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OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - General => Events => Topic started by: Martin Iturbide on October 09, 2016, 12:13:10 am

Title: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: Martin Iturbide on October 09, 2016, 12:13:10 am
Hi

I'm going to Warpstock 2016, I had complete the goal to assist and I will do my best to live video stream the event.

So, based on the tentative agenda (http://www.warpstock.org/calendar.php?mode=&view=week&month=11&day=4&year=2016), are there any questions you want me to present to the speakers?

Regards
Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: Sergey Posokhov on October 10, 2016, 04:36:38 pm
"When".
Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: RickCHodgin on October 10, 2016, 05:44:49 pm
Hi

I'm going to Warpstock 2016, I had complete the goal to assist and I will do my best to live video stream the event.

So, based on the tentative agenda (http://www.warpstock.org/calendar.php?mode=&view=week&month=11&day=4&year=2016), are there any questions you want me to present to the speakers?

Regards

Wish I could go.  No vacation time left.

I'm curious if any of the OS/2 kernel or C/C++ developers in general there would be open to the idea of helping me with the kernel and replacement programs so that we can provide a free OS/2 kernel through my ES/2 effort?

Best regards,
Rick C. Hodgin
Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: Martin Iturbide on October 10, 2016, 11:54:18 pm
Hi

This are the question that had been sent to me for the moment:

1) A user is  interested in "uncrippled" odbc (dbase) drivers that will work with both VX-Rexx and VisPro Rexx. He had been using DBExpert but needs something more current since its GUI controls are heavily outdated.

2) Is there any roadmap for ArcaOS to support more hardware components.

3) There is a need to have current laptops supported with OS/2, since some users have it running on old Thinkpad laptops. Is there going to be some specific Wifi, USB , Video chipsets that are going to be listed as ArcaOS compliant?

4) Is ArcaOS going to ship with modern Intel Wifi drivers ?

This is what I have for the moment.

Regards
Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: Joop on October 11, 2016, 12:08:23 am
Martin,
Plug and play with sticks regardless size without special OS/2 treatment. In other words use a stick with windows settings and plug it in an OS/2 machine without LVM treatment.
USB 3 (for speeding up backup)
Full USB implementation for add ons
More support for modern motherboards
Support 4Gb mem pro kernel, not 4Gb total
A perfectly working RPM, still too many misses.

Java 8?
What are they going to do with the office package?

Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: Dave Yeo on October 11, 2016, 01:31:30 am
@joop, Lars has USB drives working pretty good now, no special settings needed. Of course only for FAT32 formatted drives.  Unluckily larger drives are now exFAT, which can be another question, "will we ever get exFAT support?"
As for RPM, I don't think it even works very well on Linux.
Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: Andy Willis on October 21, 2016, 07:57:59 pm
Hi

I'm going to Warpstock 2016, I had complete the goal to assist and I will do my best to live video stream the event.

So, based on the tentative agenda (http://www.warpstock.org/calendar.php?mode=&view=week&month=11&day=4&year=2016), are there any questions you want me to present to the speakers?

Regards

Question for Yuri Dario:
Any plans to update Recoll?
http://web.os2power.com/yuri/Recoll
Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: Lars on October 22, 2016, 12:47:49 am
Is there any interest in updating USBAUDIO.SYS ? Right now I updated volume control so that master volume and application specific volume setting will both work. It's enough to have volume control (via master volume control) when playing audio CDs or playing system sound (via master volume control and application volume control via the specific system volume setting).
But there still is enough other stuff to do.
Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: Pete on October 22, 2016, 05:36:20 am
Hi Martin

Presuming CUPS for OS/2 will be included in the upcoming(??) ArcaOS release you could ask if Arca Noae will be approaching Printer manufacturers with a view to getting those manufacturers to either supply OS/2 versions of needed "plugins" or supply the source code required in order to port those "plugins".

Brief explanation: I have a Canon MG7550 which is not supported by CUPS for OS/2. The model it replaces is the MG7150 which is badly supported by CUPS for OS/2. Using the MG7150 ppd file I can print on A4 paper; I cannot print on photopaper or any other size paper as the code necessary to access the 2nd paper tray with non-A4 paper either does not exist or does not work.

CUPS/Gutenprint will not be updated to support either of the above printers. Why? - Because Canon supply a CUPS addon driver package to support the printers so there is no need to support the printers with the standard CUPS/Gutenprint packages.

The Canon CUPS drivers source code is freely available - except for the precompiled files that make them work.

The above - or similar - problem exists for a lot of current printers. It seems that HP are about the best supported printer using the hplip package ported for use with CUPS for OS/2 but some of the HP printers also need a "plugin" to get them to work with CUPS. Sadly HP do not produce a printer capable of printing directly onto printable CD/DVD discs which is a requirement for any printer I purchase.

So, at the moment, we are at about the same stage as we were before CUPS was ported to OS/2 - support for printers is patchy with a good chance that your preferred printer will either not work properly or not work at all.

