
The following was compiled by Evan Champion. Evan can be reached at the following Internet address: evanc@spatial.synapse.org. [No trailing period!]

OS/2 Wish List -- Last Updated: 94-01-29

This is the OS/2 Wish List, compiled from OS/2 users worldwide from networks
such as the Internet and Fidonet.  This document hopefully represents the
direction in which OS/2 users would like OS/2 to go and the tasks that must
be accomplished to get OS/2 there.

This list does not necessarily represent what OS/2 users want IBM to do, but
what OS/2 users want done for OS/2 in general.  Therefore, it could be a
valuable source of information for commercial vendors and sharewares
authors. I will maintain a list of any shareware authors working on a
particular area so that people working on similar areas can get in touch
with one another.

PLEASE send this list everywhere you can!

To simplify the process of updating the wish list, each user who sends in an
addition to the list will get their name added to the contributors section
rather than to the wish they contributed to.  This will also help keep the
file size down as the list grows by only including each contributor once in
the list.  Also to simplify the process of updating the list, do not mail a
message listing the items that you support.  Although I really do enjoy
it when people mail me saying that they really support certain parts of the
list, it takes a lot of time to process each message.  I would, however,
like anyone who has questions or comments on a wish to mail me.

To add your wish to the list, please mail to 'evanc@spatial.synapse.org'
(Internet) or 'Evan Champion @ 1:163/590' (Fidonet).  Please make sure that
your full name and mailing address are in the message to make it easier for
me to add your name to the contributors list.  I try my best to pick up
wishes from UseNet or FidoNet Echos, but I do not always read every
message and as such might miss your wish - so to make sure it gets in,
please send it in mail!

Often one idea does not make sense without another, or would bring the most
benefit with the introduction of another, and whenever this is the case I
have indicated a wish to reference.

It is understood that some of these options would increase the size of OS/2
astronomically, thus causing problems for OS/2's distribution.  Whenever
this is the case, the item should always be included on the CD-ROM
distribution, and should be made available for media charges only for the
floppy distribution.

Some of the items in this list represent major changes to OS/2 and
specifically dictate the removal of old methods of doing things.  It is
recommended that such changes be implemented as a two version process
whenever possible - the first release would implement the addition and the
next release would remove support for the old method.  This will allow the
user the time between major releases (usually a year) to update their
software and become familliar with the additions.

I do not necessarily understand everything I add to the list, so if I
misunderstood a request, please let me know!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The latest version of the list is always available for Fido FREQ from
1:163/590 with the magic filename WISHLIST.

I try to keep a fairly up-to-date version on ftp.synapse.org in
/pub/wishlist.

Through a network of distributors, the list will make its way to places like
the CompuServe OS/2 forum, ftp-os2.cdrom.com in /pub/os2/all/info/wishlist,
and large and small BBSs world-wide.  If you would like the list mailed to
you every week, please mail me and I will add you to the distribution list.
You must be able to accept fairly large files appearing in your mailbox.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
TABLE OF CONTENTS

 0.  ADDITIONS/CHANGES/DELETIONS
 1.  THE KERNEL
 2.  FILE SYSTEMS
 3.  HANDLING DISKS
 4.  DEVICE DRIVERS
 5.  OS/2 AS AN INTERNATIONAL OPERATING SYSTEM
 6.  PRESENTATION MANAGER
 7.  TEXT APPLICATIONS
 8.  WORKPLACE SHELL
 9.  SHELLS
10.  MULTIMEDIA
11.  UTILITIES
12.  DOS
13.  WIN-OS/2
14.  REXX
15.  OS/2 API
16.  APPLETS
17.  INSTALLATION AND CONFIGURATION
18.  DOCUMENTATION
19.  PACKAGES
20.  CONFIG.SYS
21.  HELP SYSTEM
98.  OS/2 IN GENERAL
99.  CONTRIBUTORS
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
0.0  ADDITIONS/DELETIONS/CHANGES SINCE 94-01-22

This section contains references to all new sections and changed sections of
the Wish List since it was last released.  When a section is deleted, an
explanation as to why is given.  I am currently running the OS/2 2.1
ServicePak Beta, which may give different results than the OS/2 2.1 GA.

CHANGED  2.4    FILE SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
CHANGED  2.9    MAKE ALL FILES EXECUTABLE
CHANGED  5.2    STANDARD DATE TIME AND NUMBER FORMATS
CHANGED  5.7    SEPARATE TEXT FROM CODE
ADDITION 5.8    MORE COUNTRIES
ADDITION 6.28   MULTIPLE PM SCREENS
ADDITION 6.29   DO NOT CHANGE THE KEYBOARD FOCUS WHILE THE USER IS TYPING
DELETION 8.10   DEFAULT VIEW OPTION IN OBJECT SETTINGS
  Any object for which the type of view can be variable (for example, a
  folder can be viewed in the 'Icon' view, 'Tree' view and 'Details View')
  should have a default view option.  This option would be very accessible,
  for example through a drop down list in the 'Window' page.

  REASON:  I found the option to do this - hidden inside the 'Menu' page in
  the Notebook - you click on the menu that you want to set the default for,
  and then click on 'Settings' and select the default.
ADDITION 8.43   DEFAULT WORKING DIRECTORY IS THE DIRECTORY WITH THE
                EXECUTABLE
ADDITION 8.44   NOTEBOOK OPTION TO HIDE TITLE BARS
ADDITION 8.45   DRAG-AND-DROP FOLDERS TO THE DESKTOP MENU
ADDITION 8.46   EVENT HANDLER FOR SYSTEM SOUNDS
ADDITION 8.48   REARRANGE THE NOTEBOOKS SO THEY ARE EASIER TO USE
ADDITION 8.49   DO SOMETHING WITH CHANGING PAGES IN THE NOTEBOOK
MOVED    9.21   FIX RETURN TO PARENT PROCESS FOR SPAWNED TASKS now 8.47
ADDITION 9.27   COMBINE COPY AND XCOPY
CHANGED  11.11  SUBDIRECTORY RECURSION FOR FILE COMMANDS
MOVED    11.11  SUBDIRECTORY RECURSION FOR FILE COMMANDS now 9.28
ADDITION 11.18  PM DISKCOPY
ADDITION 13.5   MOVE TO WABI-STYLE WINDOWS SUPPORT
ADDITION 14.2   MORE INTEGRATION OF THE WPS AND REXX
ADDITION 16.4   E SHOULD NOT ASK FOR A FILE TYPE
ADDITION 16.5   FIX THE ICON EDITOR
ADDITION 16.6   EDITORS KEEP REDRAWING THE SCREEN
ADDITION 17.8   SEPARATE APPLICATIONS
ADDITION 21.6   TEXT MODE INF VIEWER
ADDITION 98.19  DISCOURAGE VENDORS FROM USING THE OS/2 INI FILES
ADDITION 98.20  BETTER SECOND MONITOR SUPPORT
ADDITION 98.21  FONT SUBSTITUTION
ADDITION 98.22  SEND ALL FONTS TO BE USED IN A DOCUMENT WITH THE DOCUMENT
                HEADER
ADDITION 98.23  SERIAL PORT ARBITRATOR
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.0  THE KERNEL

The OS/2 kernel is showing signs of age in relation to the new breed of
microkernels; listed below are proposed ways to improve it.

1.1  INCLUDE SMP SUPPORT

  Included with the base system should be the kernel support for handling
  SMP (symmetric multiprocessing).  It is understood that most users can not
  take advantage of SMP, however its inclusion would be a powerful weapon
  against those vendors who claim their operating system is superior because
  they support SMP.

1.2  MOVE THE INTEL VERSION TO THE IBM MICROKERNAL

  Of course, if you can't beat them, join them.  The portable OS/2 versions
  (ie: OS/2 for PowerPC) is already moving to the IBM Microkernel and by
  moving the Intel version to the Microkernel as well as keeping uniformity
  between versions of OS/2 for different architectures.  This would allow:

  - dynamic loading/unloading of device drivers
  - greater stability as device drivers run in user space and not kernel
    space
  - would provide architecture-independent device support as drivers
    interact with the kernel and not directly with the hardware.
  - would require less memory
  - faster boot off floppy as less has to be loaded at boot time (device
    drivers could be loaded as needed by an installation program that would
    search for supported devices)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.0  FILE SYSTEMS

This section deals with all wishes directly related to changes and additions
to the OS/2 file systems.

2.1  UTILITY TO CONVERT BETWEEN FILE SYSTEMS

  It is very difficult to convince a user to format their FAT drive to install
  HPFS.  Therefore, a utility to convert between file system formats
  non-destructively should be provided.

2.2  INSTALLABLE FILE SYSTEMS FOR REMOVABLE DEVICES

  Installable file systems must be made available for removable devices,
  including floppies.  It is unacceptable for a user with optical disks to
  be forced to use FAT instead of a better file system (ie: HFPS)

2.3  LONG FILE NAME SUPPORT IN FAT

  Long file name support already exists in FAT, in the form of the .LONGNAME
  extended attribute.  All file system calls should rely on the .LONGNAME
  extended attribute instead of the 8.3 file name to provide transparent
  long filename support to the user.

2.4  FILE SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (see 3.4)

  The needs of OS/2 users are constantly changing and the file systems need
  to move with them.  The following is a list of the new file system
  requirements.

  - access control lists (ACL) for file security
  - journalling
  - support extended attributes greater than 64K
  - support caches greater than 2 MB
  - support a maximum file system size in the terabyte range
  - 255 character disk labels
  - new file type (in addition to 'File' and 'Directory' called 'Abstract'
    to handle symbolic links (shadows) and imbedding objects in to the file
    system
  - file association in the file system
  - short (8.3) filenames assigned along with the regular long ones to make
    it very quick and easy to access the file through DOS, even if the file
    has a long name

  Note: symbolic links must work across file filesystems and even across
  file systems of different types.

  Most of these requirements would probably require a new file system to
  support them.  Those that can be implemented in HPFS should be, and those
  that can not should be implemented in a new file system.

2.5  MAKE '/' AND '\' ACT THE SAME FOR CHANGING DIRECTORIES

  OS/2's API set should be changed to allow changing directories using
  either '/' or '\'.  This requires changing the command line switch
  delimiter to '-' from '/'.  It should be noted that except for IBM's
  software, most programs already use '-' instead as a command line switch
  delimiter.

  In addition, the OS/2 IFS definition specifically states that '/' and '\'
  should both be usable for changing directories.

2.6  STANDARD TAPE FILESYSTEM

  A standard tape-backup filesystem should be provided to allow sharing of
  information on tape between OS/2 configurations.  The filesystem should be
  designed to allow multiple backups on one tape and should allow the backup
  of any information stored on a disk filesystem, meaning support for long
  filenames, extended attributes, security, etc.

2.7  FILE SYSTEM-INDEPENDENT DISK COMPRESSION

  A file system-independent disk compression scheme should be provided with
  OS/2 to help offset the increased disk space requirements over DOS/Windows
  systems.

2.8  ADDITIONAL FILE SYSTEM SUPPORT

  OS/2 should ship with support for the following file systems:
  - NTFS
  - common UNIX disk formats
  - Macintosh

2.9  MAKE ALL FILES EXECUTABLE

  Any file should be executable, no matter what its extension.  The shell
  (CMD.EXE or WPS) should first determine whether whatever the user asked it
  to open is actually an executable.  If it is, the program starts normally.

  If not, the file is assumed to be some sort of data file, and the
  operating system tries to find the creator (using the extended attributes)
  of the file and starts it, instructing the creator to open the file.  The
  creator's extended attributes would have a default command line to use
  when starting a program this way.

  If it can't find the creator, it should return back an error message saying
  that the file was not executable and the file's creator could not be
  found.

  The current rules for special file extensions should be removed as
  they are not appropriate for a free-form filename system.  Something like
  a REXX script or batch file that generally has no file type could be
  started as 'cmd rexxscript'.  Typing just the name of a directory would
  change in to the directory.

