 May OS/2 Shareware Before you pack your files away, you need to compress them. By Christopher Relf |
|
Before you install a shareware program that you have downloaded from the Net, you should always check the version information. You could be downloading an old version with limited features, or even an experimental one that could crash your workstation. Generally, the first release version is 1.00 — there may be versions before this one, but they are usually 'under construction' versions. When the author makes a minor improvement, the version number is incremented (for example: 1.00 becomes 1.01). But when a major change occurs (a lot of extra functionality, or a new PM interface, for example) the version number increments to the next whole integer (for example: 1.54 becomes 2.00). A word of warning: if the version code ends with either a or b — beware! Alpha versions (for example, 1.32a) have undergone little testing at all, and beta versions (for example, 2.46b) have been tested at a base level, but have usually been released for others to test. If an alpha or beta release falls over and you lose data, or even suffer hardware damage, you have used the program at your own risk!
| RAR 2.02 | |||||
| RAR 2.02 is a text-based
application that runs in an OS/2 window -- you know my soft spot for text-based programs!
RAR is an extremely powerful tool that allows you to manage and control archive files, and
it's actually really easy to use. For those of you who don't like text-based applications,
an optional full-screen interactive interface is available, and both it and the standard
version have extensive mouse support and menus. For die-hard OS/2 users, a standard
command line interface is included, and if you've had any experience with PKZip at all,
you'll feel right at home. A special compression algorithm is used to shrink those
multimedia data files without image or sound distortion, and the registered version
includes authenticity verification -- a great idea for you software developers out there!
If an archive has been damaged in transit, RAR has the ability to recover physically
damaged archives, and other features are included such as locking, password protection,
ANSI comments (funky!), file order list, and disk volume labels. A pretty good little
package! been around for a while, and with every release it just gets better. I know that I've mentioned Peter Nielsen's PMView before, but it is really one of those applications that has stood the test of time over many years. It's been around for longer than I've been using OS/2 , and that's a while! |
|||||
Download the version for your operating system here:
|
|||||
| Price: | $US35 | ||||
| Requirements: | OS/2 Warp 3, 486DX2 66, 4M RAM, 800 by 600, video card, supported mouse, Info-ZIP's Zip 2.0 or 2.1 and UnZip 5.1 or 5.2. (or compression programs with identical command line references) | ||||
| Install instructions: | Download to your local drive, and run the EXE file. | ||||
 Links online: |
http://www.musthave.com/desc/rar.html | ||||
| Rating: |  |
||||
| Zip Control | |||||
| Zip Control is an OS/2 'point and click' front end to the freeware Info-ZIP archive utilities Zip.exe and UnZip.exe. This means you will also need these other programs, as they do all the work while Zip Control gives you a really easy to use PM application to control them. Zip Control makes it easy to view and print the files in a ZIP archive, extract one or more of the files, and create new archives. With the click of your mouse, you can even view the contents of one or more files that are contained in the ZIP file. Above that, the internal Zip Control 'view' function respects the WorkPlace Shell file associations; the registered application associated with the file extension is called to open the file. Zip Control can is the ability to print a contained file -- this is a very useful feature that is missing from a lot of other similar programs. You can wade your way through a large and/or complex ZIP file using the find function, which searches and highlights files based on your search text. Like almost all OS/2 programs, you have extensive use of the object desktop. You can easily drag and drop files from ZIP file to folder or Desktop, drag and drop files and folders from Desktop and folders to Zip Control to create or add to the ZIP file, or to open the ZIP file. More common functions are included, such as deletion of selected files from archive, addition of one or more files to archive, and an optional expert mode with reduced window size (just a list of files), using accelerator keys and/or the right mouse button pop-up menu. If required you can 'CheckOut' stuff: test, extract to temporary directory, virus scan (report), re-zip or even test-run install programs, then delete the temporary directory. Support for both IBM and McAfee virus scanners is provided. Zip Control is well set out and easy to use. A great utility that's well worth downloading. | |||||
