[241] in comp.os.os2.announce archive
NEW OS/2 DEVELOPMENT TOOL: Innoval System Solutions' SurfBoard/2
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (roderus@ibm.net)
Wed Oct 18 23:18:10 1995
To: os2ann.DISCUSS@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 1995 01:55:00 GMT
From: roderus@ibm.net
Reply-To: roderusl@ibm.net
Overview
--------
In 1969, Vinton Cerf, then a graduate student at UCLA, helped develop what
today has become the Internet. Some say, probably accurately, that what we
now call "surfing" the net was derived from an older term, named for this
founder of the Internet: "Cerfing."
About the time that the Internet was becoming a viable reality in the
mid-eighties, another unrelated development was taking place. Mike
Cowlishaw, an IBMer, had developed REXX, a procedural language for the VM
mainframe operating system, and it was rapidly becoming the procedural
language of choice for numerous operating systems including VM, MVS, OS/400,
and OS/2 Warp. It was easy to learn, easy to use, and very powerful.
Individuals, many who had never written programs before, were writing simple
end-user utilities as well as major host-based network applications. Today,
REXX is also used as the procedural language for numerous tools such as EPM,
the OS/2 Enhanced Editor, and the Post Road Mailer.
Unfortunately, until now, REXX has not been very useful as a procedural
language for the Internet because there were no easy-to-use "hooks" to
TCP/IP.
SurfBoard/2 is a library of TCP/IP functions for REXX and VX-REXX. With
SurfBoard/2 you can create simple Internet utilities or complete
applications that tap the Internet. SurfBoard/2 is distributed with a set
of REXX utilities that you can put to work immediately. Each utility is
carefully annotated so that you can tailor each to your own needs, if you
choose to do so.
The Utilities
-------------
WEBNEW - Run this utility with a list of web pages that you want to
track. It takes a quick inventory of the pages and reports documents that
have changed since the last inventory. The output is an HTML hypertext
document you can use with the IBM WebExplorer. This utility can save you a
lot of time and reduce connect charges significantly by not having to browse
for what's new. The syntax is:
[C:\] webnew mylist output.htm
NEWSNEW - Get a text file containing new news items for a particular news
group. Some information is "hard wired" into the utility and you may want
to modify it for your own use. This utility is a real time saver. It can
also be easily modified to strip headers selectively, and organize the items
by subject threads for subsequent offline reading. It is also useful
for LAN administrators who want to create news digests for end-users.
[C:\] newsnew comp.os.os2.announce since 10/01/95 mustread.txt
WEBCOPY - This copies a file from a web site to your hard drive. (Note the
"http://" prefix is optional in this utility.) You may change this as you
wish. A -g option gathers referenced image files if the requested file is
an HTML file.
[C:\] webcopy www.aescon.com/bestofos2/banner.gif d:\pictures\banner.gif
FTPCOPY - Similar to WEBCOPY, FTPCOPY gets a file from an anonymous FTP
site. This utility can be easily modified to work with passwords and to
send files, or groups of files, as well.
[C:\] ftpcopy hobbes.nmsu.edu/os2/demos/post103a.zip
POPLIST - A simple utility to get a list of mail from a POP server. All of
the parameters for this utility are coded into the utility and must be set
for your own POP server and password.
[C:\] poplist
WEBCRAWL - This is a sample web crawler that crawls from a document and
seeks out a list of referenced sites that contain a search string. It
reports sites found and whether or not the links work.
[C:\] webcrawl http://www.indelible-blue.com/ib
*** AND MANY MORE ***
Additional Information
----------------------
Additional Information and an order form may be found on the Web at:
http://www.aescon.com/innoval/surf.htm
We will begin shipping a single user licensed version of SurfBoard/2 on
Wednesday, November 1, 1995. Electronic delivery will begin on this day, as
well.
Until November 1, 1995, we are accepting orders with an introductory price
of $29.00. The MSRP price is $49.00 and street price is expected to be
fairly close to this price. Orders will be processed in the order received.
Credit card numbers, however, will not be processed until the product is
shipped to you. If you are not satisfied with SurfBoard/2 for any reason,
you may return the product within 30 days of delivery for a full refund.
We recommend that you have a system with 8MB of RAM and at least 1MB of
available disk space for SurfBoard/2. OS/2 version 3.0 or version 2.11 with
TCP/IP and appropriate Internet access is required.
You do not need to know how to program in REXX but some knowledge of REXX or
access to suitable REXX references is desirable. Persons with a fundamental
knowledge of programming, even without specific REXX skills, should be able
to use the REXX help files provided with OS/2, with SurfBoard/2
documentation, to obtain all of the necessary information for creating
SurfBoard/2 utilities.
When you place an order, you may select the Electronic Delivery Option or
you may choose regular shipping. If you select the Electronic Delivery
Option you will receive an email explaining how to download and install
using our web code center. Regular shipments are first class mail or
international priority mail for certain countries. We can ship FedEx
priority or standard overnight for an additional charge.
You may place an order using on the web, by sending fax to (914)835-3857, by
sending email to innoval@ibm.net or by telephone to (914)835-3838. A
plain-text order form is available on this web site.
Prices are subject to change without notice. All payments must be in U.S.
dollars and U.S. funds. We accept American Express, Visa, MasterCard,
checks in US dollars drawn on US banks, and international postal money
orders.
For additional information send email to innoval@ibm.net or telephone
(914) 835-3838.
