Документ взят из кэша поисковой машины. Адрес оригинального документа : http://crydee.sai.msu.ru/ftproot/pub/comp/os/os2/sai/merlin/asv-review Дата изменения: Thu Jun 20 14:26:36 1996 Дата индексирования: Mon Dec 24 11:39:26 2007 Кодировка: Поисковые слова: п п п п п п п п п п п п п п п п п п п п п п п п п п п п

Yesterday I got a fragment (first 12 disks of 43 total) of Merlin beta
9.014 (string appeared in kernel and drivers; cmd.exe reports 9.012).
I suppose it's pretty old build (probably first very closed
distribution); knowledgeable people will clarify if needed. Those 12
disks appeared to be sufficient to pass 1st phase of installation and
run Merlin off Maintenance Desktop. Here are my observations (I selected
mostly disappointing ones because already there's a lot of raving in the
newsgroups).

1) HPFS 2MB cache limit is still there. Judging from the size of
UHPFS.DLL (same as in Warp) CHKDSK times didn't improved.

2) IBM1S506.ADD does not support busmastering on Triton IDE. Note that
IBM1S506.ADD of FP19/20 does, and system is much more responsive with it
during large-volume disk operations. I suppose Merlin team and FixPak
team are different.

3) After some tweaking of Matrox's installation script I was able to
install Millennium 1.12 drivers (on a half-installed OS/2!). InfoPM
shows about the same graphics performance as on Warp 3.0 (slightly worse
on some operations).

4) Only VGA and S3 864 drivers are GRADD; others are in the old format.

5) There's a very interesting directory called LANGUAGE which has
keyboard layouts in it and file which has the word "UNICODE" in it!
Looks like at least keyboard layout will be easily customizable
in Merlin.

6) You know how GUI looks from screenshots posted to hobbes etc.;
however, after some wandering around I got the feeling that everything's
the same - just look has changed. E.g., at the first page of "System"
setting (where screen resolution can be selected) one can see plenty
of empty space while list of resolutions is squeezed into tight scrollable
list.

7) I was unable to find an option to turn on full window drag (may be
due to incomplete installation?)

8) To arrange icons in a folder one has to go through 3 nested menus
(View->Arrange->Standard/To the left/etc.) Very annoying.

9) Can't say anything about all new stuff like VTD etc. (it was missed in
my half-installation).

10) Version number shown is 9.99. Let's hope IBM won't name it
"OS/2 10.0" (remember that 2.99 before Warp 3.0?)

11) I don't like new Close/Min/Max buttons. This is a matter of taste,
of course.

12) OS20MEMU does not work with Merlin. This is expected, of course.
NPSWPS runs just fine (add shadows and :-) another close button).

13) Help system looks and acts the same - no any visible improvements.
"Copy to file/Append to file" still write to unknown file at unknown
location - damn!

14) When icons in the folders (including desktop) are arranged in some
predefined way (single column/multiple columns - old "flowed/nonflowed")
there's still unneeded scrollbar at the bottom (or at the right side)
of the folder.

15) VIO fonts look the same - same sizes, same glyphs.

16) Warp Sans looks pretty good (reminds me of VIO fonts in OS/2 1.1).
Unfortunately, it only comes in one size (9 points).
I was able to rip it from Merlin and add to my Warp desktop :-)
Anyone will to do this can try to replace /os2/dll/dspres.dll with
ftp.sai.msu.su:/pub/os2/merlin/warpsans.zip. **No warranty that system
will not trap upon boot!** Many Warp 3.0 fonts seem to be hardcoded
though and cannot be changed.

17) System installation runs in VGA mode, so do not worry that SVGA is
required. Coloured tabs look very poor in 16 colours though (text is
unreadable due to dithering).


In general I'd say that I would like to see improved internal things
but not GUI. Who needs coloured notebook tabs when cache limit is
still laughable 2MB and can't change dynamically like in Linux or
even Win'95?


Please keep in mind that
**********************************************************************
These notes are based on very early beta; there were several (?) newer
versions circulating there.
**********************************************************************

Sorry for bad grammar.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sergey Ayukov Sternberg Astronomical Institute
http://crydee.sai.msu.su Moscow