Re: [9fans] RFC: 9zine

[Enrico Weigelt <weigelt@metux.de>]

* john@csplan9.rit.edu <john@csplan9.rit.edu> wrote:

> My concern with "ezines" is always that they don't have much to offer
> that you can't get through incremental updates to a blog.  I like
> getting real magazines and newsletters because you have the
> anticipation of waiting and end up with a nice stack of the old stuff
> to proudly display in your basement.  It's not a rational thing; I
> just think people prefer to have this kind of thing mailed, rather
> than downloading and printing it themselves.

So you're talking about an paper magazine ?
Interesting idea - already thought of this :)

If articles are written in some suitable format (eg. TeX), we could
at least parts of it automatically :)

Well, I'm actually not an confident layouter/typesetter. I could hire
an old friend (for a good price), but this first needs a budget.
So we first should have to make clear, how "nice" the layout should
be (eg. simplicistic scientific paper vs. typical hi-quality paper
print like Linux-Mag ;-)), how many print exemplars and how much
people are willing to pay.

My idea was to start with an (simple) ezine and let it grow, print
magazine would be the next step.

> If said...  magazine (I hate the word 'zine') is interesting enough,

... well, the word "9zine" would sound nice, IMHO ;-)

> say, with new papers and editorials from people who actually know
> something about Plan 9, I'd print it out and read it.  There are some
> really great things being done with Plan 9 by some really smart
> people; I won't put myself in that class but I could probably put out
> an article or two myself.

If it's just an collection of papers, w/o much layout, it shouldn't
be that hard job (eg. w/ TeX).

> If it turns out to be "Enrico and Pietro propose 10 new synthetic
> filesystems they'll never build", well, I can read that on 9fans and

Hey, hey, I'm really building my suggested FS'es ... I just want to
get more people into an open specification process before actually
coding ;-O


cu
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 Enrico Weigelt, metux IT service -- http://www.metux.de/

 cellphone: +49 174 7066481   email: info@metux.de   skype: nekrad666
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