2.10  UTILITY TO VIEW/SET EXTENDED ATTRIBUTES

  A utility should ship with OS/2 to allow the user to view and edit a
  file's extended attributes.  This would be particularly necessary if all
  files are considered executable, as the user may want to specially assign
  creators for files so they can be automatically opened, or to allow a REXX
  script or batch file to run without having to run 'cmd rexxscript'.

2.11  SECURE SYSTEM FILES

  Display a warning every time a system file (typically one in the \OS2
  directory) is going to be replaced by an application.  To implement this,
  a file holding the names of files that should not be changed without
  giving notice to the user could be used.

2.12  ALLOW OPTIONAL CACHING ON A DRIVE BASIS

  The user should be able to specify drives to cache (or not to cache).  For
  example, the user could ask for drives 'C:', 'D:' 'F:' to be cached, but
  not 'E:'.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.0  HANDLING DISKS

Pretty well every OS/2 user agrees that calling disks 'A:', 'B:', 'C:' just
doesn't cut it.  Unfortunately, not everyone is agreed on how this problem
should be solved.  There are 2 opposing arguments, one for mounting drives
off of a root directory and the other for using the already present disk
labels as disk names.

3.1  DEVICE ALIASES (see 3.2, 3.3, 3.4)

  The user should be able to alias a directory to a disk name or a disk to
  another disk name, or a disk name to a directory.  This is to support
  wishes 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4.  This would be used in the case of wish 3.3 to
  alias '/' to 'C:', '/floppy' to 'A:'.  It would be used in the case of
  with 3.4 to alias device 'MYDISK:' to 'C:'.

3.2  DISK DEVICE NAMES (see 3.1)

  Instead of calling disks 'A:', 'B:', 'C:', etc, disk devices could be
  referenced internally as 'FDx:' for floppies and 'HDx:' for hard drives.
  This would allow an unlimited number of available partitions.  Device
  aliases could be created to alias back 'FDx' and 'HDx' to the DOS
  equivalents to allow older software to work while allowing those who have
  surpassed the 26 available drives to use their full capacity.

3.3  MOUNTING DRIVES INSTEAD OF HAVING DRIVE LETTERS (see 3.1)

  Drives would be mounted as directories off of the boot drive (for example,
  'D:' could be mounted as '\applications').  For programs that are not
  designed to handle such a system, the root drive would be aliased to 'C:'
  and the floppy drives would be aliased to 'A:' and 'B:'.

3.4  USING DISK LABELS INSTEAD OF DRIVE LETTERS (see 3.1)

  Disk labels, currently an unused feature of the file systems, could be
  used  as device aliases as well.  For example, if a disk label is
  'MYDISK', the drive could be accessed as 'MYDISK:'  This would make
  accessing disks much more intuitive.

  When used on a FAT or HPFS drive, the disk label could only be 11
  characters (as that is the current disk label size).  Any new file systems
  should support 255 characters and the APIs to support the new drive
  schemes should support 255 character labels.

  Disk labels should be allowed to contain any character usable in the file
  systems.

3.5  NEW BOOT SECTOR

  The current OS/2 boot sector (created by FORMAT/PMFORMAT) is next to
  useless. It displays a cryptic message that few people bother to even look
  up.  A new boot sector that just skips over the disk and continues the
  boot process if it can't boot OS/2 should be implemented.

3.6  BOOTING TAKES TOO LONG (see 1.2)

  Booting OS/2 off hard disk is a long process for many users, but loading
  off of floppy (for example, during the install process) is almost
  unbearable.  An unexperienced user could think that the computer has
  crashed while booting.  As a first step, a progress indicator should
  appear telling the user that something is happening.  To really solve the
  problem would require less to be loaded during the boot process (which
  would mean moving to the IBM Microkernel).  In addition, reducing the
  number of install disks from 2 to 1 would be a big improvement.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.0  DEVICE DRIVERS

  Device drivers are at the heart of the operating system and yet they are
  often the one of the greatest sources of heartache for users.  The
  following is a list of wishes designed to fix that.

4.1  SUPPORT

  Without device driver support for devices the user can't use their
  investments and would likely rather stay in DOS than have to give up
  access to their hardware.  IBM must do everything possible to get third
  party vendors to write device drivers.  This includes a service for
  vendors to pay IBM to write the device drivers at a reasonable cost.

4.2  QUALITY

  Not all third party vendors give the same driver quality that we are used
  to IBM providing.  To solve this, IBM should have an independent lab to
  do device driver testing at low or no charge.  IBM should also set up a
  volunteer device driver testing corps based on Team OS/2 (maybe even using
  Team OS/2 members).  IBM could manage a database with each member's
  configuration and would make the database available to any manufacturer on
  request.  This solution would satisfy everyone: it is low cost for IBM to
  support and for vendors to use, provides the vendor with diverse system
  configurations and would help to provide the user the best quality
  drivers.

4.3  ALLOW DYNAMIC LOADING AND UNLOADING OF DEVICE DRIVERS (see 1.2)

  OS/2 should allow device drivers to load and unload as desired by the
  user.  This would be handled easiest by moving to the IBM Microkernel, but
  should be made available even if the current kernel is maintained.

4.4  SUPPORT FOR ALL SCSI STANDARD DEVICES

  OS/2 should provide drivers for all devices that are part of the SCSI
  standard devices, such as tapes, scanners, etc.  Each type of device would
  get one driver, much like the way SCSI-2 CD-ROMs are handled using the
  OS2CDROM.DMD.

4.5  IMPROVED SUPPORT FOR PCMCIA

  OS/2 currently only provides the "socket services" for PCMCIA devices and
  requires the PCMCIA card manufacturer to provide the other side of the
  socket, which few other than IBM provide.  OS/2 needs to provide
  full support for PCMCIA devices out-of-the-box.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.0  OS/2 AS AN INTERNATIONAL OPERATING SYSTEM

  OS/2 is designed as an international operating system, to be used anywhere
  in the world along with other platforms.  Unfortunately, OS/2 in it's
  current state is far from being an international operating system; the
  following are wishes designed to solve this.

5.1  UNICODE

  Unicode support should be included in the base operating system.  This
  would also remove the need for a different double byte character set
  version of the operating system.

  Codepage emulation would be provided to support applications that are not
  Unicode-aware.

5.2  STANDARD DATE TIME AND NUMBER FORMATS (see 14.4, 15.1)

  The system date time and number formats (as defined in the Country object
  in the System Setup folder' should be used everywhere in the operating
  system.  Reading huge numbers like those returned by CHKDSK and DIR
  which are currently not broken up by the 1000s separator and ambiguous
  date formats are almost enough to drive the user insane.

  These formats should also be a lot less restricted.  The user should be
  able to build the formats any way they like.  This means the user should
  be allowed to do things like 'yyyy.mm.dd' (ISO date format), dd/mm-yy (old
  Swedish style) and even things like dd-mmm-yy to get a 3 character short
  form for the month.

5.3  SUPPORT FOR 8-BIT CODE PAGES FOR CYRILLIC AND GREEK

  OS/2 should have the same 8-bit code pagers for Cyrillic and Greek that is
  provided for IBM DOS.

5.4  SUPPORT OF ISO 8859.1 (ISO LATIN-1) CHARACTER SET

  OS/2 should support the ISO 8859.1 (also known as ISO Latin-1) character
  set, used in other operating systems such as UNIX.

5.5  SUPPORT FOR MORE THAN 2 CODEPAGES

  There must be support for more than 2 codepages.  As OS/2 becomes more
  widely used internationally people need to be able to exchange documents
  using different codepages simply.

5.6  KEYBOARD DEFINITION UTILITY

  The user should be able to define their keyboard as they desire instead of
  being restricted to the keyboard layouts defined by the Country setting.

5.7  SEPARATE TEXT FROM CODE

  As an example for other vendors, there should be no text imbedded in
  executable code.  All text used in the operating system should be placed
  in language files (*.msg).

  This would allow IBM to release a single OS/2 for use with the 8 bit
  character sets (and a single OS/2 for everyone when Unicode support is
  added).  IBM could ship OS/2 with all the language files for a particular
  country, and the user would just select which language they want to use
  during the installation.

5.8  MORE COUNTRIES

  IBM should support more countries in the country settings.  For example,
  people from New Zealand shouldn't have to use Australia's country settings
  - which can be a problem for programs that use the country settings to
  make assumptions of other things, like country codes for dialing
  internationally.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
6.0  PRESENTATION MANAGER

This section contains wishes for anything related to the Presentation
Manager, including wishes for INI and icon files.

6.1  INI EDITOR

  An INI editor should be included as part of the base system.

6.2  MOVEMENT OF INFORMATION FROM THE OS2.INI TO THE FILE SYSTEM

  Icon information etc. should be moved from the INI files in to the file
  system in the form of extended attributes.  This will allow users to
  retain system settings even when replacing the operating system as all the
  necessary settings are kept along in the application's extended attributes
  which can be backed up, and would ensure that deleted application settings
  do not live on forever in the INI files as all settings would disappear
  along with the application.

6.3  MULTIPLE INPUT QUEUES

  Having PM grind to a halt because of a process holding the message queue
  for too long just isn't acceptable.  Every thread that uses the PM should
  be assigned its own, independent message queue to ensure that the user
  can always interact with the system, even if one application goes down.

6.4  CHANGING THE GRAPHICS DRIVER ON-THE-FLY

  Being able to change the graphics driver on the fly would be a big plus.
  This means that the system should not have to be rebooted to handle the
  new driver, and all video changes should take effect immediately.

6.6  RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON ACTION FOR PROGRAMS THAT DON'T USE IT

  The commands in the toolbar menu (at the top left corner of each window)
  as well as the menubar (in the case of PM application) should form a
  right mouse button pop-up menu for applications that do not explicitly
  support the right mouse button.

6.7  MOVEMENT OF OS/2 LOGO TO AFTER PM GETS STARTED

  Moving the OS/2 Logo to just after PM gets started (as the first thing
  that is shown on the screen) just makes more sense - the graphical
  environment is up and running and all the routines are there for showing
  bitmaps.  In addition, it would allow more colourful OS/2 bitmaps to be
  shown on start-up without pain.

6.8  OPTIONAL DISABLING OF MENU DROP DOWN ON RIGHT ALT KEY

  On many international keyboards, the right ALT key is used to type special
  characters such as brackets.  An accidental slip on the keyboard while
  doing an ALT key combination can cause a menu to drop down, and thus is a
  real annoyance.  For people using international keyboards, an option
  either the Country object or Keyboard object should determine whether only
  the left ALT key or both ALT keys should bring down menus.

6.11  USE FONTS LIKE DLLS

  A font should only be kept in memory as long as there is a program using
  the font; keeping fonts loaded forever is a waste of valuable system
  resources. After the last process to use a font is terminated, the font
  should be unloaded.

6.13  VECTOR ICONS

  Allow vector graphic files in addition to bitmaps and allow the icon to
  be scaled to a fixed size no matter what the resolution is.

6.15  ENHANCED TASK LIST

  There should be a 'Details' view of the task list, showing more
  information about a program - ie: priority, memory usage, idle time, CPU
  usage, process ID, parent ID, command line parameters, etc.  From here the
  user should also be able to change task priorities.

6.16  OPTIONAL 'KEYBOARD FOCUS FOLLOWS THE MOUSE SUPPORT'

  Optionally, the user should be able to enable X11-style 'keyboard follows
  the mouse pointer' support.  The active window and keyboard focus are
  changed as the mouse pointer moves from one window to another.  Note that
  the new active window is not brought to the surface, only the keyboard
  focus changes.

