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FREEWARE: Free OS/2 + DOS Software (Mainly Power User Utilities, but some general purpose)

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dennis Bareis)
Sat Apr 4 04:08:01 1998

To: os2ann.DISCUSS@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU
Date: 29 Mar 1998 11:01:00 -0500
From: dbareis@ozemail.com.au (Dennis Bareis)
Reply-To: db0@anz.com

Reply-to:     db0@anz.com
[Followups directed to comp.os.os2.utilities]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I have written a lot of utilities and made them available as freeware on my
home page at "http://www.ozemail.com.au/~dbareis".  There is some DOS 
stuff but most of it is OS/2.

While there are some general purpose programs, they are mostly of use to web
designers, programmers or integrators.

I have cut and pasted one of the pages below (looks good in a fixed font),
sorry about formatting otherwise  (its a two column table)...

                       [Image] OS/2 FreeWare [Image]

This software has all been written by Dennis Bareis. Please read the
disclaimer before downloading or using any software from these pages. You
should also check out my recommended software page for other very useful
code.

In this table the top entries are the latest to be added or updated. This
makes it easier for you to recognize changes when you next log on.

     Package                           Information

                 This rexx preprocessor can be used to generate HTML code
                 from source files. It supports commands such as
                 "#include", "#define", "#if" and much more.
      HTMLPP
      98.087     I maintain two differing home pages from the same
   64,831 bytes  source, all the html you are seeing has been
    [updated]    processed/generated by this program. Note that the '#if'
                 processing is very powerful and that you can execute any
                 rexx commands and use the output. The #define command
                 supports parameters.

                 This program compiles rexx code to create ".EXE" files.
     REXX2EXE    The resultant executable does not contain the source and
      98.085     by default is compressed and encrypted so people can't
  194,224 bytes  even patch text strings. You can generate 2 types of
    [updated]    ".EXE" files, a larger standalone or a much smaller one
                 that requires a "DLL" at runtime. If you are interested
                 in this program you should also check out REXBUILD.

                 This rexx program is an automated text editor. It allows
     TEXTEDIT    you to easily modify files such as "CONFIG.SYS". It has
      98.085     not been specifically written for "CONFIG.SYS" but does
   64,191 bytes  have some specialized commands to make editing this file
    [updated]    easier. It is very powerful and can make decisions based
                 on return codes, environment variables etc.

     ARCHIVE     Creates icons which turn OS/2's archiving on & off. It
      98.076     allows you to click on an icon to turn archiving on and
   3,408 bytes   automatically turn it off again after the archive has
    [updated]    taken place on the following boot. The install program
                 takes care of WARP 3 / WARP 4 differences.

     Netscape    This is a sample which makes use of a recommended tool
     Security    called RESMGR to automatically patch OS/2 netscape 2.02E
      Patch      to remove options, change buttons and links etc.

                 This utility can be used to "patch" files rather than
                 distribute the whole thing. There are two utilities
                 included. MAKBUILD.EXE compares the current and previous
     PATCHIT     version of a file and creates a much smaller 'patch'
      96.280     file. REBUILD.EXE takes the patch file, performs as many
   64,059 bytes  verifications as possible and then applies the patch to
                 the older version on a users machine to build the
                 desired file. Note that you can also sometimes get quite
                 good gains even with using an unrelated file as an old
                 version.

                 This rexx utility accepts user input and generates one
                 or more output files from a template. You specify
                 (without coding) what questions will be asked and what
                 validations should occur. Some basic validations are
     TEMPLATE    built in and rexx code can be called for more complex
      98.021     requirements.
  46,250 bytes
                 An example is included in the documentation which shows
                 how a CM/2 response file is tailored after a few simple
                 questions have been answered. Also included is
                 "CursorT.EXE" which can be used to change the shape of
                 the OS/2 cursor (can be handy in rexx code).

                 This small rexx program processes .GIF and .JPG files
                 either by dropping files or directories onto the icon it
                 installs or via the command line.

                 If using the icon then information about the images
                 (Width, height, & size) along with the image itself are
     IMGINFO     displayed in the NETSCAPE browser (these can then be
      97.335     printed if you wish). Depending on which icon you used
   5,070 bytes   either a single directory or a directory tree are shown
                 so you could display all images on a drive at once.

                 The command line version gives you more control than the
                 icon and by default has a simplistic output mainly
                 listing the width & height of the images. You can
                 greatly speed up the display of web pages by specifying
                 the image sizes on "<IMG" html tags.

