projects.

OS/2 FUND News

2007-02-04 13:56:33 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [ecomstation.ru]

OS/2 FUND is starting new season. The main current goal is create fresh port of Perl. Seems that only foreign developers can do this.

OS/2 FUND (russian language only) is the first successful project of such kind in the community of russian speaking users.

Your web-page at www.ecomstation.ru

2007-01-29 01:17:41 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [ecomstation.ru]

The admins of the site are inviting developers open homepages at www.ecomstation.ru, keep souce code in our SVN server.

2007 REXX Symposium in Tampa 4/30-5/3

2007-01-23 12:24:28 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [VOICENWS, Mark Dodel]

The 2007 International Rexx Symposium, 30 April - 3 May 2007, Tampa, Florida, USA. Read the announcement.

The 2007 International Rexx Symposium will visit Tampa, Florida, USA for the first time! To accommodate the large number of presentations offered, the 18th annual Rexx Symposium has again been extended to four days. The program agenda represents the best of an overwhelming number of quality presentations offered by the best Rexx practitioners in the world. As usual, the Sunday before the Symposium will feature free tutorials and a welcome reception.

The Symposium is the only technical conference dedicated to the Rexx family of programming languages, drawing speakers and attendees from around the world. It is the best place to learn valuable Rexx programming techniques, keep up with the latest developments in the Rexx community, and confer with your colleagues, many of whom are luminaries in the field. The Program will feature a wide variety of presentations ranging from tutorial introduction to real-world practical applications, to research papers describing techniques and features you will be using in the future. Session abstracts that have been accepted may be viewed on the RexxLA website.

The Program Schedule is being assembled and will be available on the RexxLA website soon.

Symposium Location: Sheraton Tampa Riverwalk, 200 N. Ashley Drive, Tampa, Florida 33602 USA

Downloadable complete GCC build environment available

2007-01-10 10:14:53 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [VOICENWS, Paul Smedley]

Now available from a complete (hopefully) environment for building applications using GCC on OS/2.

I often get asked about how my build environment is structured, so here it is - in a single zip file. I started too think about how to set it up from scratch, but it got too hard. I started with the mozilla build environment, and hacked away over time...

Instructions:

• I have this all setup on u: drive. It should be possible to move it to another drive, at the very least - gcc335.cmd would need to be modified, and probably also many of the package config files in \extras\lib\pkgconfig, and also some of the *config files in \extras\bin
• I keep all my installed libraries in \extras - this way I can wipe out \usr when a new version of GCC comes out.
• Unzip to root directory - recommended u: drive
• Change to \extras\lib and run makeomflibs
• Change to \usr\lib and run makeomflibs
• Create an icon on the WPS, Path and Filename = *, Parameters = /ku:\gcc335.cmd, working directory = u:\
• launch icon, start building :) Many things will compile with a simple ash ./configure, make

Open Watcom 1.6 Released

2006-12-17 01:12:27 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [VOICENWS, Michal Necazek]

"Open Watcom - a joint effort between SciTech Software Inc, Sybase and the Open Source development community to maintain and enhance the Watcom C/C++ and Fortran cross compilers and tools. An Open Source license from Sybase allows free commercial and non-commercial use of the Open Watcom tools."

Open Watcom C/C++ and F77 version 1.6 has been released. Please see the website for details

P.S. Send a message of thanks to Michal Necazek to support his efforts (he maintains Open Watcom for eComStation).

Your program on eComStation CD

2006-08-18 17:14:03 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [ecomstation.ru]

ATTENTION: don't distribute this message, it is indended for russian developers only.

We are looking for developers which are interested include own program or driver to eComStation. We are interested to discuss:

• applications: multimedia, communication and office applications;
• utilities: disk and desktop service;
• libraries useful for other developers;

Profit for developer:

• applications included to OS live longer and have more sellings;
• the program will be distributed among thousands of eCS users in short terms;
• the developer may get reward for the program;
• We can acquaint you with other developers working in the same area;

Contacts:

• e-mail
• web-form
• We can't guarantee that your program will be included but we will declare the conditions of inclusion

Development of component applications

2006-06-27 21:35:08 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [ecomstation.ru]

eCo Software is making developers create more SOM/WPS applications, that's why we published "Object-Oriented Programming in eComStation, Part 1: Introduction" (russian language)

This information is useful for development of new applications or extension of existing:

• Lucide viewer - to support new formats
• WPS/eWPS - to support new data types
• Audio-Data CD Creator - to support new devices, for example DVD
• eSchemes - to support new formats of system adornation
• Personal Cards Manager - to establish common database of personal data
• SOM Compiler - to support SOM in other programming languages
• etc.

