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1994-08-25
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| |__) | | __| | __ \|/ | |__ | |_| | | | |
| ___/| | |_ | | |_ |--o--| __|| _ | | | |
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Frequently Asked Questions for Project Galactic Guide
FAQ Mk. II Release 1.0 25 August 1994
This is the Mostly All-New FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) information file
for the Usenet group alt.galactic-guide. This file is intended to provide
you with answers to your frequently asked questions and is 97% fat-free with
no preservatives or artificial flavours.
This file is based on Paul Clegg's original FAQ, and was enhanced and is now
maintained by Steve Baker.
Contents
--------
1.0 What is this newsgroup?
2.0 Who's in charge around here?
2.1 So who do I send articles to?
3.0 Format of the articles
3.1 Article content and legal stuff
3.2 So where can I get article ideas then?
3.3 The article lifecycle
4.0 The PGG Mothership
4.1 Mothership mirror sites
4.2 Supported computer platforms
4.3 Other ways to get PGG materials
5.0 World-Wide Web (WWW) sites
6.0 Miscellaneous questions
1.0 What is this newsgroup?
----------------------------
This newsgroup was created for the sole purpose of allowing uninterrupted
communication between people involved in Project Galactic Guide. What is
this project, you ask?
It all started back in, oh, November of 1991 in the alt.fan.douglas-adams
newsgroup. For the uninformed, Douglas Adams is the author of a series
of humourous s/f books centering on the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
In these books, the characters write for and frequently consult a sort of
electronic encyclopedia which has an entry on just about everything.
Paul said, "Hey, why don't we create a REAL guide to the galaxy?" and
everyone else said, "Sounds good, let's do it!". So, with great fervor
we started working on the skeletal structure of Project Galactic Guide,
although at that time, we often called it "The HitchHiker's Guide the Known
Galaxy."
It was originally supposed to be about REAL things (as opposed to made-up
things), but we eventually broke down and decided to incorporate EVERYTHING.
So, now we'll take humorous entries about fictitious things (done in the
Douglas Adams style, of course), and humorous entries about real things
(also done in the Douglas Adams style, of course).
2.0 Who's in charge around here?
---------------------------------
Well, not anyone, really. Er, actually, I suppose there *are* a couple of
froods who tend to have a bit more input about things than others, but
really it's mostly chaotic. Well, not actually *chaotic* but instead maybe
something a bit more like recess or something.
The aforementioned Paul Clegg is one of PGG's Founding Fathers. He is
easily identifiable by his "...Paul" signature. Today, Paul's an Editor
and has many Wise Things to say about topics, issues, concerns, thoughts,
ideas, problems, suggestions, and comments. His action figure should be
available this holiday season (along with the PGG Mothership playset), and
he is available via email at: cleggp@rpi.edu
Steve Baker helped get the project rolling with his "The Guide!" software
for IBM/MS-DOS machines in the spring of 1992. Steve usually answers to
the nom de plume "Stevadelic." Today, Steve's an Editor, the Librarian,
Pilot of the PGG Mothership, and actively avoids doing required updates
and bug fixes to the TG! system. (He claims to be too busy working on
Klingon language translation software.) You can send email to Steve at
the address: swbaker@vela.acs.oakland.edu
Roel van der Meulen joined the project in the fall of 1993, and is an active
PGG Field Researcher Recruiter (he finds new articles and authors for PGG,
in addition to his own work). He also maintains the PGG archives contents
file and one of the fine WWW sites. Roel's Internet email address is:
vdmeulen@rulrol.leidenuniv.nl
Jeff Kramer is compiling the "PGG Report," a regular newsletter with lots
of great information about the Project and its activities. He also admin's
one of the PGG WWW sites. Jeff is available at: lthumper@bga.com
Ryan Tucker provides articles, ideas, and crazy text art (like the FAQ logo),
as well as up-to-date Iowa weather reports (as long as there's a tornado).
Ryan's available at: rtucker@worf.infonet.net
There's a lot of others out there who have contributed t-shirt designs,
press card information, articles, ideas, suggestions, comments, et al...
but to avoid this becoming one of those "Hi guys"-type things, I'll just
leave it at that.
