Magnetic Pages Article | 1993-07-22 | 4KB | 23 lines
MPARTICLE
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[6";32;41m Disk Magazines
[0m& Having looked at more magazines in&the last couple of months than my&aching eyeballs appreciate I've come&to the conclusion that the usual scene&magazine interface of menu and&articles with refinement is the way to&organise a disk magazine. Other than&breaking the menu's up into sections&for those with many articles it's the&way to go. Grapevine for instance with&it's dozens of pages of menu is&becoming very unwieldy. A menu of&headings that when selected opened up&a sub-menu of articles would make it&easier to get to what you want to
read.& None of the magazines reviewed here&has the perfect interface but by&taking the best bits from each of them&it's possible to come to an idea of&how the ideal disk magazine should&operate. The cursor keys should be&duplicated on the screen as per usual.&Up for previous article, down for&next, right for next page and left for&previous page. Using the right mouse&button or shifted cursor keys should&take you to the first and last&articles or pages. Other buttons on&the screen should take you to the menu&or turn off the music etc. The Help&key should always be used as well. In&all cases keep things simple and use&readable text. The interface should&make the job of moving through a
magazine easy, not a pain.& Scene mag producers. The news is&the news but why does it have to be a&text file? You're using a computer&after all. Why not store the news as a&database made up of the story itself,&it's date, the names of the people and&groups involved and any other data you&can think of. Then using sensible&software you could have the news&displayed in many different ways. By&group names or person or country. You&could have a time-line for instance.
The possibilities are endless.& And why doesn't someone start a&weekly news disk? With most disk mags&taking months between issues most of&the news they end up containing is old
news.& I was going to say more about disk&magazines in this article but it's the&last one I'm doing in this issue and&the magazine's already late and it's&1:30 AM and I've got to get it out to&subscribers tomorrow (today) or they won't get it before the weekend.& There's one last thing I have to&mention for any of you who may have&had your stuff reviewed. After the&proofreader had read the magazine&reviews I asked her what she had&learned from them. "Ummm... You don't&like teenagers?" Huh? I hope none of&my other readers come to that&conclusion as it' ain't true. It's a&fine example though of a sixteen year&old reading things wrong. As I'm a&critic I have to criticise but there's&two types of criticism. One is the&mean-spirited kind which is designed&to hurt and hopefully put someone out&of business. The other kind may also&hurt but it's meant to be constructive&and if it's correct, (and you have to&judge whether it is or not), and it's&acted on may help you to stay in business.& Anyway, a Kiwi rock band in the&late 70s called Toy Love said it a lot&better than I can in a song called&Swimming Pool. It's to do with music%but the principle's still the same...
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