OS/2 FUND news

2006-06-27 19:03:15 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [ecomstation.ru, Igor Vaskov]

As you know, there are some funds for developers in OS/2 community: OS2 World.Com Bounties, eCo Labs fund.

Some weeks ago, the third fund OS/2 FUND (russian site) was founded. Currently, it holds 362 USD. Three projects was defined: porting of perl, module of access to MSSQL Server, PHP5 fixing.

The main goal now is find more investors and developers.

Main differencies of OS/2 FUND:

• The guarantees are fulfilled by Igor Vaskov;
• The tasks are defined by shareholders (investors);
• The money is accumulated in one "bank" in advance;

Status of WIN32PRN

2006-06-17 17:45:40 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [VOICENWS, Mensys, Roderick Klein]

Mensys press release regarding status of WIN32PRN (running Windows printer drivers under OS/2)

Haarlem, The Netherlands

Mensys B.V. is pleased to announce that it has reached an agreement with Vitaliy Tymchyshyn from the Ukraine. With this agreement all rights for the WIN32PRN project and source code are transferred to Mensys.

Mr Tymchyshyn has started the WIN32PRN project in 2002 and worked on making a base to load the Windows printer driver DLL's on OS/2. More information on this project can be found on www.os2warp.be (Please note that this website still needs to be updated and that the downloads no longer work).

Here is a photo of Vitaliy from Warpstock Europe 2002

We however wanted to inform the community that with the transfer of the source code we want to make the project move forward again as soon as possible. This in answer to the frequently seen question in public forums what happened to the WIN32PRN project. Obviously we are committed to provide better printer support on the eComStation platform.

The WIN32PRN project explained:

The WIN32PRN project aims (with the help of the ODIN project) to run Windows printer driver DLL's on OS/2/eComStation. A printer driver for a printer is a different kind of driver than for example a network or videocard driver. Most drivers that control a device run on at kernel level of the operating system, because they require direct hardware access. However a printer driver (as its normally referred to) is basically a set of DLL (programs) from a printer vendor that translate the data stream from the operating system in a data stream the printer of that vendor can understand.

To print you basically need 2 kind of drivers. The first driver does run at kernel level just like a driver for a network card, in this case the driver that sends the data via hardware to your USB, parallel or serial port. This is mostly standardized and normally does not require a vendor specific driver.

The tricky part is the most inkjet printers and low end laser printers normally use a printer language that is non-standard (like for example PCL or postscript). What the printer driver in this case does, is that it sends a data stream to the printer that printer understands. The solution that WIN32PRN provides, is to create a printer object that loads the proper DLL files that normally run on Windows and that output is sent to the printer port under eComStation.

Current status of the project:

For the coming couple of months there is no beta to be expected, we are currently investigating the code and will announce more information as soon as it is appropriate.

Contact:

For any inquiries about this project, please contact

• Mensys B.V., Roderick Klein
• +31-23-5482020, rwkleinDESPAM@DESPAMmenshys.nl

The second edition of OS/2 API Research book

2006-05-05 11:22:44 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [ecomstation.ru, Sergey Posokhov]

The book should prove to be a valuable reference as well as an informative tutorial for Control Program and Presentation Manager programming.

The book answers to questions: Why we use OS/2? Why competitors always bury OS/2? What is the future of OS/2? etc.

Whatsnew: Initial chapters was updated (multithreading, memory, queues, PIPE-connections, file systems, etc). Updates in chapters related to window shell. Updated chapter related to TCP/IP protocols. The list of literature is updated too.

OS/2 API Research book is available from hobbes (Author: Sergey Posokhov; Language: Russian).