6.17  DISPLAY POSTSCRIPT

  PC's have become powerful enough to handle Display Postscript, and
  definitely the next generation of PC's - the PowerPC's - could handle
  display Postscript with no problems at all.  With fonts playing an
  increasingly important role, it is important for what is on the screen
  to look as much as possible as printed output.

6.18  ANIMATED CURSORS

   OS/2 should support animated cursors.  This means for the alarm clock
   cursor, the dial could spin, etc.

6.19  MINIMIZE BUTTON GOES FIRST TO TITLEBAR ONLY, THEN HIDDEN

  The minimize button could be (optionally) changed to first minimize down
  to the titlebar only and then another click on the minimize button would
  hide the window.  Pressing the maximize button when at the titlebar-only
  stage would bring the window back to its original size.  This would be a
  great screen saver while not inconvieniencing people with having to keep
  running to the Window list to bring up a minimized window.

6.20  ENHANCE FILE DIALOG BOX

  Enhance the file dialog box so that it is possible to see the size and
  date stamp on a file, in addition to just the file name.  An example of
  how this would look is the folder Details view in the WPS.  Also, be very
  desirable to be able to sort the list of files by name, size or date from
  within the standard file dialog box.

6.21  STATE-REVEALING ICONS

  Icons should reveal the state of the program they belong to.  For example,
  the printer icon could change to indicate that there are jobs in the
  spooler, a minimized interactive program's icon could bink to indicate
  waiting on user input, and the minimized folder could 'glow' when
  occupied.

6.22  CHANGE BEHAVIOUR OF DROP-DOWN LISTS

  Currently, the user must click on the button to the right of a drop-down
  list to make it drop down.  This should be changed so that the user could
  click anywhere in the entry field in addition to clicking on the button to
  bring down the list.

6.23  ALT-TAB SHOULD WORK LIKE WINDOWS

  The ALT-TAB key combination, which cycles through the running programs,
  should work like in Windows.  This means that rather than flipping through
  the programs, a little box showing the name of a running program should
  appear.  Each time the user hits ALT-TAB, the name of the next running
  program would appear, until there are no more programs and it restarts at
  the beginning again.  When the user finds the program they want, they let
  go of the ALT key to switch to that program.

6.24  HAVE PM NOT LOAD ON BOOT UP

  PM should be more separated from the rest of OS/2, allowing a user to
  function without it when the overhead of a graphic interface is
  undesirable.  This might be a good use for the STARTUP.CMD - OS/2 would
  first start in a text mode and then try to execute STARTUP.CMD -
  STARTUP.CMD would then contain the commands to start PM.

  It should also be possible to quit PM without shutting down the machine.
  Doing so would return the user to the command line.  This would allow
  to do such things as replace locked DLLs, change display drivers etc. that
  would normally require the system to be reset.

6.25  EDIT CONTROL NOT CUA COMPLIANT

  The base edit control (not MLE: WC_ENTRYFIELD) does not support some CUA
  defined behaviour.  For example, the control does not support CTRL-LEFT or
  CTRL-RIGHT accelerators to move to the next word.  It also does not
  support double clicking on a word to mark the word.  The MLE control
  supports both of these and it is inconsistent not to provide this support
  in dialogs.

6.26  INCLUDE NEW ATM AND MORE FONTS

  Adobe Type Manager 3.0 (with multiple master fonts) should be included in
  the next version of OS/2, along with a greater number of fonts.

6.27  32-BIT CONTAINERS

  When opening a WPS window with 1000+ icons, you only see the real icon for
  a limited number of them.  This is probably due to PM's 16-bit internal
  structure, and should be changed.

6.28  MULTIPLE PM SCREENS

  Take the virtual-desktop one step futhur by allowing multiple PM screens.
  There would be one screen for the WPS, and then the user could run
  applications on a different physical screen.  This would allow multiple
  resolutions while still using the Presentation Manager.  This would be
  very desirable for viewing pictures or other graphics in one screen at
  640x480x16.7 million colours while keeping the Desktop at 1280x1024x256
  colours.

6.29  DO NOT CHANGE THE KEYBOARD FOCUS WHILE THE USER IS TYPING

  It is a huge annoyance to be typing in a window and suddenly find the
  keyboard focus has changed because a window popped up and took control.
  The keyboard focus should not be changed while the user is typing.  The
  window that is popping up should still be put on top of everything so the
  user knows that something needs to be taken care of, but it should not
  become the active window.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
7.0  TEXT APPLICATIONS

This section is for wishes related to text applications.  While it is
desirable to have most applications as PM programs, reality states that some
programs work best in text mode and can not have the overhead associated
with a graphic interface and these wishes are designed to specifically
address those applications.

7.1  TEXT-MODE MULTI-TASKING

  From full screen DOS or OS/2 sessions, CTRL-ESC should bring up the
  a text version of the task list rather than switching to the desktop.
  Pressing ALT in a full screen session should bring down a text the
  equivalent of the toolbar menu for a windowed session, with functions to
  mark, copy, paste, change settings, etc.  Switching between full screen
  sessions should not require switching to the desktop as an intermediate
  step.

7.2  TEXTUAL USER INTERFACE

  Provide a text user interface API, a type of textual Presentation Manager.

7.3  SWITCHING FROM FULL SCREEN TO WINDOW MODE FOR OS/2 SHELLS

  The same ALT-HOME functionality available to DOS shells should be made
  available for OS/2 shells.  There are features that a full screen shell
  can do that a windowed one can't - then again, with DOS shells, there are
  resolutions that can be handled in full screen mode that can't in windowed
  mode; OS/2 just says 'I can't do that' and pauses the window until it goes
  full screen again. Why not do the same thing for OS/2 shells?

7.4  SWITCHING FROM FULL SCREEN TO WINDOW MODE

  The same ALT-HOME functionality available to DOS software should be made
  available for OS/2 text applications.  There are features that a
  full screen shell can do that a windowed one can't - then again, with DOS
  shells, there are resolutions that can be handled in full screen mode
  that can't in windowed mode; OS/2 just says 'I can't do that' and pauses
  the window until it goes full screen again.  The same type of message
  could be given for text applications that try to do unsupportable actions
  while windowed.

7.5  USE THE PM METHOD FOR COPY AND PASTE IN TEXT MODE

  OS/2's current method for doing copy and paste's from a text session is
  very awkward.  A much simpler and more natural method should be used,
  namely the one implemented for PM applications.  The user simply selects
  the text they want to copy and then press the standard PM CTRL-INS to
  copy and SHIFT-INS to paste.

7.6  MAKE COPY AND PASTE FEATURES AVAILABLE TO FULL SCREEN SESSIONS

  There is no reason why full screen sessions should not be able to use the
  same copy and paste features of windowed sessions.

7.7  FULL ANSI X3.64 SUPPORT

  The complete ANSI X3.64 terminal specification should be enabled for text
  sessions.

7.8  VT-100 SUPPORT
  Text sessions should have complete VT-100 support.

7.9  ALLOW MARK AND COPY AS 1 FUNCTION (see 7.5)

  The Mark and Copy features should be integrated in to 1 action.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
8.0  WORKPLACE SHELL

The WorkPlace Shell is something a user must interact with every day and so
it is important for the shell to meet the user's needs.  The following is a
list of wishes directly related to the WorkPlace shell.

8.1  ADDITION OF MASTER TEMPLATES

  'Master Templates' are default settings for any object, like a folder or a
  program.  By changing the settings in the Master Template, the settings in
  every object of that type would also be changed.  This will allow the user
  to accomplish something like 'make all folders look like this one'.  By
  default, an object would always inherit any changes to the master;
  however, by turning off a setting in the object's settings (named, for
  example, 'Inherit from Master') the user could disable such a feature to
  allow for customization for specific objects.

  Master templates could also be used as a replacement for the command
  association features of the WPS.  A Master Template for '*.ZIP' could
  execute UNZIP when a ZIP file is run.

8.2  MOVEMENT OF SHADOWS IN TO THE FILE SYSTEM (see 2.4)

  The Shadows are one of the most complex parts of the WPS because often
  users don't understand that a shadow only exists in the desktop.
  Therefore, shadows (or 'symbolic links') should become part of the file
  system.

8.3  SHADOWS SHOULD STAND OUT BETTER

  It is often difficult to tell whether an object is a shadow or not as the
  only distinguishing characteristic is a different icon text colour.
  Shadows could have a slightly different icon (as templates do).  In
  addition, it should be possible to set the font for shadows independant
  from the font used for other icons.

8.4  RELIABLE WORKPLACE SHELL BACKUP/RESTORE (OS2.INI AND DESKTOP DIRECTORY)
     (see 2.4)

  There needs to be a way to backup and restore the Workplace Shell setup,
  including things like the desktop and object settings.  Possibly this
  could be achieved most easily through the movement of desktop information
  from the INI files to the filesystem where they can be easily backed up
  using any backup software.

8.5  RANDOM BACKGROUND SELECTION FOR THE WPS

  A list of desirable backgrounds could be selected for the WPS and upon
  startup, the WPS could randomly choose a background to display.

8.6  TURNING THE SHREDDER IN TO A TRASH CAN

  The Shredder needs to be turned in to a trash can, meaning that files put
  in it need to be recoverable.  This means tighter integration of the WPS
  object with the SET DELDIR= option.  Files should remain in the trash can
  until they are explicitly cleaned out (as an option in the object and a
  command line utility).  When there is not enough space to perform a
  function, the operating system should first see if there are files that
  could be cleaned up to make room.  If so, the user is asked if it is
  alright to remove files, and then proceeds to make space.  If the user
  says 'no', or there are no files to remove, the write fails normally.
  Files would be removed in chronological order, starting with the oldest
  files and proceeding until enough room is made or there are no more files
  to remove.

8.7  LIST VIEW FOR OBJECT SETTINGS

  There could be a list view for object settings - it would basically be a
  dump of all the possible settings there are for the given object, sorted
  alphabetically and not grouped together in notebook sections.  This would
  make it very easy to find a particular setting when you don't exactly know
  where to look (but you know what to look for).  As many as could fit on
  one notebook page would be shown at a time, and arrows at the bottom of
  the notebook would allow flipping between pages.

8.9  STARTING PM APPLICATIONS 'MINIMIZED'

  The feature for starting a program minimized should be enabled for PM
  applications.

8.10  DEFAULT VIEW OPTION IN OBJECT SETTINGS

  Any object for which the type of view can be variable (for example, a
  folder can be viewed in the 'Icon' view, 'Tree' view and 'Details View')
  should have a default view option.  This option would be very accessible,
  for example through a drop down list in the 'Window' page.

8.11 ADD GRID/CHANGE THE MEANING OF ARRANGE

  The Icon view named 'Non-grid' should be renamed to 'Gridded'.  An option
  for defining the grid of user-defined size (or to turn off the grid, for
  functionality similar to the 'Non-Grid' mode)  Arrange would move the icons
  to nearest point on a the grid.  In addition, there should be an option in
  the window settings for to always snap icons to the grid.

8.12  EXPAND ALL BRANCHES/EXPAND TREE FEATURE FOR TREE VIEWS

  The user should be able to expand all branches of a tree or to expand
  the entire tree while in a Tree view. * and CTRL-* are used in the help
  system to provide similar functionality, and their use is recommended
  here as well.

8.13  MORE INFORMATION FOR DRIVE OBJECTS/DISK TREE VIEWS

  Below the name of the drive in a drive object (ie: 'Drive C') the
  amount of free disk space should be shown (note: this should only be
  shown for disks that are writable; no matter how long you look at a
  CD-ROM, it will always say 0 bytes free).  In a Tree view, below each
  folder name, the  number of files in the directory and the size of the
  contents should be displayed.

8.14  SAVE CHANGES MADE BY THE PALETTES IN THE SYSTEM SETUP FOLDER

  ALL IBM software, including the help system and INF files, must support
  saving changes to fonts definitions, colour schemes etc. made by
  performing a drag-and-drop from any of the various 'Palette' objects in
  the System Setup folder.  This includes the 'Font Palette', 'Colour
  Palette' and 'Colour Scheme' objects.  Third party vendors should be
  encouraged to follow IBM's example.

