ST INFO - A NEW DUTCH DISK MAGAZINE by Richard Karsmakers
I could have expected that, sooner or later, competition would
appear on the Dutch (yet International) scene of disk magazines.
It took suprisingly long before anyone started one, but now ST
Club International has finally launched the first issue of their
"ST Info", the second official Dutch disk magazine.
When looking through the pages of this new magazine, sweet
memories creeped back into my minds - memories of the good ol'
days of ST NEWS. Being the first issue, this "ST Info" is
supplied on disk as a "First Word Plus" file (though only
compatible with the versions that include the 'add ruler'
option), being about 64 Kb in size. Starters' problems are of
course present, which manifest themselves in a a layout not too
perfect here and there and the unmistakable English errors now
and then.
But Mr. Lai (the senior editor of "ST Info" and boss of ST Club
International) and myself have decided not to get too much of the
competition spirit between our two magazines, so everything will
go on as usual - though (of course) we will each try to publish
better articles than the other. A little bit of competition,
after all, won't hurt and the only one who benefits it the
reader - and that's all that matters.
Apart from a great deal of Club Info and more or less commercial
articles (explaining how to order cheap disks, etc.), "ST Info"
contains articles about Pascal, Databases and New ST Software,
written by e.g. Ivo van Vlaenderen (our Belgian distributor) and
yours truly.
When "ST Info" will also use an own program to display the
documents (rather than the .DOC file for "1st Word Plus"), it
will prove to be much better. I speak from experience when I tell
that designing such a program is very tiresome (especially
debugging it so that even the most basic ST Users can work with
it), and I think that that is the slow-down factor there at the
moment. A second disadvantage of "ST Info" is that nearly all
articles are written in a matter-of-fact style, rather than the
story-style that I personally prefer and that I use myself as
well. But that's merely a matter of taste, so it might very well
turn out to be more pleasant to read for many of you, instead of
all nonsense and wagonloads of (bad?) humour I try to put into my
'literary' outbursts.
Alltogether, I think "ST Info" might soon turn out to be a disk
magazine worthy of a wide range of readers all over the world.
Just watch and you'll probably see it grow into a worldwide
computer medium for ST owners!
Disclaimer
The text of the articles is identical to the originals like they appeared
in old ST NEWS issues. Please take into consideration that the author(s)
was (were) a lot younger and less responsible back then. So bad jokes,
bad English, youthful arrogance, insults, bravura, over-crediting and
tastelessness should be taken with at least a grain of salt. Any contact
and/or payment information, as well as deadlines/release dates of any
kind should be regarded as outdated. Due to the fact that these pages are
not actually contained in an Atari executable here, references to scroll
texts, featured demo screens and hidden articles may also be irrelevant.