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## Yesterday, today, tomorrow

An editorial by the editors of the VOICE Newsletter

It's birthday time: one year of the VOICE Newsletter in the German language. Time to look back a bit. What has happened since last August? What's the situation today? What are the plans for the future?

Some people wouldn't have expected us to endure a year at all. Those of you who can remember the call for help from several weeks ago know that there were some long hauls during which our team showed signs of fatigue and the German issue was basically run by one or two people. This situation would not have been bearable any longer. But fortunately it has improved a lot with the help of some new faces on the translation team. This doesn't mean that we couldn't use more helpers, of course. :-)

As of the publishing of this issue the old translation team mail list at eGroups/Yahoogroups has been closed and replaced by a mailing list on the VOICE server (subscription via christian.hennecke@os2voice.org), completed by a database table for organization that can be accessed online by every member of the translation team. So we have finally managed to get rid of the advertisements and our team members don't have to worry about abuse of their e-mail address, etc. any more.

We no doubt have achieved the main goal of providing OS/2 users in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland with the latest news and facts about OS/2 and so we can pat ourselfs on the back a bit. Furthermore, we have been able to give something back to the international issue in return by increasing the number of articles written by German-speaking authors, e.g. Klaus Staedtler von Przyborski's column The Free Files. Alas, a relatively large rate of contributions originate from the pen of members of the translation team. More participation from outside would be most desirable. And perhaps some other groups may be interested in translating the newsletter to other languages if there is a demand. We have already proved that the concept is doable. :-)

So we have arrived at the future. The review of "Crown of Might" is another result of our agreement with Team OS/2 Region Trier e.V. that is going to present us with more articles in the future. As another venture to increase the pool of articles we issued a call to authors of the failed German print magazine OS/2 Only! to donate their unpublished works for the Newsletter. Last month we began to automate the Newsletter's creation using the free pre-processor PPWIZARD. This will not only enable our editors to focus on their original work, but also make the translation team's and author's work easier.

In the recent past we have changed the Newsletter's layout and introduced the graphics format Portable Network Graphics (PNG) to keep the archive's size reasonable. While most of our readers accepted these changes well, we have received a few negative comments. The points of criticism being the new font size that some find to be too small, and the use of PNG graphics that browsers older than Netscape Communicator 4.x are not capable of displaying.

Until now we have tried to keep the VOICE Newsletter backwards compatible - even back to the IBM Web Explorer. The question is however, in how far this will be possible in the future. First, this would mean ignoring the WWW Consortium's standards (latest is XHTML 1.0), since older browsers cannot interpret them. Second, usage of old code includes the risk of display errors on newer browsers like Mozilla and Opera. Using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) that are supported by Netscape 4.x and later on the other hand would enable us to further simplify the creation of the Newsletter and offer our readers alternative designs. For instance you could easily adapt fonts, font sizes and background colors by using an alternative style sheet. So we are caught in a dilemma between having regard for our readers who are using older machines or prefer it that way (with Navigator 2.02's speed being a valid argument) on one side and - in our opinion - better service for our readers, complying to international standards, and simplifying our tasks on the other.

VOICE is a member-directed organization. What is more important for you? Which way do you want the Newsletter's evolution to take? Do you have any alternative or additional suggestions? This is your chance to express your opinion! Send your comment to editor@os2voice.org.

VOICE Newsletter Update: We are always interested in your thoughts and views on subjects related to OS/2, and would like to see opinion/editorial pieces as well as hardware/software reviews and HowTo articles. If you can help by writing an article please contact me at editor@os2voice.org. The Guidelines for Article Submissions to the VOICE Newsletter page has been updated with the addition of some ideas for articles. Please take a look and see if you can help us with an article for an upcoming issue. Some folks find they enjoy telling about their OS/2 experiences. :-)

VOICE Server Update: The new hard drives have been installed on our server. These included an 18Gig IBM and 36Gig Quantum SCSI drive. We plan to shortly install DB2/2 so that the Warp Doctor team can get started on implementing the new database for the Warp Doctor assistance/information site.

The Warp Doctor site: Have an idea for Warp Doctor? You can send your comments directly to the Warp Doctor web guy Jeremy at rs@fyrelizard.com or better yet attend one of our Warp Doctor Team meetings, weekly on IRC. The team meets ever Wednesday at 8PM EDT (00:00 GMT), on IRC in the #warpdoctor channel on the WEBBnet IRC network. For more information on attending online Warp Doctor IRC meetings please see the VOICE Meeting Information page - http://www.os2voice.org/meetinginfo.html.

VOICE Online Update: In July we had a couple of general membership meetings. You can review the transcripts of these and other VOICE IRC events at http://www.os2voice.org/transcripts.html This month we have a Speakup with Sundial event on Monday August 6 and a general member meeting August 20 at 8PM EST (00:00GMT, 02:00 Berlin). Everyone interested in OS/2 is invited to attend either or both of these sessions. For more information on attending online VOICE IRC meetings please see the VOICE Meeting Information page - http://www.os2voice.org/meetinginfo.html.

If you have an idea for a Speakup event, please submit it to liaison@os2voice.org, and we will try to schedule something. As always, please be sure to check out the updated VOICE Future events Calendar in this newsletter or on the VOICE website at http://www.os2voice.org/calendar.html for more details on future VOICE events.

This month we start with a review by Thorsten Thielen, of the OS/2 game Crown of Might.

Next up, we have a how-to article by Jason R Stefanovich on Installation and Configuration of Software for the Sound Blaster Live! and 512 Sound Cards under the OS/2 Operating System. Then Michal Necasek steps to the front of the class with An OS/2 History Lesson - Ten years ago. For those of you new to OS/2 or only having worked with the more modern versions, here is a chance to read up on the early history of OS/2. Michal will follow up with an article on OS/2 1.1 and 1.2 in the next issue of the newsletter.

Time is something that is always a dilemma for an international group like VOICE. Before you can figure out what time it is in another time zone you need to make sure your system clock has the correct setting. If you are using special software that requires UTC time then be sure to read Setting the System Clock to UTC. You'll learn about this as well as more information on setting your system's time zone parameters.

Walter Metcalf has been elected to head VOICE into the future. For more on where read From Your New President.... Finally in Make me hot! Thomas Klein looks at ThermoProtect, a temperature monitoring program.

Finally we have the VOICE Newsletter OS/2 Tips page and the Letters, Addenda, Errata page. If you have any OS/2 or eCS tips you've uncovered, please send them to tips@os2voice.org. If you have any comments or suggestions about the newsletter or articles in it, please send them to editor@os2voice.org

That's it for this month. So far, for September, we have Michal Necazek's continuing series on the history of OS/2; a followup article by Frank Berke on Limewire; a review of the Persistance of Vision Raytracer (POVRay) by Thorsten Thielen; and an article by Herwig Bauernfeind on manually installing win32 applications for use under Odin. A couple of articles also in the works is an in-depth review of Xact 7.x by Stefan Deutscher, and a review of the Artem Wireless LAN cards, by Karlheinz Schmidthaus. A date for publishing hasn't been determined yet for either article.

Mark Dodel and Christian Hennecke
Editors, VOICE Newsletter
editor@os2voice.org

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