8.15  OPEN PARENT FOLDER

  The ability to open a folder's parent should be available in the 'Open'
  section of the right mouse button menu.

8.16  CLOSE OF THE CURRENT FOLDER WHEN OPENING A CHILD FOLDER

  Both accessible through the 'Open' section in the right mouse button menu
  and by an accelerator key should be the ability to close the current
  folder when opening a child folder.

8.17  CASCADABLE MENUS

  The user can add items to the right mouse button menus, even sub-menus,
  but the user can not add sub-sub menus.

8.19  REDEFINE SCALING OF MOUSE SPEED, KEY REPEAT SETTINGS ETC.

   The current scale used for mouse speed, key repeat delay, etc. is much to
  slow for most users.  As most users use the settings at their fastest
  rate, there is not much point in having the settings there in the first
  place.  To make them useful, the fastest speeds need to be many times
  faster than those available now.

  To solve this problem, flexible ballistics should be supported via a
  customizable acceleration curve.  The user would more or less 'pull' on
  the curve to create the acceleration they desire.  A few standard
  configurations would be given for users that do not want to play with the
  curve.

  In additon, the user should be able to disable ballistic tracking for the
  mouse for those who prefer linear mouse tracking.

8.20  SHELL WINDOW CLOSING

  The WPS should not ask for confirmation to close a shell that is not
  running any programs.

8.21  COLOUR PALETTE CHANGES ICON TEXT COLOUR

  Dragging a colour from the Colour Palette should change the icon text
  colour for that particular icon (or group of icons if more than 1 is
  selected).

8.22  PUT FULL PATH IN IN DIRECTORY TITLEBAR

  When the user chooses a directory from the Drives object, the title bar of
  the directory window should contain the full path to the directory, and
  not just the directory's name.  For example, it should say 'D:\MYDIR'
  instead of 'MYDIR'.

8.23  ABILITY TO SET DISK LABELS FROM THE DRIVE OBJECT

  The user should be able to change a disk label from the Drive object.

8.24  ADD 'CHANGE' OPTION TO RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON MENU

  An option to 'Change' a view from one type to another (for example, from
  Tree to Icon view) should be added to the right mouse button menu.  This
  would allow the user to see a different view of a window without the old
  view staying on the desktop.

8.25  TEAR-OFF MENUS

  Tear-off menus were a rather interesting part of the OS/2 2.0 betas, and
  unfortunately were left out of the final product to ensure compatibility
  with all existing applications.  It would be nice if IBM could resolve the
  compatibility problems and return the tear-off menus to OS/2.

8.26  SIMPLIFY 'FIND' PAGE

  The notebook 'FIND' page is much too complicated.  It should be replaced
  with a simple file dialog (slightly modified to handle the WPS).

8.27  NO PASSWORD FOR SCREEN SAVER

  The screen saver should not require a password in order to operate.

8.28  ADDITIONS TO THE WPS SHUTDOWN FUNCTION

  Two additions are preposed to the WPS shutdown function.  First, there
  should be an option (in the dialog asking to shut down) to automatically
  reboot the machine after shutdown.  Second, there should be an option to
  unconditionally close all running programs, without asking for the user's
  consent.

8.29  'CLEAN DESKTOP' FUNCTION IN THE DESKTOP MENU

  A 'Clean Desktop' function should be added to the desktop menu (the one
  that appears with the right mouse button).  This function would minimize
  all open windows.

8.30  'ACCESSING DISK' NOTICE

  The initial disk access in the WPS (especially for floppies) can take some
  time.  A message indicating that the system is, in fact, doing something
  should appear so the user is not left wondering what is happening.

8.31  HOTKEYS

  It should be possible to create hotkeys to start applications from the
  WPS.  For example, the user could design the system such that ALT-1 starts
  a communications package, ALT-2 starts a word processor, etc.

8.32  A WAY TO USE THE PTR FILES CREATED WITH THE ICON EDITOR

  While the user can create pointers using the icon editor, there is no way
  for the user to make any use of them.  The user should be able to use
  these new pointers, if no where else but the WPS.  All pointers used in
  the WPS should be configurable, from the standard pointer to the 'lock' in
  the screen saver.  In addition, it should be possible to return to the
  default pointers.

8.33  MODIFY TREE VIEW TO ALLOW THE USER TO MORE SUB-LEVELS

  When opening a sub-level in a window's Tree View, the parent of this
  branch should be moved to the top of the window to allow the user to see
  more of the sub-levels.  It is obvious that the user wants to see what is
  in the sub-levels and the WPS should reflect this.

8.34  SET THE DEFAULT START SIZE, POSISTION OF AN OBJECT

  It should be possible to set a default start size and position at the
  object level rather than at a program level.  This would allow the user to
  individually set the start size and position of one shell window object
  without affecting any other shell window object.

8.35  ABILITY TO TURN OFF ANY OF THE OPTIONS IN THE RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON MENU

  The user should be able to turn off any of the options in the right mouse
  button menu in the WPS.  This would allow the user to turn off such
  functions as 'Arrange', which can be hazardous to a carefully designed
  desktop.

8.36  COLOURFUL ICONS

  The default icon set in OS/2 is a bit bland and unappealing.  A splash of
  colour would really improve the looks of the WPS.

8.37  BACKGROUND COLOUR ON ICON TEXT

  Icon text should have the background colour underneath in order to be able
  to see the text with some bitmaps.

8.38  AUTOMATIC CONVERSION OF WINDOWS ICO FILES TO OS/2 ICONS

  Windows ICO files should be automatically converted to OS/2 icons, or
  there should atleast be a utility included in OS/2 to allow turn the icons
  in to OS/2 ones.  This is required for DOS software that comes with
  Windows icon files.

8.39  ALLOW DIRECT MODIFICATION OF INI FILES WITHOUT COPYING THEM

  Having to re-copy INI files to change them is terribly wasteful and
  should be corrected.

8.40  CONFIG.SYS SETTINGS SUPPORTED BY WPS OBJECTS

  Program objects and folders should have a new settings page where the user
  could specify settings such as environment variables (like the PATH).
  This function would work hierarchically - opening a program in a folder on
  the Desktop would set the program's default environment to that of the
  Desktop, then any settings defined in the program's folder would be added
  and then any settings defined in the program's object would be added.

8.41  EXPAND THE SYSTEM SOUNDS

  The System Sounds should be an object attribute for every object,
  available through a 'Sound'  page in it's notebook.  It should have at
  least two fields - open and close - in addition to any
  application-specific sounds.  For example, the Shredder has a sound that
  is played when something is dropped on to it.  If a datafile associated
  with the program has different sound attributes, they will be used instead
  of the application defaults.  Only sounds that are specific to the WPS
  should be defined in the System Sounds object, such as warning messages.

8.42  GRAPHS FOR PRINT SPOOLER

  There should be a graph showing the percentage complete of a print job as
  well as the percentage complete of all the print jobs in the spooler.

8.43  DEFAULT WORKING DIRECTORY IS THE DIRECTORY WITH THE EXECUTABLE

  The default working directory for program objects should be the directory
  with the executable.  This will prevent things like KLONDIKE.INI appearing
  in the root directory.

8.44  NOTEBOOK OPTION TO HIDE TITLE BARS

  For progams that run all the time, having a title bar takes up valuable
  screen real estate with little gain.  Therefore, there should be an option
  in the settings notebook to hide the title bars for the application.

8.45  DRAG-AND-DROP FOLDERS TO THE DESKTOP MENU

  It is possible to add programs to the Desktop menu by dragging them to the
  Menu page of the Desktop settings notebook, but it is not possible to do
  so for folders.  This should be changed to allow users to, for example,
  put the Command Prompts folder in the Desktop menu.

8.46  EVENT HANDLER FOR SYSTEM SOUNDS

  The user should be able to define an event handler for the different
  system sounds - a program to run when a particular action happens.  For
  example, in a network configration, when something that causes an 'Error'
  happens the user could run a program that sends mail to a remote
  administrator.

8.47  FIX RETURN TO PARENT PROCESS FOR SPAWNED TASKS

  When returning from a spawned process (for example, the 'HELP' program,
  which starts up the system help in another task), control should return to
  the parent process (for example, a shell) and not to the WPS.

8.48  REARRANGE THE NOTEBOOKS SO THEY ARE EASIER TO USE

  The current notebooks can sometimes be a pain to use because in some ways
  they are so complicated.  For example, it took me a while to figure out
  how to change the Default Setting for a menu - it should be an option
  in plain view on the page.

8.49  DO SOMETHING WITH CHANGING PAGES IN THE NOTEBOOK

  <- and -> in the Notebook can be used to flip between pages - although
  most people just use the tabs at the side to change between sections.
  Because many people decide the arrows do the same thing as the tabs at the
  side, they don't even bother with the arrows.  This is a real problem when
  there are 3 or 4 pages to a section - the user only gets to see the very
  first one.  One suggestion is to remove the arrows unless there are
  multiple pages in the notebook - and print beside the arrows in the
  standard window text "Continued on Next Page" along with the page number.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
9.0  SHELLS

A huge number of users prefer using the command line over any other method
of controlling the system, and yet it has not significantly evolved over the
COMMAND.COM from DOS.  The following are wishes related to OS/2's shell
(CMD.EXE) designed to remedy this oversight.

9.1  SCROLL-BACK BUFFER FOR ALL SHELLS

  A scroll-back buffer of user-definable size should be available for all
  shells, be it full screen or windowed, DOS or OS/2.

9.2  SUPPORT WILDCARD EXPANSION IN THE SHELL

  The OS/2 command shell (CMD.EXE) should provide wildcard expansion.  For
  example, a user should be able to 'cd \desk*' to change in to '\desktop'.
  As another example, 'copy' would copy all the files in the wildcard
  expansion in to the last file given on the command line.  Therefore, 'copy
  \mydir\* .' would copy all files in '\mydir' in to the current directory.

  To ensure that such a change would be safe for the user, commands such as
  'copy' would be modified to complain if a file will be overwritten.  A
  command line switch would override this.

  The addition of shell wildcard expansion will also simplify application
  development as well, as each piece of software does not need to have its
  own wildcard expansion routines.

9.3  COMMAND ALIASES IN CMD.EXE

  The OS/2 command shell (CMD.EXE) should support command aliases.  This
  allows users to alias a complex or cumbersome command with a short, simple
  name.  Aliases should be executed before any internal commands.

9.4  JUMP-SCROLLING FOR SHELL WINDOWS

  Windows currently scroll too slowly - jump-scrolling, whereby only what
  can be put to the screen in a reasonable amount of time is shown, would
  improve performance dramatically.

9.5  RESIZABLE SHELL WINDOWS

  Being limited to fixed resolutions (80x??) is an unnecessary limitation
  for shell windows.  They should be changed to be dynamically resizable -
  simply pull on the resizing borders to resize the screen.  During the
  process, the title bar could change to show the current resolution.

9.6  RESIZABLE FONT FOR SHELL WINDOWS

  Similar to having dynamically resizable shell window resolutions, there
  should be dynamically resizable font sizes.  The amount of text that could
  be shown a one time in the window remains constant, but the font size is
  changed (using the resize borders).  This should be an option in the
  titlebar menu and not default behaviour.

9.9  RESIZABLE FONT FOR SHELL WINDOWS

  Similar to having dynamically resizable shell window resolutions, there
  should be dynamically resizable font sizes.  The amount of text that could
  be shown a one time in the window remains constant, but the font size is
  changed (using the resize borders).  This should be an option in the
  titlebar menu and not default behaviour.

9.10  ANY FONT IN SHELL WINDOWS

  Any font, be it bitmapped or an Adobe Type 1, should be available in shell
  windows.

