B.E.O.S. releases first app_server Skeleton
30 September 2002, 19:35gmt, by , Contributing Journalist
From the skeleton in the closet department...

Blue Eyed OS has released the first skeleton of their app_server. No, it's not something you scream and run away from, it's actually a milestone in their development of a BeOS clone.

It still uses X11, but it's a step forward. I know you want to read what matters and not my lame jokes, so here's the full monty:

First skeleton of the new app_server in the CVS. It is far from something complete but I like it's behaviour. There are no input handling (mouse, key, refresh) and I have to fix a race condition, but it draws line, rect, ellipse... but no string (it's the part of Michael Weichert!!). There is only the X11 rendering, drawing operations must be fixed before include the native window managing done by Tobe, IMHO. If you press Enter in the app_server console you will see debug info (and that the ressource management is working). The Application Kit will be my main job now.

If you're like me (and i hope you're not...), you'll want to check screenshots, so get your gear and head over here.

Support Zathros -- Purchase a Webcam
27 September 2002, 20:46gmt, by , Senior Journalist
From the longtime-friend-of-beos department...

I'd like to let you all know about the great offer that Adam (Kancept) McNutt has going at his site. He is offering a great price on webcams, and the profits he would normally receive are going instead to our good friend Ted (Zathros) Leeuwesteijn, who as you may already know, is not feeling well these days. Please consider purchasing one of these great looking webcams, and know that you will also be helping out a fellow BeOS Community member too. Thank you.

beunited Annouces Free Membership Program
26 September 2002, 17:10gmt, by , Contributing Journalist
From the "did someone say FREE?!" department...

beunited.org has announced officially at their site what you already new if you read Simon Gauvin's interview, both here and over at BeGroovy.

Remember, this is a limited offer, even with the one year extension, so as soon as it's available, go for it!

Without further ado, and since i'm a nice guy, i'll quote the entire announcement so you can read it all here:

Free Community Membership at beunited.org will be available to anyone, starting as soon as the Standards Portal is released. This promotion will continue until a full OSBOS distribution is available to the community. At that time all memberships will be extended for one year at no extra charge. A membership form will be available ones the Standards Portal is released, allowing members to easily join. New members will be eligible for the monthly "Inside beunited.org" email newsletter.

Nice, real nice folks. You can be certain i'll be first in line to get my Membership!

New Site Creates Yet Another BeOS Distro
26 September 2002, 12:23gmt, by , Senior Journalist
From the choices-aplenty department...

I became aware of BeFAQ.com recently, (no, not BeFAQS, that's different altogether.) and contacted the owner via email. He was kind enough to respond right away, and let me know more about what he's planning to do.

Here follows the email and reply:

Hi Chris, I will be glad to do tell you about it.

BeFaq hosts a few projects for BeOS, like the Greek translation of the BeAPI documentation and the somewhat popular BeOS 5 PE Max Edition distro, which is a customised distribution of BeOS 5 Personal Edition with a few improvements. It was based on BeOSOnline Developers distro.

The only problem I have is that the host only allows 300kbps trafic on my page so when people are downloading the files exceeding that limit, the page seems unavailable. I haven't found a mirror yet, and I can't afford yet to pay for more space or speed, so for the time being even if you write about my page on BeOSJournal you will have to mention this fact.

BeFaq.com is virtually hosted inside www.devconone.com which is ment to be a portal for BeOS developers. It is under heavy construction right now, with a database being built and a system for Articles designed from scratch. Since I work as a full time developer for a software house, I have little time to spare on it so it is a little bit behind, but I hope to have it finished before the end of October.

Now about BeOS 5 PE Max Edition, I am planning for the second release, which will include new software, upgrades, utilities and stuff, some fixes for a few bugs (for example the GifTranslator 1.3 cause problems with Pentiums and K6 so I will have it in a selectable package form with the original GifTranslator). The major thing about Max is that it is Athlon XP patched and has a lot of drivers that make it install perfectly on ~80% of todays computers. Also I would like to have BeOS users more involved in the process, by sending me requests on what to include in Max, in terms of software, drivers or documentation. Note that BeOS Max contains only legal distributions of Be or third party software. No dano, or Professional Edition parts, and no commercial software. Only freeware and shareware.

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Simmons [mailto:]
Sent: Thursday, September 26, 2002 10:46 AM
To:
Subject: heyas

Hey there...

Just noticed befaq.com for the first time.

Can you tell me a bit more about it? I'd like to know more, in the interest for BeOSJournal readers, etc.

