DIBA Software Consultants is a small computer consulting company that builds better software. We develop both commercial and custom software for IBM PCs, IBM Mainframes, and the internet.
You're invited to read
Diane's resume which will take you from COBOL to Assembler,
VISUAL BASIC and VX-REXX to C/C++, mainframes to PCs, from applications programming through
systems programming and finally to consulting..You can read
Barry's resume. He started out doing hardware, migrated to
programming, systems programming, and systems design and architecture. He's the most
knowledgeable person about MVS internals that I know! You can browse
DIBA's associates' resumes. It's a mighty talented
group of associates we've got here! This is only a partial list. More resumes will be posted soon.Ace Webstead, web site construction at www.websteads.com. This is DIBA's web development division.
One launch pad wasn't enough for me, so we wrote
Launchit.
Boy, did we ever waste a lot of paper until we wrote DJPrint which handles 2-sided text printing.
My desktop was a mess, so we wrote TidyDesk.
TidyDesk was too quick so we wrote DelayStart.
But I want to create my OWN sound scheme! So we are writing Sounder.
OS/2 is IBM's operating
system for the PC. We believe it is the BEST operating system for PC's currently available
today. Click here to find links to a bunch of neat OS/2 pages.
OS/2 Warp came along just in time. My desktop was turning into a bewildering array of
folders within folders in an attempt to keep all of the assorted things I work on and with organized.
Launch pads seemed like a good answer, but you only got one. So, Barry wrote Launchit,
a quickie Launch Pad creation and management aid. Now I have launch pads within launch pads,
but it's a lot easier and faster to use than the folders, and the launching of launch pads from
the original launch pad has pretty much eliminated the clutter.
I have organized my launch pads by type of work, which means I rarely need more than one
open at a time.
DJPrint
I get a lot of work coding at home, and like to print the source.
Using the normal drag and drop print to do this quickly got ridiculous. We ended up with a huge
mess of unidentifiable code fragments on separate sheets of paper. To make matters worse,
our printer is an HP Deskjet 560C, which is a fine printer, except for its annoying habit of
printing the pages out first to last, right side up (and therefore, in the wrong order).
Largely in self defense, Barry wrote DJPrint, which adds file titles, date/timestamps, and page
numbers to each page, and prints them in reverse order to avoid collating after each print job.
To save some money, He added two sided print capabilities and a spooler interface
process that permits reprinting of pages or entire jobs.
He also added some simple formatting capabilities (margin spacing for hole punched paper,
page and line size options), and some nice bells and whistles that took advantage of the printer's
capabilities and the desktop environment. I can create a particular output configuration
using the printer's capabilities (landscape print, font selection) and create a desktop object.
DJPrint fires up directly from this object, presenting file and alternate configuration selection
options, or I can just drop a file on it and it will print using the specific configuration.
I keep a quickie, one sided small file object, a two sided object, and a Landscape object on
my desktop(they're really in a launch-pad drawer!). These handle most text print requirements..
TidyDesk
You can arrange your desktop ICONs, but not all programs can or will remember where and
how big you want your windows. And some just refuse to start minimized when you want them to.
To fix this, Barry wrote TidyDesk, which lets you specify actions (MIN, RESTORE, FOCUS) and
locations for any windows that are active when you run the program.
You fire up the things you expect to be keeping around, then run TidyDesk in 'setup' mode. It
allows you define the actions, in order to be taken for specific windows. You can move them
where you want them and then have the program read and remember the windows' position.
When all done you can save the actions as a set of commands that the program will execute
when it runs. This has the effect of arranging the open windows on your desktop. If some are
missing, it's no problem, TidyDesk just handles the ones it finds. It even supports
partial window title recognition (for those pesky apps that use the date or filename as part of
the window title).
DelayedStart
I wanted my machine to boot and run TidyDesk while I went off to
do other things. Unfortunately, TidyDesk doesn't work well in the
STARTUP folder, as it tends to run before the windows you want to
arrange are active. So, Barry wrote DelayedStart. It runs a timer process
that doesn't do anything until it expires (you can set the time to an
arbitrarily large number of seconds).
When the timer expires, it starts whatever program objects (or shadows of program objects) are
in the Delayed Start folder (which it creates the first time you run it to set the time delay).
Sounder
Well, we got Merlin, which supports sound schemes. But it gives you no
way to create or manage them, so we're writing a utility for this, too.. Who
knows, it might even be good enough for Shareware.
Have a question or need assistance? For additional information on DIBA Software Consultants' products and services, please send e-mail to diba@walkersweb.org, or
phone us at 1 301-948-5755.