9.11  EXTENSIONS TO THE DIR COMMAND
  The DIR command should optionally:
    - show the .COMMENT extended attribute
    - show the number of HPFS extents used by a file

9.12  VERBOSE COPY/MOVE/DEL FOR SHELLS

  The copy/move/del etc. commands should, by default, show each file being
  processed.  An option to process quietly ('/Q' perhaps) should be
  available for those not interested in seeing each file being processed.

9.13  CD WITH A DRIVE CHANGES CURRENT DRIVE (see 9.3)

  In a shell, using 'CD' with a drive (ie: 'CD D:\MYDIR') changes the
  the current directory of the 'D:' drive to '\MYDIR', but does not move
  the user to 'D:'.  A new command to move the user to the new drive (for
  example, 'chddir' or 'cdd' for a short form) should be created to allow
  users to use the old method while allowing them to take advantage of the
  new one.  If aliases are added to CMD.EXE, the user could opt to alias
  'cdd' to 'cd' to always change the drive when changing directories.

9.14  ADDITIONS TO SHELL COMMAND HISTORY FUNCTIONS

  Pressing 'PAGE UP' in a shell should print out the complete
  available command history.

  If the user uses the new 'PAGE UP' function or the 'UP' and 'DOWN'
  arrows when there is already a command partially entered on the command
  line, the shell should try to match the first part of the command with
  something in the history.  'PAGE UP' would show all items in the  history
  that start with the partial command, and 'UP' and 'DOWN' would move to
  the next match.  Partially completed commands should be matched up to the
  current cursor position only.  If there are no matches, the system moves
  forward or backward as usual and 'PAGE UP' returns 'No Matches'.  In order
  to implement this feature, OS/2's shell will have to stop moving the
  cursor position to the end of the line after searching in the command
  history.

9.15  ALLOW OPTIONAL ANSI KEY REMAPPING WITH COMMAND HISTORY ENABLED

  It is undesirable to have OS/2 only allow either ANSI key remapping or
  command history for shells.  This is an unnecessary limitation and should
  be removed.

9.16  FILENAME COMPLETION IN SHELLS

  Pressing 'TAB' while entering a path in a shell would try to perform
  'filename completion', that is, fully resolve the path.  The first 'TAB'
  would find the first match for the partial command; subsequent 'TAB's
  would cycle through the items that match, until it runs out of matches at
  which point it restarts at the beginning.

9.17  LICENSE 4OS2 FROM JPL SOFTWARE AS OS/2'S DEFAULT SHELL

  Most of the shell wishes could be easily solved by replacing OS/2's
  command shell 4OS/2 by JPL Software.

9.18  FIX THE HANDLING OF '*' AND '.' IN A SHELL

  The current handling of '*' and '.' in a shell are terribly outdated,
  being remnants of the old FAT filesystem.  The following is how they
  should be interpreted.

  '*' = select all files
  '*.' = select files ending in a '.'
  '.*' = select files starting with a '.'
  'myprog' = execute a program named 'myprog'
  'myprog.' = execute a program named 'myprog.'

  Not that it is not acceptable for '*' to equal '*.' and for a program
  named 'myprog' (no extension, as they are not required with free-form
  filenames) to only run when it is started as 'myprog.'

9.19  CHANGE WHEN INTERNAL SHELL COMMANDS ARE EXECUTED

  Internal shell commands (like copy, del) should only be executed after
  searching the path for the program.  This would allow people to replace
  the default commands with their own versions.

9.20  PROFILE.CMD TO STORE COMMANDS TO RUN FOR OS/2 SHELLS

  A program, PROFILE.CMD, should be run every time a shell is opened.  It
  would contain all environment variables (rather than having them in the
  config.sys) so that they can be easily changed without rebooting the
  machine.

9.22  ALLOW THE USER TO DROP FONTS ON TO SHELL WINDOWS

  Instead of having to go in to the titlebar menu to change the font, the
  user should be able to drop any font from the Font Palette on to a shell
  window (be it DOS or OS/2).

9.23  PLUG-AND-PLAY SHELL

  Implementing some of the proposed changes to the shell will no doubt cause
  third party vendors to worry (as they must provide the same level of
  functionality to make sales) and possibly users, who may be uncomfortable
  with the changes.  Thus, it is proposed that IBM turn CMD.EXE in to a
  bunch of DLLs, linked together through a single interface, CMD.EXE.  In
  effect, CMD.EXE would be just a dispatch system - sending out the work to
  DLLs.   This would allow users to make custom shells to suit their needs
  by plugging in different DLLs, and would allow shareware authors and
  commercial vendors to use IBM's technology as a stepping stone for their
  own products.

9.24  SINGLE COMMAND LINE

  A single command line should be created to allow users to execute OS/2 and
  DOS software from the same command line.  A similar scheme as available
  right now for specifying DOS configuration could be used (as part of the
  shell options), and the extended attributes could hold specific
  configuration options for DOS applications.  This would also allow IBM to
  remove the entire set of DOS utilities as a DOS program could not tell
  whether an application was DOS or OS/2, allowing seamless integration of
  the two operating systems.

9.26  MOVE SHOULD WORK ACROSS DEVICES

  The MOVE command should work across devices - this means it would have to
  do something like copy and then delete the files.  When MOVE is used on a
  directory, it should move the entire contents of the directory across to
  the destination drive.

9.27  COMBINE COPY AND XCOPY (see 9.23)

  There is no need for two separate copy commands when OS/2 has the ability
  to do it all as one.  A single COPY command, integrated in the shell,
  should be used instead of XCOPY.  If the shell commands were turned in to
  a DLL, a stub XCOPY could use the same code as the shell's COPY command.

9.28  SUBDIRECTORY RECURSION FOR FILE COMMANDS

  All file commands modification, such as 'DEL' and 'COPY' should
  have an option to recurse subdirectories.  The switch '-s'
  (subdirectories) is recommended for enabling the recursion option.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
10.0  MULTIMEDIA

One of OS/2's best features is the MMPM/2; the following are suggestions for
making it even better.

10.1  SUPPORT MORE VIDEO FORMATS

  Support for the following additional formats should be provided by the
  Software Motion Video extension:

  - MPEG-I
  - MPEG-II (when finalized)
  - FLI
  - FLC
  - Video for Windows 1.0 AVI
  - Video for Windows 2
  - Indeo 3
  - QuickTime

10.2  'LOOP FEATURE'

  A feature to continuously loop a video clip or sound file (MIDI or Digital
  Audio) should be provided.

10.3  UPDATE THE OS/2 CD-ROM VIDEOS

  Each full release of OS/2 should come with a totally new set of videos.
  They should emphasize human interaction, wild technology and something
  that could be used as an in-store demo (an introduction to OS/2, perhaps)
  or something that uses the word 'OS/2' in a way that makes the user think
  about it.

10.4  SUPPORT FOR MODE AUDIO FORMATS

  Support for the following additional formats should be provided by Digital
  Audio player:

  - AU
  - SND
  - VOC
  - Compressed WAV

10.5  ADD DSP SUPPORT

  Support for DSP boards, such as the IBM MWave, should be added to the
  MMPM/2 to offload the CPU from such tasks as graphics manipulation,
  voice recognition, text-to-speech, audio compression and video playback.

10.6  MPU-401 SUPPORT

  The MPU-401 is the standard for MIDI interfaces, yet it is not supported
  by the MMPM/2.  MPU-401 support is essential for those who with to use
  OS/2 as a music creation platform and support must be provided for these
  users.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
11.0  UTILITIES

The following are suggestions for changes to existing OS/2 utilities and
suggestions for additional utilities.

11.1  CONTROLLING PROCESS PRIORITY

  Command line utilities for setting process priority should be available.

11.2  LIST/KILL PROCESS COMMANDS

  As part of the base operating system, a command to kill processes must be
  provided.  There must be some means to kill off a program that has gone
  awry quickly and simply.  In addition, to become useful to the average
  user, 'pstat' must be simplified.  It is recommended that, by default,
  'pstat' should show only the base amount of information (ie: PID of the
  main thread and the program command line).

11.3  SHUTDOWN UTILITY

  There must be a utility to shutdown from the command line.  By default,
  it should ask to confirm whether to shutdown the machine or not, but there
  should be a command line option to unconditionally shutdown.  In addition,
  it should have the ability to reboot the machine automatically at the end
  of a shutdown.  This could then be called by remote users (say, on a
  network) who could reboot a troubled machine without having to go down to
  the system.

11.4  DEFRAGMENTATION UTILITY

  It is unacceptable to have to boot DOS in order to defragment a FAT
  partition - especially when many DOS defrag utilities mutilate extended
  attributes.  A defrag utility for HPFS would be good as well.

11.5  SYNCING UP DOS AND OS/2 UTILITY FUNCTIONS

  All command-line utilities, such as DIR and FORMAT, should have the same
  functionality as those included with IBM DOS 6.1.  This means the same
  command line options and the same behaviour (for example, COPY should ask
  before overwriting an existing file, FORMAT should be able to QuickFormat,
  etc.)  Whether OS/2's way of doing things or DOS's way of doing this is
  chosen, they should both be the same for compatibility and consistency
  across platforms.

11.6  UTILITY FOR FINDING THE OWNER OF A RESOURCE

  There should be a utility to show the program and process ID of the owner
  of a particular system resource, be it a pipe, queue, device, file, drive
  or any other system resource.  For example, assuming the program was
  called 'OWNER.EXE', the user could type 'OWNER \PIPE\MYPIPE' and find out
  that it is owned by 'MYPROGRAM' running at PID 135, along with any other
  useful information.

11.7  MIGRATION DATABASE MAINTENANCE

  Included in the Migrate program should be a method for updating the
  database to change settings as well as adding and deleting programs.

11.8  NEW 'MORE' UTILITY
  The OS/2 'more' utility is showing its age and should be replaced with a
  faster and more feature-packed version.  It should be able to get a
  filename to read from the command line (ie: you should be able to type
  'more myfile'), it should NEVER scroll when showing a full page (should
  clear the screen and show the full page), should have forward and backward
  movement using 'UP' and 'DOWN' arrows for moving single lines and 'PAGE
  UP' and 'PAGE DOWN' for moving entire pages.  'SPACE' would move forward 1
  page, 'RETURN' would move forward 1 line.  It must have some kind of
  search capabilities.

11.10  TEXT-MODE EDITOR

  A text editor that can be used when booting from floppies must be included
  for emergency measures. I recommend using the same editor that comes with
  IBM DOS 6.1 which is based on TinyEd, an IBM EWS product.

11.11  SUBDIRECTORY RECUSION FOR FILE COMMANDS

  All file commands modification, such as 'DEL' and 'COPY' should
  have an option to recurse subdirectories.  The switch '-s' is recommended
  for enabling the recursion option.

11.12  PROGRAM SCHEDULER

  Include a program to schedule programs to start at different times during
  the day, allowing support for starting programs at any minute, hour, day
  of the week, day of the month and month.  While it is understood that the
  ALARM applet can do it, ALARM is not really designed as a task scheduler,
  and furthermore is probably overlooked by many users because it is quirky
  to use.

11.14  DISTRIBUTION OF MIGRATE DATABASE

  Assuming IBM periodically updates the migration database (which it should
  if it does not right now), it should be posted to the IBM BBS as well as
  to the Internet regularly.

11.15  FDISK SHOULD NOT REQUIRE A REBOOT

  Changing drive tables should not require a reboot.  Any drive that is no
  longer available should simply disappear, leaving other drives available
  for use.

11.16  ATTRIB FOR DIRECTORIES

  ATTRIB should work on directories in addition to files.

11.17  MIGRATE UTILITY SHOULD REMEMBER WHAT IT HAS MIGRATED

  The Migrate utility should remember what it has migrated and by default
  not show any applications that have already been migrated in the lists of
  found applications.  An option to 'Show All' would allow the user to
  select programs that have been installed before.