Maybe you can write me a small press release...

Best regards,

So there you have it... yet another BeOS distribution for the masses. Please don't overload his server, and if anyone can offer up some mirror space, it would be much appreciated.

Reminder: BeOSJournal Still Offering Subdomains
26 September 2002, 12:04gmt, by , Senior Journalist
From the flowers-of-new-hope department...

Just wanted to remind everyone that The BeOSJournal is still offering subdomains to anyone involved with BeOS in some way.

The subdomains include 5mb of space, an email, and the name of your choice, all for the low price of five dollars of your currency, per year. That's an amazing deal, even considering many other low-cost alternatives out there. Not to mention that you get linked from our front page, and your url is directly attached to a well known BeOS resource.

All proceeds until the end of this year will be graciously donated to help our good friend, and fellow BeOS Community member, Zathros. Please see the signup page for further details on how you can send your payment.

One small note. I will be attending BeGeistert in a few weeks, and am willing to set up your subdomain now, if you want to bring your payment to BeGeistert, and happen to be going too. ;)

Review: VideoCanvas DV-7 Digital Video Workstation
24 September 2002, 13:04gmt, by , Contributing Journalist
From the digital-video-goodness department...

Now you can have fantastic picture quality. The DV-7 is a digital video and audio editing system - complete set of professional tools - made easy.

Read more of this review...

Art Paint Source at BeUnited.org
23 September 2002, 09:04gmt, by , Contributing Journalist
From the painting department...

The Art Paint source code has been donated to BeUnited.org by Heikki Suhonen, and will be made available at code.beunited.org.

BeUnited.org President Simon Gauvin stated "These donations demonstrate that the community is reacting to beunited.org's continuing commitment to support the development of open source software for the OSBOS platform" and also thanked Heikki Suhonen for his donation.

YellowTab Achieves Zeta
23 September 2002, 14:08gmt, by , Senior Journalist
From the state-of-mind department...

The folks at YellowTab have announced they have reach Beta stage 1 of Zeta, a BeOS distribution. All the power to them, we say! (edit: I completely mis-read the email I received, so I am correcting this now. ;)

The current beta is for closed members of their beta testing program, but YellowTab expects to announce more updates soon for the public, according to their "road map" information listed on their website.

Hopefully YellowTab will be able to make a more public display and announcement when the upcoming BeGeistert begins, October 19th - 20th, in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Interview with Simon Gauvin of beunited.org
22 September 2002, 16:48gmt, by , Senior Journalist
From the united-we-conquer department...

The BeOS Journal and BeGroovy got together over the weekend to interview Simon Gauvin from beunited.org.

Read on for more juicy details.

OpenBeOS Betas
22 September 2002, 14:49gmt, by , Contributing Journalist
From the OpenBeOS department...

OpenBeOS has released a beta version of the OpenBeOS Print server. Also, OpenBFS Beta 2 was released a while ago. Download both of them, test them, and fill out bug reports if needed. Congrats to the OpenBeOS team, keep up the good work!

New CommuniGate Pro Sports Extensive Changes
21 September 2002, 11:51gmt, by , Senior Journalist
From the redirected department...

The folks at Stalk Software, Inc. have released yet again another feature-packed version of their remarkable software CommuniGate Pro, not just for BeOS but 29 other operating systems too. Go to their BeBits Page and download your copy now! You won't be sorry, as the list of feature updates in this version is quite extensive.

Don't forget to send them a virtual "Thank You" card for their hard work... This truly is a superb product, and it is heartening to see software of this caliber being developed for BeOS. Cudos guys!

Star Control 2 Now At SourceForge.
14 September 2002, 18:02gmt, by , Senior Journalist
From the control-the-stars department...

Well, it was only a matter of time before the source code to Star Control finally made it's way to SourceForge. We're glad it has become available to anyone interested in helping out this tremendous project. Not only are there ports for Windows, MacOS , and Linux, but BeOS and any other operating system that supports the SDL library may work too. Sweeeeet.

Check out the activity for yourself at http://sourceforge.net/projects/sc2 and see what I mean.

We will definately be watching the progress with baited breath, as more games being ported to BeOS can only mean good news.

News From Pixel32.
14 September 2002, 18:02gmt, by , Senior Journalist
From the secret-labs department...

Great news folks! You thought they were dead a long time ago, but really in secret, they've been quietly working on code. This represents a major stepping stone to yet -another- graphics program for BeOS. Tell your friends, family, and the neighbours dog. There is more on the horizon for BeOS than ever before.

