With Warpstock '97 being only six weeks away, we are all busy at work. Volunteers are stepping forth to make Warpstock a success. Thank you! To see the list of volunteers and also the openings that we have for you, visit http://www.warpstock.org/volunteer.html
We now have an image map of the AQMD floorplan for your viewing at http://www.apc.net/pwirtz/warpstock/map.htm. Looks like this is a great facility and will provide us with most of the needed resources.
For those that haven't looked at the "Presentations" page at http://www.warpstock.org/presentations.html, there are two topics that should be of interest to all. IBM will be presenting, OS/2 Problem Determination. This is a one-hour general overview of all new Problem Determination Tools. The second topic of interest, OS/2 Problem Determination II, will be a "birds of a feather" type discussion about the new Problem Determination Tools. These tools include significantly advanced versions of System Trace and Process Dump.
On 9/11/97 Larry B. Finkelstein hosted the Warpstock Steering Committee on CompuServe in the OS/2 Central Forum. A two hour conference was held. We discussed plans, ideas and answered questions. I think we may have won over a few more attendees for Warpstock! Larry would like to have another conference in the near future, so watch for announcements.
If you haven't made your hotel reservations as yet, better hurry. The rooms at the Clarion, that have reserved at a discounted price, are only guaranteed until 9/15/97 or until the supply runs out. The discounted price of $59/night includes breakfast at the hotel. Full details at http://www.warpstock.org/location.html.
See you at Warpstock!
Warpstock Steering Committee
PlanetWide v1.10 is a powerful, multithreaded, 32-bit OS/2 HTTP Web Server. It was developed to serve high volumes of data from the OS/2 Warp platform, and do it efficiently!
As the web master, you require an HTTP server that is lean on the system resources, and still performs. PlanetWide was written with a text-based interface, preserving precious memory and virtual swap space.
There is also a lot of important information available to you in the log file, and in the text window. Further explanation is available; (see: log file ).
The server configuration is very simple, and you should be up and running in just a few minutes. Enjoy.
FEATURES IN THIS RELEASE:
Available at ftp://ftp.bmtmicro.com/bmtmicro/pwws110.zip and at http://www.bmtmicro.com
Filename: pwws110.zip
Filesize: 320k
Registration: $45 US / 83 DM / £ 30
AI news for the OS/2 developers
Visual Prolog is one of the world's most powerful implementations of the Prolog-language, which combined with a powerful GUI-builder, an efficient compiler and a large collection of tools, offers a very nice environment for developing AI applications as well as traditional applications. Visual Prolog is the only alternative, if you want to develop in Prolog in native OS/2! Prolog is the logic-based programming language, that offers a wide range of possibilities: very readable and short code, easy prototyping and facilities for simulation and meta-programming. Visual Prolog has the logic facilities that make Prolog an excellent problem solver, and the GUI-builder can turn these raw algorithms into professional applications.
On top of all this, you can easily port the applications! Visual Prolog is one of the most portable development tools available today. Windows 95 / NT / 3.1 and OS/2 are all supported, and you can switch freely between these platforms for GUI-based programs. You can also make portable textmode applications for DOS, SCO UNIX and LINUX. Conversion utilities help in converting resources between the different platforms. Very few programming tools offer such a high degree of portability as Visual Prolog.
Visual Prolog is a highly professional tool, which scales up to large multi programmer development projects. You can use Prolog's strengths in the Visual Prolog environment to do database programming, web support, object-oriented programming, and much more: ODBC, Oracle, DB2, TCP/IP, FTP, HTTP, ISAPI, generation and use of DLLs and standard .OBJ files, an included Expert-system shell and Interpreter, domain checker and flow-analyzer, determinism checking and fail-detection, large on-line help and support for generation of help-files, resource import from other applications, graphical editors for cursors, bitmaps, dialogs, toolbars, CodeExperts that assist in many areas of GUI building, etc.
The Internet is one of the hottest programming areas and Visual Prolog's strong Internet support makes it an ideal tool for creating intelligent WEB sites! Intelligent websites -expert systems attached to homepages, that can do automatic support and help customers choose products will play an increasing role. Visual Prolog can of course communicate with Java-applets, as illustrated in the examples
Claus Witfelt, Product manager, PDC: "We are very proud of our OS/2 version of Visual Prolog. The first versions we have sent out have already been used for building mission critical applications, and the developers have been very pleased with the compiler's performance, the tools and the facilities."