11.18  PM DISKCOPY

  There should be a PM version of DISKCOPY included with OS/2.  When
  introduced, it would replace the text DISKCOPY as the 'Copy Disk' command
  on in the Drives object in the WPS.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
12.0  DOS

One of the benefits of OS/2 over any other operating system is its ability
to run both existing applications as well as the newer, faster and more
functional OS/2 ones.  The following are suggestions to keep OS/2's DOS
support on the cutting edge.

12.1  UPDATE DOS CODE

  OS/2's DOS code should updated to IBM DOS 6.1 or higher and should include
  full DPMI 1.0 support.

12.2  AUTOMATIC TRUNCATION TO 8.3 FILENAMES IN DOS/WINDOWS APPLICATIONS

  Currently, OS/2 will only show filenames that are 8.3-compatible in a
  DOS/Windows session, which is an extreme problem for those of us with HPFS
  drives and like to use the long filename feature to its full potential.

12.4  BETTER SVGA IN DOS WINDOWS SUPPORT

  OS/2 needs better SVGA support for DOS window sessions.  All resolutions
  supported by a card should be available for windows.  As long as a window
  would not cover more area than available on the desktop it should be shown
  (or perhaps a method for 'squishing' the windows to make them fit on the
  desktop could be developed).

12.5  DOS WILDCARD EXPANSION

  DOS wildcard expansion should be changed to act exactly as in IBM DOS 6.1.

12.6  HPFS DEVICE DRIVER

  Create a device driver to seemlessly handle HPFS disks when booting from
  real DOS and offer to include it in a user's DOS CONFIG.SYS, if present.

12.7  ALLOW SETBOOT /IBD:X TO BE RUN FROM DOS

  Having this command would allow the user to boot OS/2 from DOS without
  having to go through the Boot Manager.

12.8  USE EXTENDED ATTRIBUTES TO STORE DOS CONFIG INFO (see 9.24)

  The extended attributes would store a list of device drivers and
  environment settings (like EMS, XMS, priorities, etc) for a DOS program,
  so that any time the program is run it's specific configuration is
  enabled.  This moves the dependance on configuration information from the
  shell to the application, where it belongs in the first place.

12.9  DRAG-AND-DROP DOS SETTINGS

  It should be possible to drag the DOS settings from one program to another.
  This would greatly simplify the configuration of DOS programs.

12.10  MAKE DOS-RELATED FILES LESS INTRUSIVE

  Move all DOS-related files to the \OS2\MDOS directory, like AUTOEXEC.BAT,
  etc. so that they do not clutter up the root directory.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
13.0  WIN-OS/2

Everyone said IBM could never get Windows to run under OS/2, and yet they
did and it runs amazingly under most configurations.  To enhance IBM's
support for Windows, the following wishes were made.

13.1  WIN32S SUPPORT FOR WINOS/2

  Win32s support should be included as part of the base system to allow
  users to run such applications as MathCad 4.0.  This also means full VXD
  support should be available.

13.2  SIMPLE WAY TO INSTALL WIN-OS/2 FULLSCREEN DRIVERS

  Provide an easy way to change the Win-OS/2 FS device drivers to
  the manufacturers accelerated ones. One of the biggest problems
  with Win-OS/2 is the slow FS performance. This turns off many
  people moving from Windows. Including the video card manufacturers
  accelerated drivers with an option to install them as the FS ones
  would help improve this perception.

13.3  ALLOW OS/2 FOR WINDOWS SUPPORT IN STANDARD OS/2

  The standard OS/2 distribution should be able to perform the same magic
  that OS/2 for Windows can when it comes to starting Windows.  This means
  that a user should be able to use the Windows already on their drive
  instead of having to install WinOS/2 - even if the user bought the
  standard OS/2.

13.4  SUPPORT WINDOWS FOR WORKGROUPS 3.11

  IBM should support the enhancements brought by Windows for Workgroups
  3.11, such as the enhanced file system routines.  While it is debatable as
  to the need for full Windows for Workgroups support (meaning the
  networking functionality), the user should be able to run Windows for
  Workgroups using OS/2 for Windows' Windows technology.

13.5  MOVE TO WABI-STYLE WINDOWS SUPPORT

  The future of Windows support is looking a bit grim as IBM will no longer
  get source code to any new additions to Windows.  Therefore, it should
  look to porting the Windows APIs to OS/2 APIs - in effect, giving OS/2 its
  own version of Wabi.  This would reduce the disk requirements as a full
  Windows install would not be required and would be faster and more
  efficient that loading up a full copy of Windows.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
14.0  REXX

REXX is one of the greatest features of OS/2 because of its simple way of
allowing any user to write very powerful programs.  The following are
suggestions to make a good thing even better.

14.1  INTEGRATION OF REXX QUEUES WITH API QUEUES

  Why must there be two separate queues in OS/2 - the system queues invoked
  using the API calls and the REXX queues?  Would it not make more sense to
  have both use the same queues?  The transmission between the API calls and
  REXX could be done using shared memory which is freed after the element is
  taken off the queue.  All that would be passed through the queue would be
  the address to the shared memory segment.  This would not only remove the
  confusion as to why there are two separate queues, but would allow the
  user to create very powerful yet simple software with REXX-based clients
  talking to a C-based server using queues.

14.2  MORE INTEGRATION OF THE WPS AND REXX

  The ability to query and control objects is greatly needed in REXX.  This
  means passing data to and from an object, as well as doing things like
  instantiating objects (for example, opening a WPS folder).  Being able to
  query objects would make it much easier to document and compare object
  settings.

  REXX also needs much better INI control - the current INI management
  routines are extremely slow.

14.3  PROCESS CONTROL AND SHUTDOWN COMMANDS FOR REXX

  REXX should have commands to allow process control (starting new tasks,
  killing tasks, setting process priority) as well as a command to shutdown
  the system.

14.4  INTERNATIONAL FUNCTIONS (see 5.3)

  To implement the standard formats asked for in section 5.3, the REXX API
  must be expanded to handle the conversion of date, time, floating point
  and integer numbers, currency, etc. to and from string formats.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
15.0  OS/2 API

The following are requests for changes or additions to the OS/2 API set.

15.1  INTERNATIONAL FUNCTIONS (see 5.3)

  To implement the standard formats asked for in section 5.3, the OS/2 API
  must be expanded to handle the conversion of date, time, floating point
  and integer numbers, currency, etc. to and from string and number
  formats.

15.2  APIS FOR ALL STANDARD SCSI FUNCTIONS

  OS/2's API function set should be expanded to include any standard SCSI
  device, such as CD-ROMs, scanners, tape drives, etc.

15.3  MAKE ALL APIS PUBLIC

  It is unacceptable for part of OS/2's API set to still be hidden away,
  forcing programmers to hack the libraries to find out how to use these
  functions.

15.4  ENHANCEMENTS TO DOSALLOCMEM

  Two new memory allocation types should be added for DosAllocMem.  The
  first is PAG_RESIDENT which would make the memory object from being paged
  out or discarded.  This would be helpful for those programs that need to
  have deterministic behaviour in order to maintain real-time I/O
  responsiveness in heavy workload situations.

  The second memory allocation type is PAG_DISCARDABLE which would allow
  OS/2 to throw away the contents of pages of the object rather than paging
  them out.  This would be useful for application-managed caches.  For
  example, DB2/2 could cache database information in a higher-level form
  than depending on file system caches.  Multimedia applications could cache
  recently used images or read-ahead data to improve responsiveness to the
  user.

  Two new exception type should be added to help applications using
  discardable memory to handle accessing pages that have been discarded. The
  first exception could be named XCPT_PAGE_NOT_PRESENT and would be issued
  when an attempt to access a discarded page is made.  The default behaviour
  would be to terminate the application.

  The second exception type could be named XCPT_DISCARDING_PAGE and would be
  issued whenever a range of discardable pages are being thrown out.  This
  would help applications update status tables to reflect that pages have
  been discarded.  The default behaviour would be to ignore the exception
  and continue.

15.5  ENHANCEMENTS TO DOSQUERYMEM (see 15.4)

  DosQueryMem should be modified to be able to report resident and
  discardable page types and also to be able to report whether a discardable
  page is present (in RAM) or not present (it was discarded).

15.6  NEW API - DOSQUERYRESOURCESTATUS (see 15.4)

  A new API call named DosQueryResourceStatus should return the amont of
  used and unused physical resources such as physical memory, virtual memory
  and CPU time.  This would aid programs that maintain caches allocated with
  PAG_DISCARDABLE by giving them more informatino to decide how big to make
  discardable caches.

  The following is a proposed definition for DosQueryResourceStatus.

  APIRET  DosQueryResourceStatus( PID processID, RES_TYPE sourceType,
  RES_MEASURE  resourceMeasure, RES_UNIT resourceUnit, PULONG pResult );

  processID - process ID for which information is to be returned or 0 for
  global information for the entire system

  resourceType - type of resource: RESTYPE_PHYSICAL_MEMORY,
  RESTYPE_VIRTUAL_MEMORY, RESTYPE_DISCARDABLE_MEMORY RESTYPE_CPU_TIME

  resourceMeasure - type of measure: RESMEAS_UNUSED, RESMEAS_USED

  resourceUnit - unit to use for results: RESUNIT_BYTES, RESUNIT_PAGES,
  RESUNIT_PERCENT, RESUNIT_MILLISECONDS

  pResult - pointer to 32-bit unsigned integer to receive the result
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
16.0  APPLETS

OS/2's applets should be one of the highlights of the operating system, and
yet it the applications contained in it are rarely used.  To remedy this
problem, the following wishes should be taken in to consideration.

16.1  REVAMPING THE PRODUCTIVITY FOLDER

  The productivity folder should not only be made up of useful applications,
  but should also be a reflection of what OS/2 is capable of.  They should
  be technology statements.  This means that the applications should be
  usable, should be SOM-based, support standards like OpenDoc when
  applicable, etc.  They are often the first exposure a user has to OS/2
  applications, and IBM should do everything possible to make sure it is a
  positive first step.

16.2  PROVIDE BASE WORD PROCESSING ABILITIES

  A small word processor should be included with the operating system.  It
  would have to support things like multiple fonts, bold, underline, etc.
  This might be a good way to show off OpenDoc.

16.3  UPDATE/REPLACE SOFTERM

  Softerm has been updated since the version that was included with OS/2
  2.0, and yet OS/2 continues to ship with the same version.  If it can't be
  updated, it should be replaced.  The current Softerm is too difficult to
  use for most users.

16.4  E SHOULD NOT ASK FOR A FILE TYPE

  It is a major annoyance to be asked for every file you edit for the file
  type.

16.5  FIX THE ICON EDITOR

  The Icon Editor needs a real overhaul.  It is very difficult to use
  (especially for multi-mode colour icons) and is full of bugs.  For
  example:

  - it always defaults to version 1.2 icons instead of 2.0, even when you
    save the icon as version 2.0
  - you can have 256 colour icons stored as EGA type - impossible!
  - if you close without saving, it asks you if you want to save - even if
    say yes, the icon does not get saved
  - one user reports the icons keep going black and white on him

  In addition, the following changes should be made:

  - rearrange the menus so that it is easy to switch between different icon
    formats
  - a control should indicate which icon format is being edited and should
    allow quick switching between views
  - use a different term for 'device' - 'image' for example.  'Device' is
    much too obscure.

16.6  EDITORS KEEP REDRAWING THE SCREEN

  The two PM editors (E and EPM) continually redraw the screen - whenever
  the return key is pressed, the screen is redrawn even when no scrolling is
  required.  This is a real problem for people with slower video cards.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
17.0  INSTALLATION AND CONFIGURATION

Installing OS/2 has been a horrible experience for many users; the following
suggestions are designed to simplify the install procedures and make sure
they work for everyone.