2.1 So who do I send articles to?
----------------------------------
Paul is available from September until April or May (during the college
school year), and Steve is on-line and available year-round. Both Paul
and Steve also have America Online accounts, so they're available there
as well. Now that I think about it, Steve actually collects email accounts
(he's up to six different active, on-line email accounts, which is quite a
lot of passwords to get straight).
To answer the question, however, let's just say send articles to one of
the PGG Editors:
cleggp@rpi.edu -- Paul
swbaker@vela.acs.oakland.edu -- Steve
3.0 Format of the articles
---------------------------
The articles that are accepted are organized by category and compiled in
article "archives." Each archive file contains 25 accepted Guide entries.
These archives are stored and available for download from the PGG Mothership.
We've decided upon a simple ASCII text format for the article entries. The
specs on the format are contained in the "article.new" file. It's really
pretty simple, with just a few header token-type things that define useful
stuff.
The fine folks at PGG spent about a year discussing, debating, formulating,
postulating, configuring, finalizing, and neglecting a nifty but complex
text format. It was complete with crazy text formatting things and lots of
other fun and wonderful features, but it never really caught on. Oh well.
We're currently investigating the possibilities of porting the article
archives into HTML (HyperText Markup Language) for use with html and WWW
viewers. For now, however, standard ASCII files are just fine!
3.1 Article content and legal stuff
------------------------------------
You're welcome to write about anything. Yes, no matter how bizarre or
crazy, please write about it. Really. Anything.
Er, except, we don't want you to regurgitate Adams' material. Not only is
this very unoriginal, it's also known as plagiarism. (Unless DNA himself
decides to write it for us!) In general, please do NOT copy other people's
work or ideas. We don't want the project stopped because we violated some
silly copyright law!
3.2 So where can I get article ideas then?
-------------------------------------------
We have a PGG Idea Bank, chock full of great ideas that beg for exploring.
They're frequently posted to the alt.galactic-guide newsgroup, and all are
available on-line at the Mothership.
When posting an idea, be sure to include your name and email address for
proper credit down the road. Conversely, when using an idea, just go ahead
and write your article and credit the idea's originator in the header
information.
3.3 The article lifecycle
--------------------------
This describes what your Friendly Neighbourhood PGG Editor does and presents
"a day in the life of an article" so to speak. Erm, actually, the articles
themselves don't really speak much; that's just an expression, so let's
carry on.
1) A young, up-and-coming comedian/researcher/student/author/human/whatever
stumbles across, gets hit with, becomes infected by, gets arrested in, or
otherwise has a great idea for an article (or consults the Ideabank,
which is sometimes less painful).
They then write the article and send it to an editor via email. (Please
see above for info on who the editors are and where to send stuff.)
2) The editor send a message back to the author, stating something like
"blah blah, thanks for the article, blah blah blah, I'll edit it for
format and stuff, blah blah, you'll get it back soon for author
confirmation, blah blah, give me all your money, etc. etc."
This message is the author's "receipt" that the editor received the
article submission. If you don't get one of these, then the editor
didn't get your article!
4) The editor edits the article and performs routine grammar and spell-
checker things on the article.
5) The editor then sends the article back to the author for "author
confirmation." (This is often times abbreviated as A/C.)
6) The author reviews the modified article, and then lets the editor know
that things are alright. If the author has additional changes with the
article, they go back to step one and start over.
7) Once the article is approved, the editor sends it to the PGG Librarian.
The Librarian adds the approved article into the article archives and
posts the article to alt.galactic-guide.
4.0 The PGG Mothership
-----------------------
The Mothership is an Anonymous FTP site where you can download PGG info,
articles, programs, t-shirt images, reports, and other great stuff. To
get to the PGG Mothership, FTP to the following site:
Lexical: vela.acs.oakland.edu
Numeric: 141.210.10.2
URL: ftp://vela.acs.oakland.edu/pub/galactic-guide
When you connect, use the [ anonymous ] user ID and specify your full
Internet email address as the password.
The Mothership is [ pub/galactic-guide ], which is actually just a link
to [ pub/swbaker ]. Thus, if you're using an FTP server which doesn't show
the logical links, go into the [ swbaker ] directory.