Here's from the official news at pixel32.box.sk

Latest news
09/13/2002
New alpha version of Pixel32 v0.99.8 for Windows, Linux and BeOS has been released to our betatesters and public release should follow in a couple of weeks.

Fantastic! Thanx go to Francis for submitting to us.

BeWicked back On-line
10 September 2002, 13:04gmt, by , Senior Rant Artist
From the Eye Candy box

I'd like to take a moment to let everyone know BeWicked the BeOS UI site is back on-line thanks to The BeOS Journal. BeWicked was a BeOS oriented graphics site that carried BeOS themed "Desktop Accessories" such as wallpaper, icons, & skins.

The site has suffered much down time as the server that originally hosted the site was hit by a power surge far greater then its power conditioning could handle. For those who enjoyed the work BeWicked hosted it's back & new updates will filter in as time allows.

I would also like to take a moment to suggest you read the Be Well article. Zathros could really use the support right now & a reminder we are a community & will stand by him as best we can.

- JET

http://www.BeWicked.tk/
http://BeWicked.beosjournal.org/

The 'Be Well' Campaign.
9 September 2002, 13:04gmt, by , Senior Journalist
From the solidarity department...

I'd like to take a serious moment out of your time to discuss an important development in the BeOS Community.

A fellow BeShare Member, notable BeOS user, and all around great guy has become very ill with a serious and potentially devastating biological disease. I speak about Ted "Zathros" Leeuwesteijn, who lives in the Netherlands, and has been an avid user of BeOS since the early days of R3.

He has been sick for some time, and it was only recently after receiving a full checkup by his doctor that he was diagnosed with an unnamed (at this time) biological disease that affects his nervous system and contributes to neurological impairment. He is (as of September 9th) to start on a treatment program soon, and expects to fully recover by the end of the year, as I recall from our discussion last week, after I went to see how he was doing.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I feel it is very important for the rest of us to let him know how we feel about him, his contributions to BeOS and to us. He is a good friend, many will know him from BeShare, and his activity on the mailing lists and forums online. As of September 9th, he hasn't even been able to touch his computer in almost 5 weeks, let alone consider being active.

I want to stress that when I last saw him, he was in fine physical shape, except for his back which is a result of the combination of above said ailments, and his mental state. He is not alright mentally, and this is distressing to me as it is still an unknwon factor at this point in time. Without going too far on a limb here, I will merely say that he is not as well as he could be, by far. Hence why I am writing this to you all now.

How can you help? I will be providing his physical mailing address below, and arranging for a PayPal account in his honor soon. (Someone needs to help me with this. I'm not in the US.). What I would like to see happen is for everyone around the world to send him some token of appreciation, whereby it is a postcard, getwell card, letter, picture, or whatever else you can think of. I am very sure he would appreciate each and every one. Thank you all for listening to me, it really means a lot.

Physical Address:
Ted Leeuwesteijn
Jean Monnestraat 1 (street name & number)
3066 VR
Rotterdam, The Netherlands,
Zuid Holland

UPDATE: Use this form to send via PayPal. (Thanks to VitViper!)

Thank you, all... Peace!
-Chris Simmons,
Avid BeOS User
Comments

Blender Project Means Good News for OBOS.
9 September 2002, 07:30gmt, by , Contributing Journalist
From the blending-in department...

Hi gang! I think everyone in BeOS land should know that the Blender fund has now reached it's target goal of $100,000 and is set to officially open source it.

Here are the details of their press release and more information:

The Open Blender project has met their target, collecting sufficient money to pay for releasing the Blender sources!

On Oct. 1st the needed contracts will be signed with NaN, and payment done.

There will be a pre-release of Open Blender Oct. 5th for members. Then Oct 11-12-13th, there will be a Blender Conference in Amsterdam, Holland (Technix: are you going to that? ;). On the last day of the conference, the CVS server will be plugged into the Internet, and the new home of Blender will see the light (Blender dot org).

The Open Blender Project still need your support, also to allow the Foundation a headstart. But nothing can stop it anymore... :-)

Related links:
http://www.blender3d.com
http://www.elysiun.com

Blender is a cross plaform 3D creation suite, allowing fully integrated modeling, animation, rendering, post production and interactive 3D creation and playback.
We are in the process of bringing back the old Blender product website. For the time being check www.elysiun.com for more info.

New Realtime API Under Discussion.
7 September 2002, 19:15gmt, by , Contributing Journalist
From the AUDIOphile department...

From LeBuzz's site comes the following (very) interesting bit of news.

