On Fri, 2 Nov 2001, Editor - Squeak News wrote:

[snip]

> I am grateful for these comments! If you look at my message I
> suggested the first 3 issues should be placed only, and in fact the
> third issue may prove to be problematical since its size is about
> 118MBs and I may have problem with free redistribution of one of the
> items in the contents on the web.

This is, in general, perhaps only in theory, a problem with widely
available free distribution of the articles...some folks (none who've as
yet contributed, I'll bet, but future authors) might want to have more
control over their articles. I've been writing my articles mostly in
Squeak Friendly HTML (validator coming to a page near you) so that
separating out the articles and putting them on a "regular" website won't
be *too too* difficult, but as yet I've not had the time or energy to do
actually do so. Lot's of things to deal with.

That all being said, Yay to Randell and Tansel!

> Obviously We can't really offer all
> past issues for free and these will be the only ones that will be
> freely downloadable on the web for a foreseeable future, but I have no
> objections for the first issues to be given out for free because
> people will not appreciate them unless they see them.

FWIW, I like the idea of quarterly or yearly "cumulative" CDs, though,
they way things are going, the images might have to be compressed :)

More work, but perhaps better advertizing, is a "Best of" issue for
download (and maybe as a subscription bonus or available for a
"news-stand" price).

Note that, unfortunately, most of these sorts of suggestion end up being
suggestions that Tansel do a bunch of work.=20

[snip]

> Think about the process: Articles (many of them active) have to
> be collected, formatted and edited, and integrated under one image
> (which if you think about the variety of the images they are coming
> out of it by itself may be a hair raising experience).

Not to mention that generating such articles is nontrivial. I've stayed
away from active content just to keep myself sane. That is, I don't think
I could have written as many articles if I'd have to debug them while I
was debugging my code :) Sometimes it's a relief to be able to pop the
article up in Amaya or Dreamweaver! Especially for thinkz loik spelliny
cheecking!

Also, I'm still grappling with what I'd like an "active essay" about
Squeak to be like. One thing you want to be able to do, if you're trying
to teach someone how to "tweak" their system, is roll back changes so they
can try them out. To set that up automatically is non-trivial at the
moment. At least for me :) I've also been inspired by ILEX to want
configuable *content*. I.e., to have my articles be pitched at several
different levels of expertise, depending on a preference check. That would
be *extrememly* cool, but is *very very* hard (at least, right now). I
long for the day when the whole of SqueakNews is set up that way, so you
can log on as a newbie and not just get the newbie articles, but have
*all* the articles be newbie ones!

[snip]
> There is actually a serious discussion of coming up with a Kung
> Fu/Self defence/healing e-zine based on the technology of Squeak News
> (look for the article "Capturing the knowledge of a Kung-Fu
> Grandmaster" coming up in February of March 2002). Another one about a
> cook book that uses a central server to share recipes is also on the
> table (look for the "souffl=E9" article that will come out in December).

That's *sooooo* cool!

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.