Date: Fri, 04 Apr 1997 05:35:49 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: hackers@freebsd.org Cc: www@freebsd.org Subject: Better late than never... The FreeBSD News! Message-ID: <1848.860160949@time.cdrom.com>
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OK folks, sorry for the delay on this.. As I intimated last week, the
"FreeBSD News" newsletter publication thingy is now past the early
planning & layout stages and into the "who will write the articles?"
stage.
We're not looking for anything super ambitious in the way of articles
here, just something which describes an interesting use you're making
of FreeBSD or aims itself at educating the new user about some aspect
of FreeBSD's infrastructure (Davidg talking about wcarchive, mpp
talking about GNATs and how to use it, jmb talking about the mailing
lists, etc). Generic "how to configure your <foo>" sorts of tutorials
would be nice too. Length should be 300-400 words, though shorter
"quick tip" articles are always welcome too. We can make the panels
any size we want. :)
This introductory issue isn't going to be very large (maybe 6 pages,
counting both front and back covers) and it's intended more to give a
taste of things to come than anything else, also setting the stage
with some of the "what is FreeBSD?" boilerplate that will take up
permanent residence in the front). That doesn't mean you shouldn't
all submit articles like crazy, of course, since there's always the
next issue(s) and one can *never have enough articles*! :)
"How much does it pay?" you ask me. "Erm, $0.00" I answer. Sorry
'bout that, but Walnut Creek CDROM is looking for strictly volunteer
writers for TFN and for good reason - anything published in the Nooze
will be treated the same as BSD-copyrighted code going into the source
tree - you can redistribute, republish, do whatever you like with it.
Sell it to other magazines, we don't care!
The good news: You don't have to sweat the formatting because the
whole thing is going to be typeset in Quark, that being what our art
dept. uses and is familiar with. Just raw ascii text files will do,
along with any .gif or .jpeg files for figures and drawings (Fig 1:
"new growth in FreeBSD userbase indexed against coffee sales
world-wide") and they'll make it all look neat. As the editor, I will
also run a spell checker over it and make suggestions about any
particularly odd passages I find (:-). I'll also make an archive of
all the submissions available via FTP, of course, and wosch, I'm sure,
will also have an HTML-ifying script put together for it all before
the first issue reaches the subscribers. :)
Walnut Creek CDROM will be printing and mailing some 30,000 copies of
this issue, and when you add to that the # of people who will probably
read it on the web, that's actually a pretty fair audience. I only
now hope that we can get content from one part of our user base for
the other part to read! :-)
The deadline for submissions is April 21st.
Again, we're not talking War & Peace here, just ~300 words or less,
subject of course to negotiation (if you're being positively
fascinating, I suppose we can always include more words and knock the
point size down a notch or try to beg another page out of the
publisher [WC]).
What have you got to lose? Go ahead! Send me some text! It doesn't
have to be pretty, we'll doctor it up before the deadline! Let's get
this publication on the road and get some serious articles going!
Yeah! Rah rah rah!! [cue inspirational theme music from "Rocky"] :-)
Some example topics just off the top of my head for those suffering
from writer's block and/or deep existential angst:
o The FreeBSD mailing lists and how to make them work
for you. [jmb? :)]
o The FreeBSD web site - an overview of services offered.
o The FreeBSD problem reporting mechanism - how to submit reports and
how to search for them. [ mpp is signed up for this ].
o Staying up to date with {CVSup | CTM} [jdp? phk? :)]
o Setting up an effective X desktop environment.
o How FreeBSD is developed [subtitle: What are core team
members and committers and how does one become one?].
o Installing and managing your Apache web server.
o Installing and managing SAMBA for Win95/NT interoperability
o Running Linux binaries under FreeBSD - what to do and where
to get the libraries.
o A comparison between FreeBSD and Linux [special note: This topic
reserved for someone with cojones the size of coconuts].
Also don't fall into the trap of thinking that you have to write
something brand-spanking-new for the newsletter in order for it to
have any value - you don't! Think of your readers as newborn babes
who just found FreeBSD under a rock and haven't the faintest idea that
there is even a web page for it, much less looked at it. Perhaps a
previously written handbook section can find new life as a short
column? Perhaps so! Also, as I told Mike Pritchard when I asked him
about doing a "GNATs & how to use it" article, much of this material
can also, with a little editing, do double-duty as periodic posting
fodder for comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.announce. I've really neglected the
whole "periodic posting" thing for awhile now, and if I had short,
up-to-date descriptions of the mailing lists and bug reporting
mechanisms as well as a web resource summary, I'd post each once a
month for the benefit of new users.
All correspondence to me please (and watch your cc lines! I don't
think all of -hackers wants to read your first draft :-).
Thanks!
Jordan
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