                 This program reads in a text file which describes the
     INIWRITE    changes you wish to make to one of more INI files and
      97.319     makes these INI file changes. It can also take a single
   5,593 bytes   command from the command line. It can take some very
                 complex expressions.

     INIREAD     This small rexx program dumps all or part of the INI
      97.312     file specified on the command line. I have used it to
   3,096 bytes   look for differences between INI files.

                 This program creates a database of CRC 32 calculations
                 for the files you specify and allows you to compare
      CRC32      these at a later stage to report the changes. It is
      97.310     possible to automatically create lists of changed files.
  39,508 bytes   It can be very useful to record your whole hard drive
                 and then report on changes after a program has been
                 installed.

     STRINGS     This program scans binary files and finds strings. You
      93.116     have a lot of control as to what is defined as a string.
  15,478 bytes   For example you can decide that strings don't contain
                 digits 0-9 etc.

                 This program is used to add "#include" and "#define"
     REXBUILD    support to rexx programs. This allows you to easily
      97.305     create header files of standard routines so that you
  42,215 bytes   never need to duplicate source code again! If you are
                 interested in this program you may wish to compile the
                 generated output using REXX2EXE to produce ".EXE" files.

     UTLBCOMP    This program will compare 2 binary files. It formats
      93.090     results much better than the standard "comp" command and
  23,835 bytes   does not stop at 10 mismatches. It will handle files of
                 different length but will stop on EOF of the smaller.

      WPSOBJ     This program has many commands related to the
      97.256     manipulation of WPS objects and classes. It can create
  31,153 bytes   objects based on a database (which can use commands such
                 as #include and #define).

                 This program is used to modify a floppies' boot sector
                 so that when its in the drive and the PC is rebooted it
     FLOPBOOT    will boot off the hard disk. I use this for all my data
      97.212     floppies (see enclosed format1.cmd). There are other
  39,562 bytes   programs that do this but all had bugs and I could find
                 none for OS/2. This package also contains "DRIVE_FB.EXE"
                 which can reset/read/write diskette or hard disk boot
                 records as well as hard disk master boot records.

      VFILE      This is a text based file viewer. It has some nice
      96.196     features including the ability to highlight lines that
  55,778 bytes   contain specific text such as "error". It can also
                 accept its input via a pipe.

                 This tool is basically for debugging or tracing code,
                 this tracing code may be left in place as the impact is
                 not that large. This is an extensive enhancement to the
     PMPRINTF    PMPRINTF code you may have seen elsewhere, this code
      96.179     allows you to debug SOM/WPS code as well as REXX and 'C'
  183,114 bytes  code. The viewer which has also undergone many
                 enhancements is supplied along with the programming
                 interfaces and online help. A program to redirect
                 PMPRINTF queue output to a log file is also attached.

     MSGDCOMP    This program decompiles OS/2 message files. This would
      95.316     allow you to examine/modify the file and recompile. This
  11,248 bytes   program was written in rexx with a small DLL written in
                 'C' to overcome a OS/2 bug which IBM is not keen to fix.

     FILTER$     This is a do heaps filter program. Amongst other things
      94.239     it does case conversion, hex dumps (ASCII/EBCDIC/Custom)
  16,768 bytes   and binary to text representation and back.

      EADUMP     This rexx program dumps a files Extended Attributes. Its
      94.216     written in rexx and makes use of the OS/2 EAUTIL.EXE
   3,108 bytes   program.

                 This program is very useful in make files and can also
       STDT      be of use in batch files. Its task is to capture the
      93.239     output of a command to a file while also displaying the
  16,134 bytes   output. This functions much like "tee" programs however
                 the return code of the command is not lost.

Some of the packages contain very detailed documentation while others don't
contain any. For almost all of my programs if you make a command line error
a summary of the correct syntax is produced. If I have placed a package
here without documentation then I have done so because I believe there is
enough information available (and because I have too many other things to
do!).

I would appreciate some feed back on how you use or find my programs. I am
also interested in fixing any bugs you might find or hearing about any
enhancements that would make your task easier.

As long as you are not making money by reselling or including my software
as a selling feature then I don't care who uses this software or whether
its for individual use or used by a large corporation. If however you will
make money from my work then we need to talk!

Note that many of the programs above are written in rexx and since rexx is
available for DOS, Windows 3.1/95/NT etc these programs would require
little if any conversion to work on other operating systems.

Last modified: Saturday March 28 1998 at 5:57pm 

-- 
Dennis Bareis
Melbourne, AUSTRALIA.
email   : db0 @ anz.com  (remove spaces!)
HomePage: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~dbareis
   (Contains heaps of freeware written by myself)
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