17.1  A SIMPLE, ROCK SOLID INSTALL PROCESS

  OS/2 has in the past had a reputation for a terrible install process.
  Whether many of the problems have been solved or not, the fact remains
  that many people still have problems, and even more people fear installing
  OS/2 in the first place because they have heard about the 'OS/2 Install
  Monster'.

  In addition to just installing the operating system, the install program
  should do some initial hardware testing and provide useful feedback to
  the user about what to do to correct any problems.  Things to be checked
  include:
    - cache memory (works or not)
    - change line in diskette drives
    - proper operating of parallel port
  and anything else that could cause problems for OS/2 down the line.

  The text mode install program should contain stripped down versions
  of FDISK and FORMAT (perhaps in the form of DLLS) which would load and
  execute in the background while the user is reading installation notes.

  The PM part of the install should install the MMPM/2 and video drivers
  rather than forcing the user to install the MMPM/2 and extra video
  drivers after everything is installed.

17.2  RECOVERY FLOPPY/PARTITION

  OS/2 should allow the user to create a 'Recovery Disk', with only the code
  needed to get the particular installation of OS/2 up and running for
  correcting problems, replacing system files, etc.  The user should
  be able to specify whether they want to make a recovery floppy or a
  recovery partition - the partition, in conjunction with Boot Manager,
  would allow a user to boot off hard drive to fix problems.  Either way,
  these options would allow the system to boot much quicker than using the
  2 install disks.

17.3  COMMON INSTALL/UNINSTALL PROGRAM

  A single, common install and uninstall program should come with OS/2 and
  IBM should insist that all 3rd party vendors make use of it.  This install
  program should even be used for the OS/2 installation.  This install
  program would use CID scripts to perform the installation and would allow
  administrators to create their own scripts.  The process for creating CID
  scripts would have to be documented to allow anyone to make their own
  scripts.  Installation scripts would be processed hierarchally and the
  granularity of packages should go down to individual programs, for
  example:

  - OS/2 Base System
     - Tools and Games
        - EPM
        - Chess
     - Multimedia
        - Software Motion Video
     - Video Drivers

  If, for example, the user chose to install the Software Motion Video
  drivers, the MMPM/2 would be installed if it was not already installed,
  while uninstalling Tools and Games would remove EPM, Chess and everything
  else in the package.

  The installation process should support SOM object registration and
  CONFIG.SYS updating.  Uninstalls should remove all traces of the program's
  existance, including entries in any system INI files (ie: OS2.INI).

17.4  SUPPORT FOR PLUG AND PLAY ISA

  OS/2 should support the Plug and Play ISA specification by Microsoft and
  Intel to ensure simple installation and configuration of ISA bus cards.

17.5  PROGRESS INDICATORS

  Any task that will take longer than 5 seconds to accomplish should have a
  progress indicator to assure the user that the system is, in fact, still
  functioning.  These progress indicators should also be used during the
  boot process, showing loading device drivers etc.

17.6  TEST IF USER IS VISUALLY IMPAIRED

  The OS/2 install program should ask the user if they are visually
  impaired, perhaps along with a simple colour test.  This would allow IBM
  to include one set of icons and schemes for the visually impaired and
  another set, a much more colourful one, for those who are not.

17.7  NEAT TIPS, TRICKS AND OTHER INTERESTING INFORMATION

  During the installation process, little banners showing nifty tips, tricks
  and other interesting information should appear, giving the user not only
  something to watch during a lengthy installation, but practical knowledge
  about an often unfamiliar system.

17.8  SEPARATE APPLICATIONS

  Putting every application/game that comes with OS/2 in the \OS2\APPS
  directory is not a great idea.  The programs should be put in their own
  directory, under the \OS2\APPS tree.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
18.0  DOCUMENTATION

Some parts of OS/2 have not been documented very well or not at all.  The
following are suggestions of which parts should be included as on-line
documentation or enhancements to existing documentation.

18.1  ON-LINE USER GUIDE AND INSTALLATION GUIDE

  The provision of the 'User Guide' and 'Installation Guide' as INF files
  would be much appreciated.

18.2  MAKE THE OS/2 TECHNICAL LIBRARY FREELY AVAILABLE

  Releasing the complete IBM OS/2 Technical Library would be greatly
  appreciated by all OS/2 users.  If this is not possible, at least the
  OS/2-specific parts should be released.  This includes such items as the
  Redbooks.  They are chocked full of useful information for any OS/2 user
  and would be put to good use by many people.

18.3  AN ON-LINE, IN-DEPTH DESCRIPTION OF THE CONFIG.SYS

  There should be an on-line, in-depth description of the CONFIG.SYS
  consolidated in one INF file.  This file should have descriptions of each
  and every valid command in the CONFIG.SYS, along with useful tips and
  recommendations.

18.4  DOCUMENT PRODUCTIVITY FOLDER

  There is no documentation for the software included in the Productivity
  folder beyond the on-line help for each package.  IBM should include some
  kind of user's guide for each program.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
19.0  PACKAGES

The following are packages that are not included in the base system and
should be for future releases.

19.1  PEER-TO-PEER IN BASE SYSTEM

  The base OS/2 kit should include some sort of peer to peer networking as
  an option.  Basic TCP/IP networking would be good for cross-platform
  networking.

19.2  INCLUSION OF EPM SOURCES (*.E) AND ETPM COMPILER

  The EPM sources (*.E) and ETPM compiler should be included in the base
  operating system.

19.3  C2 SECURITY IN BASE SYSTEM

  Optional C2 security should be available in the base system, complete with
  a file system to handle file permissions.  Support for even higher levels
  of security would be great, as a separate product.

19.4  USE THE CD-ROM VERSION OF OS/2 TO PROMOTE OS/2 SHAREWARE

  Only a small portion of the OS/2 CD-ROM is used.  The remainder could be
  filled with the best OS/2 shareware, bitmaps, fonts, etc.  Software should
  be initially tested for quality, but after that no restrictions should
  apply to who's software can appear, except that it must not be commercial.
  This will give a real boost to the OS/2 shareware industry while not
  treading on the toes of the commercial vendors.

19.5  PROVIDE A SEPARATE OS/2 SOFTWARE CD WITH OS/2 ON CD-ROM

  Ship each version of OS/2 on CD-ROM with an extra CD of vendor software.
  Each disk would contain fully featured OS/2 applications that work for a
  limited number of uses (say, 10 uses).  After that, the application must
  be paid for (by using an 800 number).  When ordering the application, the
  user receives a key to unlock that application so it can be used unlimited
  times, and the user would have the opportunity to order manuals etc. on
  the phone.

19.6  INCLUDE MORE EWS PROGRAMS IN THE BASE PRODUCT

  The IBM Employee Written Software collection is chocked full of really
  useful software.  The entire EWS collection should be provided in the
  CD-ROM version.  The floppy version should contain the most useful of the
  EWS programs - namely TinyEd, ExDesk, MSHELL/TSHELL, etc.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
20.0  CONFIG.SYS

The CONFIG.SYS can be a mortal enemy for some users.  It is difficult to
update and often a little frightening to the novice user.  The following are
recommendations designed to solve that.

20.1  MULTIPLE-LINE CONFIG.SYS ENTRIES

  CONFIG.SYS entries should be allowed to span multiple lines to enhance
  readability and ease of editing the CONFIG.SYS with editors that can not
  handle the long lines.  Entries that span multiple lines could, for
  example, be enclosed in double quotes ("") or the end of a line could be
  delimited with two pipes (||).

20.2  ABILITY TO CHANGE LIBPATH WITHOUT REBOOTING

  Not being able to change the LIBPATH without rebooting is a real problem.
  The user should be able to change the LIBPATH that all new processes will
  inherit; existing processes will retain their existing LIBPATH.

20.3  SEPARATE CONFIGURATION INFO FROM DEVICE DRIVERS (see 9.20)

  The only thing the CONFIG.SYS should hold is device drivers, and even
  then, only OS/2 device drivers.  Putting configuration information (like
  the LIBPATH, environment variables) in to the CONFIG.SYS makes OS/2 a
  problem to reconfigure as the system needs to be rebooted for changes to
  take effect.  Such configuration information should be kept in the
  PROFILE.CMD and executed for every OS/2 process that is started.

20.4  GET RID OF THE CONFIG.SYS

  Of course, the real solution is to replace the CONFIG.SYS all together.

  A folder called \STARTUP would be used to store the device drivers,
  installable file systems and programs that would normally be started from
  the CONFIG.SYS.There would be various possible times the driver
  could be loaded - for example, base-level support for hard drive
  controllers etc. would be loaded very early in the boot process while
  things like extra file systems would be started later on.  The extended
  attributes for each file would contain the setting for when the driver
  would be started.  The extended attributes would also contain any
  necessary command line options.

  This directory would be managed by a WPS configuration object that would
  allow users to do drag-and-drop configuration and set the boot order and
  command line options for each program to be started.

20.5  PM CONFIG.SYS MANAGER (see 20.4)

  A PM CONFIG.SYS manager is required to help the user get their machine
  configured as they need it hassle-free until such time as it can be
  replaced by the WPS Configuration Manager.

20.6  SEPARATE DOS DEVICE DRIVERS FROM THE OS/2 CONFIG.SYS

  It is unnecessarily complex to have OS/2 device drivers included in the
  same file as DOS device drivers.  Another file should be used to hold DOS
  device drivers instead.  It would replace the DOS_DEVICE setting in the
  program settings for a DOS program; instead, only an option to specify a
  path to the file should be provided.  Any option that is allowable in a
  DOS CONFIG.SYS should be allowed in here; OS/2 can choose to ignore those
  that do not apply.

20.7  DRIVER CONFIGURATION DATABASE (see 20.4, 20.5)

  A database-based tool for configuring device drivers could be created to
  simplify their management.  The database would contain infomration on what
  swithes exist, what they do, which drivers must be loaded before this
  driver can be loaded, examples of use, etc.  A GUI utility would use this
  database to help the user edit the CONFIG.SYS.

20.8  SUPPORT FOR MULTIPLE CONFIGURATIONS

  Like DOS, OS/2 should support multiple configurations.  However, OS/2's
  multiple configuration support must be much simpler than DOS's.  One
  method of ensuring simplicity would be to look for files named CONFIG*.*
  in the root directory of the boot drive.  OS/2 would show a menu of all
  the CONFIG*.* files during boot up, with the default being CONFIG.SYS.
  The user can then select which configuration to start.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
21.0  HELP SYSTEM

  When in trouble, the on-line help system is usually the only place to
  turn, so it should be easy to use and intuitive to use and reasonably well
  featured.  Unfortunately this isn't necessarily the case.  The following
  are suggestions on how to correct this.

21.1  ASSOCIATE VIEW.EXE WITH INF FILES

  Associating VIEW.EXE with INF files will make starting INF files from the
  WPS much easier for the user.

21.2  SEARCH FEATURE SHOULD FIND PARTIAL MATCHES

  Searching for complete words can be a trial-and-error game if you don't
  know exactly what you are looking for.

21.3  ALLOW PM-STYLE COPY FROM VIEW.EXE

  It should be possible to just mark and copy from a INF file using the same
  PM-style methods as everywhere else, meaning the user should be able to
  drag to highlight an area and then use CTRL-INS to copy.

21.4  ABILITY TO TURN INF FILES IN TO TEXT

  It should be possible to turn a partial or entire INF in to a text file.

21.5  PRINTER-SELECT OPTION IN VIEW.EXE

  It should be possible to select alternate printers from within VIEW.EXE.

21.6  TEXT MODE INF VIEWER

  Your machine is dead and you have to boot up off floppy to fix it and you
  forgot the command line switch for the utility that would make it all
  right again.  Not a good time to find out that the help system only runs
  with the Presentation Manager.  A text mode viewer is definitely needed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
98.0  OS/2 IN GENERAL

The following are items that do not fit in to any other category.