There's an effort, lead by Frans van Nispen of Xentronix, to develop a new audio API for BeOS/OBOS. A real time API which would allow for every audio app written to support it.

This is just a small quote from their site:

As you all know, support is very important for BeOS/OBOS. It is the most powerfull platform for audio.

I have been working to get as much support from 3th parties as possible to make OpenBeOS an accepted media choice and with some success.

(...)

This means, we want a plugin API that can be used by any BeOS/OBOS developer to add plugin support to their audio application. We want this to be a standard for BeOS.

To even make this more exciting, Sonic Timeworks is concidering to port their plugins to BeOS if we can meet these goals and add their 2$ to the design.

This is very good news not only for audiophiles out there, but for BeOS/OBOS in general. The more functionality and support we get, the better the chances we have of succeeding.

Head over to Dane "Buzz" Scott's site and read the entire piece, which has a link to the discussion group.
Comments

BlueEyedOS Update.
4 September 2002, 12:55gmt, by , Contributing Journalist
From the "blue eyed boy" department...

The B.E.O.S. team has updated their site. Changes include the moving of their Status page and also the creation of two very useful sections, Screenshots and News Archive (hint hint: update those screenshots, we want to see new material).

If you look at their Status page you can see a number of kits being near completion, which include the Kernel, the Support and the XML kit.

Also, being their work based on the Linux kernel, Hardware OpenGL is about 95% done.

Earlier, they reported on the "official creating of the app_server", which supports "full C++ implementation, a conception allowing a full OpenGL implementation" among others aspects.

Work seems to be progressing quite well, we'll be on the lookout for updates and we'll keep you posted about this project.

UPDATE: My buddy Jason VanDerMark has posted an interview with Guillaume Maillard on his site, TotallyBE. So head over there and catch a very interesting read. Good work Jason :-)

UPDATE 2: On a related note, OpenBeOS has the log for the second "Q&A Session with Michael Phipps" up on their site. Get the full monty by clicking here. Also a very interesting read, with lots of information.
Comments

PE Source Now Available At BeUnited.
4 September 2002, 12:40gmt, by , Contributing Journalist
From the "other PE" department...

PE's source has been made available for download over at BeUnited's site. In case you missed it, the source was donated in August by Maarten Hekkelman, a very generous contribution.

Since their post isn't that big, i'll just be a nice guy to you all and quote it:

The source code to the Pe editor is now available at the beunited.org development portal at code.beunited.org. Access is through normal anonymous cvs login using pserver using the following command: $cvs -d :pserver::/cvs/pe login Those who wish to contribute to the project and submit code are asked to contact beunited.org directly at .

There you go. So all you PE users who were complaining it wasn't being updated go grab the source and start improving it.

UPDATE: Simon Gauvin posted on the forums some extra information on how to build PE's source. Since i'm a real nice guy, i'll post the whole thing in here:

If you're on a BeOS x86 box, type:
$ cvs -d :pserver::/cvs/pe co pe_x86
$ cd pe_x86
$ make

and that should be all. For BeOS ppc you should type:

$ cvs -d :pserver::/cvs/pe co pe_ppc
$ cd pe_ppc
$ make
UPDATE: In some cases some people may experience build problems trying to find the mail library if you are using MDR. Before building execute this command in the terminal:

$ ln -s /system/lib/libmail.so /boot/develop/lib/x86

There you go, now get busy!
Comments

OBFS reaches beta and "We Want YOU!"
4 September 2002, 00:22gmt, by , Contributing Journalist
From the b-b-b-BETA department...

Beta Stage it is. The OpenBeOS BFS team is the second team to reach beta stage in their quest for R1.

OBFS is complete, feature wise, and now it just needs a LOT of testing and debugging. Hence the "we want you!" bit i wrote in the header, don't want you to get any weird ideas...

From the OpenBeOS site (if you ask me the url i'll wack you over the head) you can see what they would like YOU to do. Yes you, the user, the "joe user", you don't have to be a "joe c++" (thanks Tom) coder to help you know, and not just with OBFS, though it's about it we're talking about right now. So get in gear and start testing, stressing and just giving it a hard time, and report back to the devs.

Detailed instructions can be found by clicking here

Great work everyone, we all look forward to more updates like this one.

UPDATE: Here are a couple more links (thanks _V_) that should help you with your "quest to build OpenBeOS": 1 and 2.

UPDATE 2: Just a quick mention of the command you must use to get the OBFS source:
cvs -z3 -d:pserver::/cvsroot/open-beos co BeFS
Good luck and start testing.
Comments