From: lthumper@bga.com (Jeff Kramer) Subject: PGG Report 1.3 Date: 31 Oct 1994 23:27:17 GMT __ /\ \__ _____ __ __ _ __ __ _____ ___ _ __\ \ ,_\ /\ '__`\ /'_ `\ /'_ `\ /\`'__\/'__`\/\ '__`\ / __`\/\`'__\ \ \/ \ \ \L\ \/\ \L\ \/\ \L\ \ \ \ \//\ __/\ \ \L\ \/\ \L\ \ \ \/ \ \ \_ \ \ ,__/\ \____ \ \____ \ \ \_\\ \____\\ \ ,__/\ \____/\ \_\ \ \__\ \ \ \/ \/___L\ \/___L\ \ \/_/ \/____/ \ \ \/ \/___/ \/_/ \/__/ \ \_\ /\____/ /\____/ \ \_\ \/_/ \_/__/ \_/__/ \/_/ 1.3 - = P_r_o_j_e_c_t G_a_l_a_c_t_i_c G_u_i_d_e = - The Project, a continuing research undertaking of the alt.galactic-guide Usenet Newsgroup, and other entities dedicated to the furtherance of the intergalactic hitchhiker. This Edition of the PGG Report was send to press at 5:10, 10/31/94. -------------------------------------- C o n t e n t s -------------------------------------- 1) Welcome to 1.3 2) Achieving Perfection - Roel 3) Our newest editor, ExPOseD! - Alex 4) The Birth of the MacGuide - Rickard -------------------------------------- WELCOME TO 1.3 By Jeff Kramer (lthumper@bga.com) Welcome, one and all to the PGG Report 1.3! Who would have thought we'd have made it this far? The results from the survey were, unfortunately, deleted. Sorry folks. I do however wish to express my gratitude to all who participated. The general consensus was that PGG is more of a hobby than a way of life, that most people like both long and short articles, and I should think before I hit "rm *". My PGG site has been on hold recently, why you ask? Well, school, partially. I am currently working for Eagles Nest Intelligence, and I will probably be setting up their FTP and Web server and writing their web pages. I am also thinking of making my web site home to the Deep Forest and Taz-Mania web pages. We shall see. I'm trying to make a little more free time to dedicate to net-stuff, but you know how that goes. One mans extra free time is another mans 'lazyness'. Well, enough about me, on to the rest of the report... ---- ACHIEVING PERFECTION By Roel van der Meulen (vdmeulen@strw.LeidenUniv.nl) When I started reading the newsgroup I was impressed by all the people who posted a lot, and even more by people who had written long or a lot of articles for The Guide. I thought that if I would write something it had to be *reeeeeaaally* good, so that took a little time. (It was, by the way, the article on quantum mechanics of sandwiches.) I can imagine other beginners feel the same pressure to make it perfect. Perfection is always good, but don't let it refrain you from sending the article in. Contrary to you fears, we don't harshly judge your article! Finally I humbly sent it off to the editors. The encouragement you get from them is always stimulating. But what I had to get used to, after the article was archived and posted, was that I hardly got any response to it. It looks like everybody is indifferent to the article, but that is not so. The article is read by thousands of people and most of them enjoy it very much. I suspect that this seeming lack of appreciation is the reason a lot of authors only write one article. (Another could be that they have no more to say. :-) So, all authors, please accept that around here appreciation (unfortunately) comes without saying. We could invent forums to change that, but the bottom line is that if you want more response to articles, you will have to start with giving some yourself! Let's try to do that! Oh yes, back to starting to write, don't be too impressed by all the names of prolific authors and authorities, this family is an easily accessible one. If you just continue to write an article once in a while, and keep up with the newsgroup, after a while you will find that you have become one of those 'impressive' names without realizing it. So long folks! Roel ---- OUR NEWEST EDITOR - EXPOSED! By Alex McLintock (alexmc@biccdc.co.uk) I always wanted to be a writer - partly because I read so much and wanted to give something back to the reading public. I submitted one story to a professional magazine and it was rejected. It wasn't very good. I stopped writing during college - except the odd piece for the science fiction fanzine; I was chairman of Imperial College SF Society (see PGG article). Since I can't write good serious fiction I aim towards humorous fiction (I am a great Sheckley, Pratchett, Adams fan) After all, if you can make your reader laugh it doesn't matter how good your writing is. :-) And you can quote me on that. Alex McLintock Alex is our newest article editor, taking some of the load off of our over worked staff. For more info on Alex, check out his personal article. -Ed ---- THE BIRTH OF THE MACGUIDE by Rickard Andersson (rickard@softlab.se) INTRO I have been reading the PGG articles for some years, and have always been jealous of the people with a PGG article reader for their computers. So, one day I started to look for a Macintosh version. But no luck, everybody just told me to wait for some fantastic Mac program that was about to start to be programmed soon. When I saw that no Macintosh program existed, I took it on me to produce a MacGuide. As much for myself as for all of you out on the Net. DEVELOPMENT So, I talked to some people who had tried to make a Macintosh version before. And I talked to the people that had made PGG article readers for other computers. And I talked to the people who were keen to introduce the HTML-format for the articles. Then I talked to myself for a bit. And suddenly I had the design of the Macintosh PGG article reader. Then I started to code. Some days later a complete program was visible on my screen. The result of my work is the Macintosh program called "MacGuide", a Macintosh program that helps you to store and read PGG articles. I have used HyperCard as the development tool. This makes the program easy to rewrite and improve, but it also makes the program slow when installing articles. HISTORY The first official release was on 1994-09-02 when version 1.0 of the MacGuide (then called PGG-Viewer) were born. Three days later, 1994-09-05, version 1.1 was released. The MacGuide (still called PGG-Viewer) now included a history list of 16 latest read articles as well as xref- and index-word capabilities. The current version of the MacGuide is the 1.2 version, released 1994-09-25. This version includes a complete and sortable Index for easy access and browsing of all the articles. The documentation has been rewritten and a HELP document is now included. FUTURE The future of the MacGuide is in the hands of the users. Tell me what you think of the program and give me suggestions for new versions. Share and Enjoy, Rickard ----- Coming (maybe) in the next issue: -Steve's Essay on the Joy of Squishy Things -Paul's Graphic Expose of Organized Tongue Depressors "Just who is getting depressed?" -Roel's Favorite Bathtime Gurgles -PGGML vs. HTML - "Invaders from the Web!" Until then... Don't worry, be hoopy!