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OS/2 Help File
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1995-01-26
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33KB
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201 lines
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1. OS/2 Power submission guidelines ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
OS/2 Power Submission Guidelines
OS/2 Power, the number one OS/2 information guide to be, needs your articles!
It isn't possible for me to fill an issue everyone month and still have time to
have a life(TM). Below are outlined what you can offer if you are a potential
reader of the magazine, a potential writer, a shareware author or a commercial
developer.
The Potential Reader
If you want to read about all aspects of OS/2, aimed at all levels. From
reviews to tutorials, clever tricks, interviews etc. This magazine is for you.
You may not have the time or inclination to write for this - thats OK, but if
you want something covered mail me! OS/2 Power actively promotes reader
feedback
The Potential Writer
So, you want to aid the OS/2 community, pooling knowledge to generate the
source of OS/2 information - great.
So what does the magazine need?
Tutorials of OS/2 applets, shareware utilities etc
Reviews of Shareware and commercial programs
Communication info, surfing the net
Reaching into the depths of OS/2
How OS/2 works
How to configure OS/2 and other applications
Clever tricks OS/2 can do
News, interesting snippets and anything else you can think of!
Shareware Authors
Shareware authors, OS/2 Power will be running regular reviews of shareware
products. If you want to highlight your product, or find out what utilities
OS/2 users want - we will be running tallies on needed utilities.
Commercial Developers
If you are a commercial developer and want to find out what the OS/2 market
needs or wants, this is the place to ask.
Reviews of commercial software may be carried out if you supply software to a
writer or if they already own the package. Packages must be OS/2 native or
have at the minimum a good set of integration tools.
British pricing is preferred where possible, and contacts in Britain are
appreciated.
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1.1. Writing of articles ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
Writing articles
Some basic guidelines have to be followed when writing reviews.
All articles should be as accurate and unbiased as you can make them. They
should be clear, easy to read and grammatically correct. British spelling is
recommended, as this is a British publication.
Dates should be in the European format of date/month/year. Other measurements
are OK
Articles may be written in one of three formats - IPF format, Ami Pro Format or
ASCII text.
IPF Format
IPF (Information Presentation Facility) allows you to write OS/2 INF and HLP
files via embedding 'codes' in your text - for instance :p. generates a new
paragraph. The IPF compiler (IPFC) is included within the OS/2 toolkit,
contained also in the Devcon disks and OS/2 beta II cdrom in the beta toolkit -
it comes with full instructions for writing in IPFC.
This is the preferred format, as it involves very little work for me (other
than my own articles, graphics and editorial...).
Ami Pro Format
This format is included since I might be writing an Ami Pro-->IPF converter
soon. This will allow you to set fonts, bold, paragraphs etc, but not hypertext
links. Links will have to be done by informing me - please remember not to
include too many if you do it this way. Use Arial Bold 30 for the overall
column heading, Arial Bold 25 for sections and Arial Bold 16 for general text.
Subsections should be in bold.
ASCII Text
If you have neither of the above two formats, use plain ASCII text and indicate
where you want different fonts, graphics, hypertext links etc. As before,
minimise these since I have to convert your document manually.
Required format for articles
Even if you don't know IPF. I would really appreciate it if you could carry out
the following items
Place a :p. on a blank line by itself after each paragraph
Head new sections with :p2.
For those people who do know ipf, the text of this submission guide is
provided as an example of the style used. Also observe the formatting codes
below:
Your overall column heading should be in Bold Helv 30x14 ie :font
facename=Helv size=30x14 :hp2. text :ehp2.
Headings should be in Helv 25x14 ie :font facename=Helv size=25x14 :hp2.
text :ehp2.
Sub-headings should be in general text size (Helv 16x14), in bold
General text is in Helv 16x14 ie :font facename=Helv size=16x14
Important points should be emphasised in bold ie :hp2. bold :ehp2.
Your column will be in header level 1 (:h1.), whilst sub-pages within the
column should be header level 2 (:h2.).
Hypertext links can be in any format you want, but must be visible when
activated on a 640x480 screen.
Each paragraph must be denoted by :p. on a blank line by itself - if placed at
the end of the line, it occasionally ruins the layout of the following line.
Paragraph tags should also be used in the normal font height, otherwise line
spacing is uneven. Before and after lists (:ul. , :li. & :eul.) you should
not have a paragraph tag, as this gap is wider than usual.
Graphics
All graphics to be included with the article should be in .BMP (non RLE)
format in no more than 256 colours unless you have a good reason otherwise.
You should also use an image manipulation utility to 'map to System colours'.
Bitmap files must not be wider than 605 pixels (thats the maximum for a
640x480 screen), and I'd appreciate it if you could grab them at 640x480 or
800x600 resolution (as the resources such as icons and fonts are smaller). The
maximum bitmap that can fit on a 640x480 screen and still be seen in its
entirety is 605x265 pixels.
I don't consider it the writer's responsibility to create a bitmap to head
their article - I can handle that, however, graphics included within the
article should be created or screengrabbed by the writer. If you're more
artistic than myself (not difficult), then I'd be grateful if you generate the
bitmap to head your column, preferably raytraced, but not really that
important.
Submission dates for articles
These are the guidelines for the first issue, which is not yet complete, but
these dates roughly stand :
Ideas for an article should be sent to me straight away - I can then
confirm if someone else is writing on the same subject
Preliminary drafts (need only be ASCII) must be mailed to me on or
before the 10th of each month
Finished work should be sent no later than the 20th. It should be written
in a format described above,zipped, uuencoded and mailed to me.
The finished magazine should be out on the 25th, to allow for editing
and last minute changes.
Mailing me and uuencoding data
I can be mailed at P.J.KAY@ITI.SALFORD.AC.UK. I use the cc:mail package if you
want to send coloured messages. I can be snail mailed at Peter Kay, OS/2
Power, ITI Institute, University of Salford, Salford, M5 4WT, Great Britain.
UUencoding
UUencoding, for the uninitiated, turns a binary file into an ASCII text file
that can be sent via the mail system. At the other end the file is UUdecoded
to recreate the binary file.
The easiest way to UUencode is to get pmuue from ftp.cdrom.com in
pub/os2/32bit/archiver/PMuue11.zip. Or, use a command line util, also in
archiver, any file starting with U.
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ <hidden> About this picture. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
This picture, here demonstrating the use of a hypertext link, was created in
Moray, a DOS modelling package that interfaces to Povray (a freeware renderer).
The planet texture is a plasma cloud created in Fractint for DOS, (a free
fractal generator) using blue.map and then edited with Paintbrush. The word
'OS/2 Power' is made up of over 168 objects as Povray has no text capability.
Things got so bad that Moray only had 2K of base memory left! It wouldn't even
run under DOS with all memory management on - just OS/2.