98.1  MAINTAINING THE NUMLOCK STATE (AS DEFINED BY THE BIOS)

  On bootup, OS/2 should leave the NUMLOCK state alone, as it is defined in
  the BIOS.  To support machines without a BIOS option for NUMLOCK, the
  NUMLOCK state could be defined by an environment variable (for example,
  'SET NUMLOCKSTATE=[ON|OFF|DEFAULT]')

98.2  BETTER INTERNET SUPPORT

  IBM needs to provide better support to people on the Internet.  This means
  assigning people to monitor the Usenet newsgroups (comp.os.os2.*), making
  available Internet-addressable mailboxes for IBM support, making IBM
  support board message areas Internet accessible and especially keeping
  the IBM Internet site complete and up to date (software.watson.ibm.com).
  This means that EVERYTHING available on IBM's Support BBS in Boca Raton
  should be on this system at the most 1 day after it appears in Boca
  Raton.  Of course, making the IBM's Support BBS Internet-accessible would
  be the optimum solution.

98.3  CHANGE CTRL-ALT-DEL MEANING

  The first CTRL-ALT-DEL should bring up a window asking the user whether
  they would like to kill the application that had the keyboard focus at the
  time of the CTRL-ALT-DEL, reboot the machine or cancel.  The second
  CTRL-ALT-DEL will unconditionally reboot the machine.

98.5  BOOT DRIVE SELECTION

  There should be a variable in the CONFIG.SYS to denote the boot drive,
  which could be used for anything (such as LIBPATH entries or entries in
  the OS2.INI) that knows it will always be running from the boot disk.
  This would give a sort of disk independence for boot disks and make the
  task of transferring configurations much simpler.

98.6  SLIM OS/2

  There should be an OS/2 that will run in less than 4 MB (ie: start up in 2
  MB, but for performance run in 4, much like OS/2 starts in 4 now but for
  performance people use 8).  It should also use less disk space.

98.8  OPTIONAL SAVING OF MEMORY STATE

  The user should be able to save the memory state of the machine to the
  swapfile as an option during shutdown.  This would allow the machine to
  start up with all programs and documents opened to the exact place they
  were before shutting down.  It would be desirable to be able to save the
  memory state for individual applications instead of the memory state of
  the entire system.  This would allow the user to do such things as:

  - interrupt a long debugging session and reload it the next day
  - save the state of a program before attempting a critical manipulation
  - save the state of a program when a bug has occured or is about to occure
  to give to the author for debugging purposes.

98.10  UPGRADE SOM TO SOM-II, ADD DSOM W/PEER-TO-PEER (see 19.1)

  Upgrade OS/2's SOM and the WPS to SOM-II.  When Peer-to-Peer services are
  installed, install DSOM.

98.11  ADD SUPPORT FOR OPENDOC (see 16.1)

  Support for OpenDoc should be included with the operating system.

98.12  SUPPORT SWAP PARTITIONS

  OS/2 should support swap partitions in addition to swap files.  Swap
  partitions eliminate costly file I/O overhead by allowing the operating
  system to do block writes right to the device.  OS/2 should also support
  multiple swap partitions, allowing the user to spread the swap activity
  over many disks.

98.13  KEYBOARD DEFINITION UTILITY

  The user should be able to define their keyboard as they desire instead of
  being restricted to the keyboard layouts defined by the Country setting.

98.14  ALT-TAB SHOULD WORK LIKE WINDOWS

  The ALT-TAB key combination, which cycles through the running programs,
  should work like in Windows.  This means that rather than flipping through
  the programs, a little box showing the name of a running program should
  appear.  Each time the user hits ALT-TAB, the name of the next running
  program would appear, until there are no more programs and it restarts at
  the beginning again.  When the user finds the program they want, they let
  go of the ALT key to switch to that program.

98.15  ENCOURAGE GROUP DESIGN

  IBM should encourage vendors to get together as groups to design software
  for OS/2.  This means things like device drivers, file systems, common
  functionality for applications, etc.  This will help the user enormously
  by creating some form of standards for third party support.

98.16  LOWER MEMORY REQUIREMENTS

  The standard PC ships with 4 MB memory - not nearly enough to run OS/2
  properly.  To support these standard configurations, OS/2 should be
  modified to run with acceptable speed (comparable to a 6 or 8 MB
  configuration) on 4 MB systems.

98.17  PUT THE WHOLE OPERATING SYSTEM IN \OS2

  The entire operating system should be held within \OS2 - this includes the
  PSFONTS, SPOOL and DESKTOP directories, and possibly even the multimedia
  support.

98.18  LOG THE BOOT PROCESS

  Often error messages fly off the screen during boot up.  To allow the user
  to diagnose problems, a log of the boot process showing everything sent to
  the screen should be created.

98.19  DISCOURAGE VENDORS FROM USING THE OS/2 INI FILES

  Vendors should be discouraged from using the OS2.INI to store information.
  First, it increases the size of the file thereby slowing down the whole
  system, and second it means that any information in there is lost when
  OS/2 is reinstalled.

98.20  BETTER SECOND MONITOR SUPPORT

  It should be possible to install a Hercules monochrome card and have OS/2
  show a text screen on the second monitor.  This would allow the user to,
  for example, debug on one monitor and make changes with another.

  When switching to the second monitor, the main monitor should not become
  inactive, as it does currently.

98.21  FONT SUBSTITUTION

  Printers today come packed with built-in fonts.  There should be a
  substitution table for converting, for example, 'Times New Roman' to the
  printer's internal 'Times' font.

98.22  SEND ALL FONTS TO BE USED IN A DOCUMENT WITH THE DOCUMENT HEADER

  When using the PostScript printer driver, all fonts to be used in a
  document should be optionally sent with the document header.  This will
  decrease the size of print jobs astronomically as the fonts used in a
  document are sent once - not with every page.

98.23  SERIAL PORT ARBITRATOR

  Many users have any combination of terminal programs, FAX software, UUCP
  software, Fido mailers and BBSs all fighting for time on the serial port.
  There needs to be a central serial port arbitrator - a program to manage
  the port.  It would answer the phone and pass control to a particular
  program based on a string received by the remote modem.  That program
  would use the file handle passed to it by the arbitrator to access the
  port.  Software could also ask it for temporary control of the port to do
  automated dialouts or for interactive sessions with a terminal program.
  If the port is already in use, there should be an option to wait for the
  port to be free and then give access to the port on a
  first-come-first-serve basis along with a timeout, or to fail immediately.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
99.0  CONTRIBUTORS

Without the many contributors from networks all over the world, this list
would not be possible.  I would like to thank each and every person who
helped me make this list what it is today.

  Abbott, Darren (abbott@batman.dynetics.com)
  Aiyagari, Sanjay (sanjay@cs.columbia.edu)
  Babcock, Bob (peprbv@cfa0.harvard.edu)
  Behrens, Frank (frank@sax.sax.de)
  Benoit, Scott (sbenoit@phobos.astro.uwo.ca)
  Bonnaud, Laurent (bonnaud@inrs-telecom.uquebec.ca)
  Bononno, Robert (bononno@acf2.nyu.edu)
  Brown, Michael (zilch@aurora.equinox.gen.nz)
  Byrne, Peter (peterb@mclprism.co.uk)
  Cadiz, Bombim (cadizht@csgrad.cs.vt.edu)
  Caldwell, Larry (larryc@teleport.com)
  Caples, Jon (jcaples@netcom.com)
  Coen, Paul R. (pcoen@drunivac.drew.edu)
  Coker, Russell (3:633/363)
  Corrigan, John (1:3406/15)
  Cox, Sam (slc00@lvld.hp.com)
  Derbyshire, Drew (software@kew.com)
  Dhir, Al (adhir@betelgeuse.iagi.com)
  Duffy, Patrick (duffy@theory.chem.ubc.ca)
  Edwards, Paul (3:711/934)
  Fahller, Bjorn (bjorn@ludd.luth.se)
  Freeborg, John (johnf@persoft.com)
  Fischer, Kevin (kfischer@hurricane.seas.ucla.edu)
  Freeman, Jerry (n6140299@henson.cc.wwu.edu)
  Gurganus, James (gurganus@ecn.purdue.edu)
  Harden, John (johnh@splat.com)
  Heiden, John (jheiden@uoft02.utoledo.edu)
  Henry, Andrew (bspahh@ss1.bath.ac.uk)
  Hernandez, Manolo (manolo@rcf.rsmas.miami.edu)
  Huttunen, Ari (ari.huttunen@hut.fi)
  Jensen, Lew (lrj@helios.tn.cornell.edu)
  Karasch, Bernt (bernt.karasch@ruba.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de)
  Kiehl, Horst (h.p.kiehl@kfa-juelich.de)
  Kint, Rene (kint@tudebg.et.tudelft.nl)
  Knotts, Brian (bknotts@mcimail.com)
  Kwilas, Kris (kris.kwilas@gco.com)
  Lassiter, Vincent (lassiter@pentagon-hqdadss.army.mil)
  Leung, Tedman (tedman@sfu.ca)
  Liskov, Nate (nate@miki.lcs.mit.edu)
  Longton, Andrew (1:109/347)
  Lonngren, Fredric (Fredric.Longren@eos.ericsson.se)
  Hamblen, Nathan (nathan@crl.com)
  Hanser, Per M. (perhans@mmf.ruc.dk)
  Horvath, Joshua (pari4038@nova.gmi.edu)
  Mack, Thomas (mack@ips.cs.tu-bs.de)
  Mackintosh, David (1:163/557)
  Martin, Steve (steve@dlomas.com)
  Masalehdan, Babak (tillman+@pitt.edu)
  Menard, Francois (1:257/445)
  Mueller, Stefan
   (stefan=mueller%mitarbeiter%hochtechnik@uqbar.hft.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de)
  Narramore, Mattison (jmn@gandalf.rutgers.edu)
  Ngo, Jonathan Vincent (jngo@charon.engga.uwo.ca)
  Palmer, Ronald B. ($ww090@yj0030.remnet.ab.com)
  Patanen, Jani (japa@mits.mdata.fi)
  Petersen, Martin Kasper (u930730@daimi.aau.dk)
  Petrilli, Jack (jack.petrilli@rose.com)
  Raine, Michael John (michael-raine@uiowa.edu)
  Regoli, Luca (mc0280@mclink.it)
  Roderick, Richard (richard@kira.csos.orst.edu)
  Rodgers, R S (rsrodger@wam.umd.edu)
  Salo, Mike (1:282/108)
  Samuel, Joshua (josh@werple.aphana.org.au)
  Shiu, Venone (h9218919@hkuxa.hku.hk)
  Skinner, Joseph (joe@jsnode.equinox.gen.nz)
  Stephenson, Dan (dano@srl01.cacs.usl.edu)
  Swackhamer, Jay (c/o Evan Champion, evanc@spatial.synapse.org)
  Swanson, Craig (1:202/354)
  Tan, Cheng-Yang (cytan@tristan.tn.cornell.edu)
  Teittinen, Marko (marko@cs.umd.edu)
  Timms, Ian (itimms@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au)
  Venkateswar, Ravikumar (rvenkate@uiuc.edu)
  Verburg, Bram (2:500/137.21376)
  Veronese, Luciano (veu@necsy.it)
  Vezeau, Danny (spice@bmerha2f.bnr.ca)
  Vulis, Dimitri (dlv@bwalk.dm.com)
  Wiencken, Marcus (wiencken@linac.ikp.physik.th-darmstadt.de)
  Wilcox, Duncan (mc2199@mclink.it)
  Wiley, George (magrw@levels.unisa.edu.au)
-- 
Evan Champion [Team OS/2!]  System Administrator @ synapse.org
evanc@spatial.synapse.org   OS/2 Wish List Project Coordinator!