Anyway, beneath this directory are additional directories for each of
the particular computer programs and general Hitchhiker's Guide fan stuff.
There is a separate FAQ file on the PGG Mothership which describes these
directories and the files they contain in more detail.
4.1 Mothership mirror sites
----------------------------
If having all of the PGG archives, programs, gif files, and other goodies
at one centralized location isn't good enough for you, you may be pleased to
know that it isn't! That is to say, the stuff is available from more than
one Anonymous FTP site.
The PGG Mothership is mirrored at:
Lexical: ftp.cs.city.ac.uk
Numeric: 138.40.91.9
URL: ftp://ftp.cs.city.ac.uk/pub/galactic-guide
4.2 Supported computer platforms
---------------------------------
While having the articles themselves is pretty fun, actually being able to
do something with them is even better. The following computer platforms
are supported with PGG article reader systems:
o Acorn Archimedes
Author contact: Alex McLintock (alexmc@biccdc.co.uk)
o Amiga
o Atari ST
o IBM/MS-DOS (also works within Windows, OS/2, DESQview, etc.)
Author contact: Steve Baker (swbaker@vela.acs.oakland.edu)
o Unix
Author contact: Dave Gymer (dpg@cs.nott.ac.uk)
o X Windows
Author contact: David Squire (squizz@cs.curtin.edu.au)
Each of the programs is available in its own subdirectory on the Mothership.
Questions about a particular program's use or functionality should be
directed to the program's author or posted to alt.galactic-guide.
4.3 Other ways to get PGG materials
------------------------------------
There's a lot of BBS systems that carry Project Galactic Guide stuff.
Honestly -- I'm positive there's a lot of them... although the FAQ file
doesn't really reflect this. Yet. Just give us some time and soon
this list will have a lot of numbers. Really.
Area/Region BBS Name Number
--------------- ------------------------------ ----------------
Mass., USA Sea of Noise +1 203 886 1441
In addition, you may contact one of the following hoopy froods who have
volunteered to distribute PGG materials in their local countries:
Country Contact
--------------- ------------------------------
Denmark Christian Moensted
Almindingen 66
2860 Soeborg
(email: moensted@diku.dk)
5.0 World-Wide Web (WWW) sites
-------------------------------
For those who can view html documents (including users of Mosaic, Cello,
and WinWeb), there are a number of froody WWW sites:
URL: http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/~vdmeulen/index.html
Operator: Roel van der Meulen
URL: http://www.willamette.edu/pgg/
Operator: James Tilton
URL: http://web.cs.city.ac.uk/pgg/guide.html
Operator: Nick Williams
URL: http://www.realtime.net/~lthumper/
Operator: Jeff Kramer
These all have links to the Article Archives, the PGG Mothership, format
and article information, and many have on-line archive search and article
retrieval capabilities.
6.0 Miscellaneous questions
----------------------------
Q: How can I get a PGG Press Card?
A: As soon as they're finished, you'll be able to get an Official PGG
Press Card from Jason Kohles (jason.kohles@m.cc.utah.edu).
Q: What good are the PGG Press Cards?
A: They may actually get you in some places, and besides they look cool.
There's an article on what to do with your Press Card; check it out!
Q: What's up with the PGG t-shirts?
A: Among others, Stephane Lussier (stef@phoque.info.uqam.ca) has come
up with some great graphics and motif ideas for the Official PGG
t-shirt. They're available for review on the Mothership. As soon as
we decide on how the shirts will look, and as soon as someone makes
the shirts, then you'll be able to order them! For more information,
just follow the t-shirt threads on alt.galactic-guide.
Q: Do you need more editors?
A: Not really. How can you become an editor? Well, lots of money would
definitely help (just kidding). Anyway, until the project completely
consumes both Paul and Steve to the point of exhaustion, we're probably
all set.
Q: Is there a Macintosh Guide Reader?
A: Not yet. Sorry.
Q: Is there a Microsoft Windows-based Guide Reader?
A: Sorta. It's being developed. Under construction. Something like that.
Q: Is this the end of the PGG FAQ?
A: Yes.
Q: Really?
A: I mean it this time.