SingOS/2 - May 1996

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  • SingOS/2 - Newsletter of the Singapore OS/2 User Group
  • May 1996

Center

Talk to your computer with IBM’s next version of OS/2 Warp

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Apr. 23, 1996..

Merlin is made easy with speech recognition, UI improvements and better Internet integration

That’s the question IBM is asking thousands of software application developers this week at the IBM Technical Interchange developer’s conference in Nashville, Tenn. The company today unveiled an early copy of the next version of OS/2* Warp, codenamed Merlin. Integrating IBM’s latest VoiceType* technology in speech navigation and dictation, an improved user interface which includes an enhanced version of the Lotus SmartCenter, and easier-than-ever Internet access, OS/2 Warp “Merlin” will be the first major Intelbased operating system with built-in speech recognition and will take the concept of ease-of-use to an entirely new level.

“IBM has just raised the bar on operating system ease of use,” said Kathryn Dzubeck, executive vice president of Communications Network Architects, Inc., a computer consultancy in Washington, D.C. “Human-centric versus machinecentric input will provide a major productivity increase for corporate and consumer PC users.”

Are you talking to your computer, yet?

Talk, don’t type

Built-in speech navigation and dictation capabilities in Merlin will allow OS/2 users simply to tell their computers what they normally would have to type or execute with a mouse. The navigation portion will allow people to vocally navigate through menu bars and objects on the desktop in order to do things such as open files and launch applications, or pop onto the Internet hands-free with a simple phrase like ‘Jump to CNN Home Page.’ Working with a computer has never been so easy, and using a computer has never been so much fun.

Under Merlin, users will be able to open multiple Web pages with a click on the mouse or a single voice command. The dictation component will allow users to dictate memos and other documents and then paste them into word processing or e-mail applications. With this technology, doctors will be able to review X-rays or examine patients and dictate their findings directly into a computer. Insurance agents can vocally process claims. Attorneys can create legal briefs while flipping through research materials. And business professionals can dictate electronic memos while simultaneously reading through hardcopy documents.

With Merlin’s built-in speech capabilities, users will be able to dictate memos and documents into a dictation window on the screen. They also will be able to customize their screens with selected backgrounds and font colors.

“We believe that speech recognition in computers will be the next major industry breakthrough when it comes to ease-of-use,” said Wally Casey, vice president of client product management in IBM’s Software Group. “Just as the Macintosh changed the industry when it introduced a graphical user interface, OS/2 Merlin will alter the way people interact with computers — from new computer users to business professionals to anyone who wants quick and easyInternet access.”

The technology behind the talk

Based on IBM’s latest VoiceType technology, speech recognition in Merlin will run with any common OS/ 2-supported sound card, like Sound Blaster, which comes as a standard feature in most audio-enabled PCs. By integrating industry-leading VoiceType technology into the OS/2 base, IBM is offering customers an incredible value.

With years of IBM research behind it, the speech technology in Merlin has advanced to a point where it is very easy to use. Merlin will be speaker-independent, meaning the computer will understand what most users say, without any training. And it even will know the difference between words with the same pronunciation yet different spellings, like to, too and two.

Merlin also will come with a continuous navigator, allowing users to speak as they normally do, without inserting pauses between words, in order to navigate through the desktop and menus.

The navigation vocabulary in Merlin will include common desktop navigation words. Dictation will come with a base vocabulary of 10,000 words and will allow the addition of up to 42,000 more unique terms. Customers also may purchase separate vocabularies for professions like healthcare and law. And speech will be supported in six languages: U.S. and U.K. English, French, Spanish, German and Italian.

Application Support

This week at its developer conference, IBM is meeting with application developers to rally support for speech-enabled OS/2 applications. Currently, any OS/2 Presentation Manager (PM) object will automatically work with the VoiceType navigator. PM objects include menubar headings, drop-down menus and buttons on the screen.

IBM will be delivering a developer toolkit later this year, which will allow solution developers to add a richer set of speech functions to their applications.

“I’m excited about the new opportunities that will be created by integrating VoiceType into the OS/2 base,” said Jim Karn, operations director for Pittsburgh-based Alien Robotics, a solution developer that voice enables software using IBM’s VoiceType Dictation on a number of operating system platforms. “This will open up an entirely new level of solutions that we will be able to create for our customers and awhole new set of business opportunities for our company.” As with previous versions of OS/2, IBM will provide premier technical support for application developers through its Solution Developer Program.

New user interface and Internet enhancements contribute to ease-ofuse Merlin will boast more than just speech recognition. It also will sport a cleaner and more logical user interface with visual enhancements like three-dimensional shadowed icons, 256 colors, an array of customizable bitmaps and backgrounds, an attractive system font that reads well on laptop computers and customizable colored tabs in a newlydesigned settings folder.

The WarpCenter

IBM has taken the best of the SmartCenter technology from Lotus and the LaunchPad from OS/2 Warp to create the new OS/2 WarpCenter.

The WarpCenter is an object-oriented icon ribbon on the desktop in Merlin that will allow users to quickly and easily launch and group programs and check on the status of their systems.

It includes a “Warp button” that dynamically creates a view of everything on the computer desktop, a task list that indicates which programs are currently running, status indicators for disk space and battery power, a calendar, clock and timer.

Merlin’s user interface features the new OS/2 WarpCenter at the top of thescreen, 3-D desktop objects and a new settings control notebook with customizable colored tabs. Users will be able to customize their WarpCenter simply by dragging and dropping icons onto it and then grouping those icons into trays. A tray could group any combination of objects: folders, applications, even icons representing World Wide Web pages.

With the WarpCenter visible at all times in any application, users could launch a new application, check the contents of a drive or even jump onto the World Wide Web without minimizing the space within which they currently are working. The WarpCenter also can be deactivated if the user so prefers.

Merlin will include other features, like superior networking capabilities, great security and OpenDoc run-time support, that should distinguish it as the operating system of choice for the connected consumer to the large enterprise customer. Merlin will go into beta later this quarter and become generally available in the second half of this year.

Is there Demand for OS/2 Games?

Brad Wardell (wardell@ibm.net)

Stardock is on the verge of announcing several new titles. The question though is, is there still demand for native OS/2 games? Is OS/2 dying? Are users, like in the GalCiv days, still willing to join our beta programs? Entrepreneur and Avarice have been very late so we don’t blame some users for being wary (though at least they’re getting there and we’ve learned not to open up betas until they are really far among — trials of battle, for example, is already a beta 2 level project, and so is master of the empire now).

Avarice Preview, for whatever reasons (and I can think of many) has sold terribly (only a few hundred). It’s a lot smaller and not up to speed with our other products but it’s also less than $30. But still, LESS than 500 units? It makes it a bit scarey for us.

Last year, we sold a TON of native OS/2 games, but at around the end of the year, things really slowed down. Are users going to Windows95? We’ve had a lot of support from OS/2 users which has helped drive us to becoming one of the more significant producers of games (of any platform).

What we’d like to know, in your own opinions, is the OS/2 gaming market dying? Take a look around you, are the people who you know who used to run OS/2 now running Win95 or something? Do you know people who have copies of GalCiv (or GalCiv2) sitting on a shelf and now use another OS as their main OS?

ed note
please forward your comments to sg.comp.os2