|
Download the version for your operating system
here:
|
||||
| Publisher: | RPF Software | ||||
| Price: | $US35 | ||||
| Requirements: | OS/2 Warp 3, 486DX2 66, 4M RAM, 800 by 600 video card, supported mouse, Info-ZIP's Zip 2.0 or 2.1 and UnZip 5.1 or 5.2. (or compression programs with identical command line references) | ||||
| Install instructions: | Download to your local drive, then unzip it (for help click here) and run the EXE file. | ||||
| Links online: |
http://www.musthave.com/desc/zipcontrol.html | ||||
| Rating: | |
||||
| ZipMe 1.3 | |||||
| ZiPMe is a 32-bit multithreaded zip shell for the Presentation Manager of OS/2 2.x, OS/2 Warp 3 and above that helps you to manage zip archives from Info-ZIP versions Zip 2.0 or 2.1 and Unzip 5.1 or 5.2. It looks easy to use, but takes a little getting used to. Initially, you open your archive in the default icon view, and file extension associations are preserved (as you can see from the screenshot). ZiPMe has quite a similar graphical user interface layout as WinZip, so if you've previously used the latter, the transition to ZiPME should be quite easy. This also makes ZiPMe a good choice if you, say, use WinZip at work, and would like a similar interface at home. Overall, ZiPMe is a useful little utility, especially since it's free! | |||||
|
Download the version for your operating system
here:
|
||||
| Publisher: | Peter Eggert | ||||
| Price: | Postcardware | ||||
| Requirements: | OS/2 Warp 3, 486DX2 66, 4M RAM, 800 by 600 video card, supported mouse, Info-ZIP's Zip 2.0 or 2.1, UnZip 5.1 or 5.2 (or compression programs with identical command line references). | ||||
| Install instructions: | Download to your local drive, then unzip it (for help click here) and run the EXE file. | ||||
| Rating: |  |
||||
| Info-Zip | |||||
| Info-ZIP is a bit of a worldwide legacy in the field of compression. The Info-ZIP team, consisting of about 20 primary authors and over 100 hundred beta-testers, was formed way back in 1990. Their quest is "to provide free, portable, high-quality versions of the Zip and UnZip compressor-archiver utilities that are compatible with the DOS-based PKZip by PKWARE". And that's exactly what they have done. Versions are currently available for Unix, VMS, OS/2, Windows NT/9x (Win32), Windows 3.x, Windows CE, MS-DOS, AmigaDOS, Atari TOS, Acorn RISC OS, BeOS, Mac OS, SMS/QDOS, MVS and OS/390 OE, VM/CMS, FlexOS, Tandem NSK and Human68K (Japanese). Shared dynamic link libraries (DLLs) are available for Unix, OS/2, Win32 and Win16, and graphical interfaces are available for Win32, Win16, WinCE and Macintosh. If you have used PKZip before, Info-ZIP is pretty much the same. In fact, there's a good chance that you use Info-ZIP already, but without knowing it. The compression code in the unzip.dll distributed with IBM's OS/2 Warp BonusPak and WebExplorer is based on Info-ZIP, Sun used Info-ZIP's self-extractor to distribute the NT version of their HotJava browser, and that fantastic privacy program (reviewed here a little while ago) PGP uses Info-ZIP code as a first step in encrypting files. Info-ZIP's primary compression engine has also been spun off into the free zlib compression library, used in Netscape Communicator and countless other products. It's a great substitute for PKZip, and there are plenty of PM front ends available out there if you don't like the command line (see Zip Control and ZiPMe above). | |||||
|
Download the version for your operating system
here:
|
||||
| Publisher: | Info-ZIP | ||||
| Price: | Freeware | ||||
| Links online: |
http://www.cdrom.com/pub/infozip/ | ||||
| Rating: |  |
||||
⌐ Australian Consolidated Press 1999. All rights reserved.
