Since Edward has not yet told me that he has access again to do the
cross-posting, here is something I just saw on comp.os.geos that might
be useful for some of you.
From: pilz@cs.tu-berlin.de (Joerg Polzfusz)
Subject: Installing NewDeal...
Organization: Technical University of Berlin, Germany
Hello!
I've just installed NewDeal Office 2.5 on my laptop and just want to spread
some observations:
a) Who said that you can't have a "HardIconBar" in NewDeal?
I haven't tried it the normal way, but adding 2 libraries into
newdeal\system and modifying the geos.ini to:
[ui]
hardIconsLibrary = Zoomer Hard Icon Library
or
[ui]
hardIconsLibrary = Bullet Hard Icon Library
allowed using a "HardIconBar" again. (Of course this requires having
either the SDK or a Zoomer/Bullet. AFAIK I'm not allowed spreading
the libraries except when writing a program that needs them. Thus
either me or another SDK-owner will have to do so.)
b) Typical laptop-bugs:
-Like 98% of all other "DOS-programs", NewDeal detects a non-existent
disk-drive "b:", but modifying the geos.ini solves this problem. (BTW:
drive x = 65535 will force Geos/NewDeal to detect drive x as a
hard-disk OR A CD-ROM OR LARGE REMOVEABLE MEDIAS. (That's what
the NewDeal-help-files say!) So this might be a way to force
NewDeal not to detect a ZIP-drive as a 2.88MB-3.5"-disk-drive.)
-After exiting Geoworks Ensemble 2.01 on 3 different laptops, the
"NumLock" has been turned on without turning on the "NumLock"-led!
Faking the geos.ini solved this problem... but NEWDEAL DOESN'T HAVE
THIS BUG ANYMORE! :-)
c) Other Geos-2.01-bugs:
90% of them are gone! You can now create 256-colour-icons in the SDK's
icon-editor without crashing NewDeal! And bitmapped circles are circles
now! And and and ... . And NewDeal is more crash-resistant than
Ensemble 2.01! Even when working with larger vector-graphics that tends
to give "out-of-memory"-errors on my 16MB-Ram-desktop under Ensemble 2.01,
this doesn't happen on my 1.6MB-RAM-laptop with NewDeal! (Yes: This ain't
no typo! My desktop has got 10 times the memory of my laptop!)
d) there are new system-libraries
e) Tetris has gone :-(
f) The splash-screen is .... uurrgggg... ahhhh!
disappearing after approx. 1 second.
g) NewManager has got some nice enhancements, all other programs seem to be
the same. (Of course they're renamed to New* instead of Geo* - and they have
been re-compiled to work better with the new bug-fixed system-libraries.)
h) All programs for Geos 2.0/2.01 should work better under NewDeal due to the
newer bug-fixed system-libraries. BTW: All libraries are reporting to be
V2.0-ones. (Some programers -incl. me- feared that they might report a
"V2.1" what might have caused a lot of troubles for programs requiring
V2.0-libraries.)
i) Printing-problems (someone in comp.os.geos reported their existence):
I haven't tried printing yet.
j) Even though the NewDeal-loader.exe and the Ensemble-setup detect a 
GA-card
on my laptop, the NewDeal-setup automatically detects a >>"."-video-card<<, 
o
I had to manually select the VGA-card-video-mode.
Result: The bug-fixes and the new Manager-features are worth replacing
Ensemble with NewDeal.
Happy NewYear!
Joerg
 * SLMR 2.1a * UPGRADE: Removing the old bugs and installing new ones!
--- QScan/PCB v1.16b / 01-0075
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