Prolog was originally designed to be an AI language, and it is very well suited for expert systems and similar AI applications. Frame or rule-based systems, forward or backward chaining, pattern-matching systems, and constraint-resolution systems; all are natural and elegant expressions of Prolog's underlying semantics. Visual Prolog has been used for advisory systems, decision support, diagnostics, expert system shells or natural language applications, within a wide range of areas like banking, airline, healthcare, insurance, medical, etc.
Yet the strengths of Prolog extend far beyond the boundaries of AI. The high level of abstraction, the ease and simplicity with which complex data structures are represented allow a declarative approach to programming that benefits any discipline or problem solving strategy. Thus, Visual Prolog is also widely used to make administrative applications, advanced database management, planning and scheduling systems and much more.
Read more about the product and the projects that have already been developed in this version on http://www.pdc.dk
A free, timelocked version of Visual Prolog will be available for download from this site.
Prolog Development Center
568 14th Street
Atlanta, GA 30318
Tel: 800/762-2710 (toll free)
Tel: 404/873-1366
Fax: 404/872-5243
E-mail: sales@pdcatlanta.com or support@pdcatlanta.com
Outside US/Canada Phone +45 36 72 10 22 sales@pdc.dk
Corel Corp. has dramatically changed tactics after hearing that corporate customers aren't ready to make a full-blown switch to Java technology.
Corel, which has heavily promoted Java in the past year, said yesterday it will not go ahead with its release of Office for Java, a suite of programs written in the new language.
Java is a programming language that allows software programs to work on any computer regardless of its operating system.
"The Office for Java has been on the market (for testing) for several months, and we've had some very valuable feedback from that," said Corel president and chief executive Michael Cowpland.
The testers, which were mostly corporate users, indicated that they saw major problems in moving to Java because programs written in the new language aren't that powerful yet. So even companies that would buy Office for Java would still have to use other more robust software.
The trouble arises when colleagues working on different versions of software have to share documents and other information -- they can't.
"Corel is one of several who endorsed and headed for Java," said Greg Blatnik, an analyst with Zona Research of Redwood City, California. "Now they're getting a cold dose of reality splashed in their faces."
Rather than market Java directly to a clearly reticent market, Corel announced yesterday a two-pronged approach to make Java more palatable: a new technology called Remagen and an Internet-based family of products known as Corel Central.
Remagen, named for a bridge that the U.S. troops used to cross the Rhine into Germany in the Second World War, will allow different versions of software programs to talk to share information. As in the original Java strategy, all the program processing and document storage will take place on a computer server, not a desktop. The innovation is that the information on the server won't be written in Java, but in whatever language the program was first written in. Because the files are kept in their original, full-powered format, co-workers can swap them back and forth.
Although there are bits of Java technology being used in Remagen to move information for the server to the desktop client, other languages, like C++, are also being incorporated in Corel's technology.
Because Remagen can be used with any software, Corel will licence it to other technology companies. The Ottawa company also plans to release its existing software in Remagen versions, the first one being its database program, Paradox, to be released in October. Although Office for Java isn't going ahead, the knowledge gained in developing it isn't completely wasted. Corel is rolling its Java technology into a family of Internet-based products known as Corel Central.
This series of software is aimed specifically at those who will use their Internet browsers as a computer operating system, a trend many in the industry think is growing.
"I concede it's difficult to visualize this if you don't have it in front of you, but everything happens inside the browser," said Chris Biber, the director of strategic alliances for Corel. "What we're going to do is write software for this category. It's a very network-centric approach."
Although yesterday's strategy conference call demonstrates that Corel is responding to market realities, some analysts questioned whether the shift was enough to properly position the company in a very competitive market.
Since buying word-processing program WordPerfect last year, Corel has succeeded in the retail market but has had trouble breaking into the corporate sector, which is dominated by Microsoft. Analysts pointed out that both these new tactics -- Remagen and Corel Central -- are aimed at corporate clients, an area where Corel hasn't had huge success.
What makes it worse is that Mr. Cowpland hyped Java, saying it would be the next big revenue-generator for the software company. Yesterday's announcement revealed that those Java sales aren't materializing anytime soon.
"The rapid deployment of Java is not what you want to base your business future on, at least not in the short term," said Mr. Blatnik of Zona Research.
And Corel's Remagen will be going up against Citrix, a similar technology being licensed by the Ottawa company's arch enemy --Microsoft.