OS/2 FAQ

HOW DO I MAKE PMVIEW THE DEFAULT VIEWER?
Assuming that you use the default installation settings when installing PMView, this is done automatically by the installer. A reboot may be required for the changes to become effective. If you haven't rebooted, do it. If you're using Object Desktop you also need to deselect the "Automatically view when identified" option on the "Data Files" page of the "Master Setup" notebook in Object Desktop.

INSTALLATION PROBLEMS
There seems to be a problem with some file system drivers (VFAT) and PMView's installer. If the installer won't start and you're using either EXT2.IFS, FAT32.IFS, or VFAT-OS2.IFS make sure to deactivate these during installation.

OS/2 SCREEN DRIVER BUGS
If you see screen corruption, the first thing you should try in most cases is to turn off the GpiDrawBits option (on the Special page of the options notebook). There are still some display drivers that have problems with GpiDrawBits if you scroll.

Matrox Millennium bugs:

2.21.063 : Capturing the desktop window crashes PMView 2.22.078 : The mouse pointer positioning does not work correctly in full screen 2.23.082 : Beware! This version is reported to cause lockups on some systems. It may be necessary to upgrade the VGA BIOS.

It is recommended that you use version 2.21 or below. The latest version (2.31) still has problems on some systems and to our knowledge the bugs above are not fixed in 2.31.

It looks like the problems with driver version 2.31 are releated to the BIOS version. If you want to use driver 2.31, then make sure that you also are using the latest Matrox VGA BIOS.

The Matrox G200 and G400 specific BIOS (bios_104) seem to solve the problems with driver version 2.31. If you have a G200 or G400 card, make sure that you use this BIOS. For other cards, use the latest unified BIOS (setup351).

ADAPTEC SCSI DRIVER BUGS
If you have upgraded your Adaptec SCSI driver and are having problems with lockups (especially during scanning), it is recommended that you revert to the drivers on the Warp 4 CD-ROM.

PRINTER DRIVER BUGS
Printer driver bugs are not uncommon. If you have a problem printing from this version of PMView, we recommend that you download the most recent printer driver from the IBM device driver repository at the following URL: http://service.software.ibm.com/os2ddpak/index.htm

Note that the OS/2 FixPak upgrades usually DO NOT upgrade your printer driver to the latest fix level. Unless you know for sure that you are using the latest release, we recommend that you double-check it.

It is also possible that your printer driver installation is corrupted. If you know you are using a printer driver that is supposed to work, yet it does not work with PMView, then try to uninstall and reinstall the printer driver. We have encountered a couple of situations where a simple reinstall of the driver solved the problem.

APPLICATION NOTES
The following applications need a special configuration with PMView Pro:

X-it

If you select X-it's right mouse button to "edit popup menu" (default), and add 'static' as a control for the edit menu to popup over (under xit->options->menu->popup menu over these areas) (not the default), then PMView's popup menu will not show in the main window. Solution: Do NOT check the 'static' control in X-it's menu options dialog. Alternatively, you can add PMView to X-it's exception list. Future solution: Upgrade to X-it v2.6 that solves the problem.

CandyBarZ

PMView's title bar is blank. Solution: Make sure that the CandyBarZ option "Enable PMView fix" is NOT checked. This option is needed for older versions of PMView only.

MSE

Using MSE to emulate a Button 1 double click does not work correctly if the "Mover" tool in PMView is used. The Mover tool invokes OS/2 for moving the window and MSE is unable to provide the correct double clicking emulation required by OS/2. Solution: Change the tool in PMView to Scroller or Selection.

DragText

Dragging locks up the WPS when using PMView+DragText+Netscape. There is a problem with how Netscape handles drag &. drop. Solution: The recommended workaround for this is to take DT out of your Startup folder and run it from a Startup.cmd file (already supplied in your DT folder). This changes the loading sequence for DT, and gets around the problem.

STi TWAIN

Version 1.6.5 or newer is required. Make sure that the PMView option "Use buffered memory transfer" is enabled (default) and that "Unload library" is disabled (not default). Note that there are a couple of problems in the current release of STi TWAIN:

1. TWAIN.DLL cannot be reloaded once unloaded. To work around this problem you need to disable the "Unload library" option. The side effect of this is that once you use TWAIN with PMView, no other application can use it until PMView is stopped (and TWAIN.DLL unloaded).
2. Using PMView with the "Use buffered memory transfer" option disabled will not work. STi's DLL uses a method that is incompatible with the TWAIN specifications.
3. DO NOT press the "Cancel" button in the scanning dialog. Doing this will cause problems like crashing PMView with a SYS3175 (This bug only appears in STi TWAIN 1.6.10)

STi Inc. is aware of the problems and will hopefully fix them in the next version.

CFM TWAIN

There are two known bugs in the current version of CFM TWAIN:
1. Do NOT press the Escape key in the CFM "Overview" window. Doing this will result in a SYS3171 exception in PMMERGE.DLL. The problem applies to all and any program that uses CFM TWAIN. Even CFM's own ScanWorks (SWOS2.EXE) program will crash when pressing Escape in the "Overview" window.
2. There is a problem with using the PMView TWAIN option "Close user interface after scanning". CFM TWAIN only saves its current settings when the TWAIN dialog is manually closed with the "Finish" button. New settings will not be saved if the interface is closed by pressing the "Cancel" or closed by ALT-F4. The same goes if the interface is automatically closed by PMView.

Object Desktop

Occasionally parts of the control center of OD2 flicker through when loading the next file. This happens if PMView's main window is maximized.

This problem only occurs when using Object Desktop. It is caused by the fact that we need to workaround an OS/2 bug. Here are the specifics:

Ever since the very first OS/2 Warp 3 beta, the OS/2 WinCalcFrameRect API has been broken. If this API is called when an application is minimized, the application will crash. If it is called when an application is maximized, weird things start happening to the application's menu bar.

The workaround for this problem is to disable window drawing, set the application's window to normal (non-minimized/maximized) state, call WinCalcFrameRect, restore the window's original minimized/maximized state and eventually enable window drawing.

On a basic OS/2 system this will work without flicker. Unfortunately Object Desktop ignores that PMView has disabled window painting and causes painting to be done anyway, hence the flicker.

We have no remedy to this problem. The problem can be fixed by Stardock if they optimize their window handling algorithm. Even if IBM fixes the OS/2 bug it will not help you (however this will let us remove the workaround in a future version of PMView, which will of course solve the problem).