I did try approaching Canon to try to get the necessary "plugin" source code released without success. There is more of a chance of Arca Noae being able to get the source code than a private individual - possibly a non disclosure agreement.


Regards

Pete

Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: Dave Yeo on October 22, 2016, 05:46:35 am
In theory it may also be possible to have an ELF loader to load the Linux CUPS plugins. This is how XFree/2 loaded Linux graphic drivers and that code is available. How hard it would be, I don't know. And as usual there is the shortage of talented developers.
Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: David McKenna on October 22, 2016, 02:32:49 pm
 @Lars: does the USBAUDIO.SYS support USB microphones? My USB webcam has one built in - would be a step closer to having some kind of streaming video/sound capability using USB devices.
Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: Pete on October 22, 2016, 09:36:11 pm
Hi All

Sorry, my previous post was a little misleading.

While some Epson and HP printers require a "plugin" some of the Canon source files need to be linked against some Canon pre-compiled libraries during compilation.

Checking the main.c file for the tocanonij application - possibly used to convert something to a format Canon inkjet printers understand - I see the following in the comments at the top of the file:-

 * NOTE:
 *  - As a special exception, this program is permissible to link with the
 *    libraries released as the binary modules.

The required library is defined in the code:-

#define CN_CNCL_LIBNAME "libcnbpcnclapicom2.so"

The other required pre-compiled library file is libcnnet2.so.1.2.3 - without hunting through many source code files I have no idea what it actually does although the name is suggestive of being related to network connectivity.


Having "sweet talked" Paul into porting the Canon driver package I can tell you that they definitely do not work without the necessary pre-compiled libraries being available  :-(

While Daves idea of using an ELF loader for loading linux "plugins" may work it would not help with Canon printer drivers.


Regards

Pete

Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: Lars on October 23, 2016, 01:02:26 am
@Lars: does the USBAUDIO.SYS support USB microphones? My USB webcam has one built in - would be a step closer to having some kind of streaming video/sound capability using USB devices.

Let me put it this way: it should already. If it does not for your case then there is room for improvement. It depends on the sample rate. USB devices only have have a reduced number of sample rates they support. Normally they are smart enough to support 44.1 kHz (CD-ROM sample rate) and/or 48 kHz (the sample rate for professional equipment). Everything else would need to be supported by sample rate conversion in SW.
Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: Martin Iturbide on October 23, 2016, 02:55:19 am
Hi Joop.

I didn't understood what do you mean with "Full USB implementation for add ons".
Can you please explain me a little bit the question.

Regards
Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: Martin Iturbide on October 23, 2016, 05:03:44 am
Hi.

Here it is the consolidation of questions by session:


Session 4: Arca Noae News
1) Is there any roadmap for ArcaOS to support more hardware components.
2) There is a need to have current laptops supported with OS/2, since some users have it running on old Thinkpad laptops. Is there going to be some specific Wifi, USB , Video chipsets that are going to be listed as ArcaOS compliant?

Session 5: Arca Noae Device Drivers: Recent Progress and Future Plans

1) Plug and play with sticks regardless size without special OS/2 treatment. In other words use a stick with windows settings and plug it in an OS/2 machine without LVM treatment.
2) USB 3 (for speeding up backup)
3) Is there any play to support exFAT format?"
4) More support for modern motherboards
5) Support 4Gb mem pro kernel, not 4Gb total
6) A perfectly working RPM, still too many misses.
7) There was a project to make it easy to port BSD drivers to OS/2, was there any progress about it?
8) What is the progress of the video driver? Is there any interesting news about it?

Session 11: Blue Lion demonstration
1) A user is  interested in "uncrippled" odbc (dbase) drivers that will work with both VX-Rexx and VisPro Rexx. He had been using DBExpert but needs something more current since its GUI controls are heavily outdated.
2) Is ArcaOS going to ship with modern Intel Wifi drivers ?
3) CUPS:  Will Arca Noae be approaching Printer manufacturers CUPS "plugins". For example  the Canon MG7550 printer is not supported by CUPS for OS/2 and there special functions of the printer that does not work on CUPS for OS/2. The Canon CUPS drivers source code is freely available, but there is no OS/2 version.  (this is what I understood as a quick summary of the question)
4) When is there going to be more information about ArcaOS (Blue Lion) available like release dates, price, Software componts included, etc.
5) Is there any chance to re-release old OS/2 software and get agreements to get that software for a price. For example StarDock software.

Session 12: Yuri Dario, TBA
1) Any plans to update Recoll?
 
Session 14: BitWise: company profile, products and progress
1) Is there any plan for Java 8?
2) What are they going to do with the office package? This is because OpenOffice loose a lot of momentum and there was (theoretical) discussion inside the community about the steps to archive the project. LibreOffice seems to continue developing the open source office suite.
3) Is there any plan for Qt 5 to be ported?

I'm guessing that some of this question may also be answered on the presentations.

Regards
Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: Paul Smedley on October 23, 2016, 10:19:00 am
Hi Dave,

In theory it may also be possible to have an ELF loader to load the Linux CUPS plugins. This is how XFree/2 loaded Linux graphic drivers and that code is available. How hard it would be, I don't know. And as usual there is the shortage of talented developers.

There is already an elfomf.exe (http://www.os2site.com/sw/dev/gcc/misc/elfomf.zip) but unfortunately source isn't available.  I guess this could convert a elf format static lib into omf format? However, most closed source plugins are in .so format....

Cheers,

Paul
Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: Dave Yeo on October 23, 2016, 06:15:44 pm
The lack of source is a killer for a GPL application and elfomf is based on GPL code, namely emxomf.
A better option is objconv http://www.agner.org/optimize/#objconv (http://www.agner.org/optimize/#objconv) also on Hobbes. It'll convert ELF to OMF, unpack and repack static libs and disassemble DLLs and SO files. Worth looking at the documentation and a nice tool.
In theory if ELF code is just linked into CUPS, it may work but if using system calls, a compatibility layer would be needed.
Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: Joop on October 23, 2016, 06:50:40 pm
Hi Joop.

I didn't understood what do you mean with "Full USB implementation for add ons".
Can you please explain me a little bit the question.

Regards
Sure, its not that hard, camera's, audio equipment, sticks any size, gps equipment, lots of stuff needs an usb connection just for updating maps or software and does need the pc just for the connection.
Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: Lars on October 26, 2016, 10:24:30 am
... and none of the additional SW needed is likely to be available under OS/2.
Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: David McKenna on October 29, 2016, 04:27:24 pm
 I'd be interested to know what ever happened to the Arca Noae printer driver that was announced awhile back as going to be part of the subscription service...
Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: Martin Iturbide on October 29, 2016, 04:51:19 pm
Thanks David.

I found the reference since I didn't remember it.
https://www.arcanoae.com/roadmap/

Quote
Enhanced printer support for OS/2 (with and without CUPS)

A new printer driver package as part of the Arca Noae subscription is in the works. This package will consist of an updated PostScript printer driver for OS/2, usable both with and without CUPS. OS/2 and eComStation users with a need to print to newer PostScript-compatible printers should be pleased with the enhancements planned for this driver package.
Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: Paul Smedley on October 30, 2016, 02:08:31 am
Thanks David.

I found the reference since I didn't remember it.
https://www.arcanoae.com/roadmap/

Quote
Enhanced printer support for OS/2 (with and without CUPS)

A new printer driver package as part of the Arca Noae subscription is in the works. This package will consist of an updated PostScript printer driver for OS/2, usable both with and without CUPS. OS/2 and eComStation users with a need to print to newer PostScript-compatible printers should be pleased with the enhancements planned for this driver package.

I'm sure this will just be Alex's psprint driver with further improvements....
Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: Oxyd on October 30, 2016, 05:17:46 pm
@joop,
...
Unluckily larger drives are now exFAT, which can be another question, "will we ever get exFAT support?"
...
Valery Sedletski(Valerius on IRC) (http://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=715) is writing Fat32 driver with more speed, format, chkdsk support, files up to 4GB and much more. In plans - universal fat driver (Fat/Fat32/ExFAT), and rewrite it to 32 bit(similar to new ramfs.ifs) after ArcaOS beta release.
Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: Michaelhz on November 02, 2016, 05:23:14 pm
Thanks David.

I found the reference since I didn't remember it.
https://www.arcanoae.com/roadmap/


Hi all,

My first question would be whether Arca Noae is still on the roadmap.

In particular I would be interested, if the development of "Support hard disks larger than 2 terabytes" is still on the agenda.
My last OS/2 system is a Samba server for my family. With the 2TB limitation, I reach now my limits. Without a clear statement, the transition to FreeBSD would be inevitable - very unfortunate.
Title: Re: Any questions for Warpstock 2016 ??
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on November 02, 2016, 05:47:58 pm
Warpstock 2016 begins this week on Friday. This is the only gathering of it's kind in North America. The list of presenters and sessions has grown, and now includes some time for participants to bring their own issues, questions and comments.

The main web page for Warpstock 2016 is here. Instructions and a link to watch the conference on-line will be posted there.

http://www.warpstock.org/staticpages/index.php?page=ws2016_home (http://www.warpstock.org/staticpages/index.php?page=ws2016_home)

At an early session, we will ask each attendee why they came to Warpstock and if they would like to present or request a discussion. Subsequent sessions will be reserved to cover topics proposed by attendees.

Why did you come to Warpstock?
Tell us how you use OS/2 or eComStation.
Do you want to give a presentation? Title of presentation?
Do you have a question to discuss? Question (or questions) to be discussed?
Do you bring a laptop or other system that is a problem system? Describe problem?

There is a little room in the schedule for these questions and discussion. The list of activities will grow as we make last minute changes.

Best regards,
Warpstock board of directors