magazine - some basic choices

[spiralofhope]

A few decisions need to be made:

- One idea is to have the magazine be truly community-driven and not
have it controlled by Unity Linux. Is this still an important idea?
-- If it is, then does it matter if the hosting is done through Unity
Linux resources, or should it be hosted elsewhere? (if so, where?)

- What server software will get used for the magazine's website? Maybe
a simple blog? All we need are a few pages
-- Home page, links to the latest issue
-- Archive of previous issues - one long list of links
-- "How to submit / Join the team" page
.. If we choose to have the same software as one of the other Unity
Linux sites, then we could also take their skin.

- Will a web-viewable format be maintained, or will it only be PDF?

Also,

- We had some discussion on a magazine name which I should go re-read.
The name may influence the URL we use.

Does anyone else have any ideas/thoughts or things to discuss?

[Douglas Wilson]

On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 3:26 PM, spiralofhope <spiral...@gmail.com> wrote:

A few decisions need to be made:

- One idea is to have the magazine be truly community-driven and not
 have it controlled by Unity Linux.  Is this still an important idea?
-- If it is, then does it matter if the hosting is done through Unity
  Linux resources, or should it be hosted elsewhere? (if so, where?)

Since these two are related I'll give an opinion on them at the same time.  I think the magazine should be community driven and if possible hosted with the rest of unity stuff to have, well unity :)

- What server software will get used for the magazine's website?  Maybe
 a simple blog?  All we need are a few pages

I'm not sure, probably what software unity uses now. 

-- Home page, links to the latest issue
-- Archive of previous issues - one long list of links

This is good
 

-- "How to submit / Join the team" page
.. If we choose to have the same software as one of the other Unity
Linux sites, then we could also take their skin.

Yes we should imo

- Will a web-viewable format be maintained, or will it only be PDF?

Both hopefully

Also,

- We had some discussion on a magazine name which I should go re-read.
 The name may influence the URL we use.

Does anyone else have any ideas/thoughts or things to discuss?

I forgot about the name. I have an idea for the first issue using the background with the name Unity Linux with the leaf in the middle

--
Use Linux

[Custom Processing Unlimited]

it's funny this topic was brought up... I was combing the old dev forum earlier today looking for the stuff we put together about how unity functioned (as far as the dev structure went) and I stumbled on the old threads about the naming of the mag... I didn't read them, but I did remember passing them.  Now that I'm done babbling about myself, I'll give my suggestion of you guys revisiting those threads and seeing if any relevent info for now was left from back then.

--
"Custom" is NOT mass produced... then it's just a product line.
Custom Processing Unlimited

[spiralofhope]

I still have a very large amount of flagged threads and bookmarks with
magazine topic ideas, and many of snippets explaining technologies..
saved for use with the magazine.

[Kaleb]

On Sun, Aug 22, 2010 at 1:40 PM, spiralofhope <spiral...@gmail.com> wrote:

I still have a very large amount of flagged threads and bookmarks with
magazine topic ideas, and many of snippets explaining technologies..
saved for use with the magazine.

I think you should probably consider the mag to be a basically dead idea. It might come around in the distant future. 

[Matthew Dawkins]

I would agree with KD on this one.

The motto for getting anything done around here is that you do the work yourself and stop letting everyone's 2 cents and laziness kill the project. If you have a good idea and a start on the mag, then run with it and get people to submit stories, but if not and you're just throwing your 2 cents to see if others will pick up the idea and do the work, well then you are mistaken.

[Douglas Wilson]

What do you have, can I get a sippet of it.

Doug

--
Use Linux

[spiralofhope]

[re-sending, my email preferences are now fixed..]

Many of the items are todo items, some are news items and some are
"tips" (simple and sometimes very technical). At a glance, I have 151
flagged emails with various levels of usefulness.

I have several other projects I'm just starting up.. and if the whole
magazine concept is a bit big to just magically make happen, as Kaleb
is saying, then a collaborative blog with a bunch of occasional
contributors might be casual enough to get this sort of stuff out there
in the world.

Here are two examples:

(1)
> Does anyone know the magic to make this use another editor?
>
> According to smart mirror --help, it is $editor.  My $editor is not
> set, and it's defaulting to vi.  When I set editor to nano, it is
> ignored and I am still given vi. What am I doing wrong?

sudo EDITOR=nano smart mirror --edit
works

EDITOR=nano smart-root mirror --edit
unfortunately does not work

--------------------------

(2)
> Upon switching from PCLOS to Unity, one of the first things I noticed
> was that the fonts in PCLOS seemed much more readable. I have several
> .BMP screenshots here documenting differences between PCLOS and Unity:
>
> http://tinymelinux.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=1668
>
> If you would like to view all of these screenshots locally, here is a
> tarball:
>
> http://tinymelinux.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=1735
>
> I would recommend you use MTPaint and blow it up to at least 800%.
> This will produce a grid delineating each pixel.
>
> In particular, note the difference in the panel clock and the
> application menus (File, Edit, etc). Also, the difference between the
> two systems with the Times New Roman font is quite remarkable.
>
> Is there a way we could get these fonts to look more like what PCLOS
> has?

Yes, there is.
Few packages have to be patched: freetype, cairo, xft, maybe
fontconfig ... These patches should enable LCD filtering (also known as
David Turner's patch). Turning subpixel hinting on and using bytecode
interpreter can also improve font rendering a lot.

http://development.smfforfree.com/index.php/topic,343.0.html

I plan to work on this issue soon, it's quite complex because there are
several ways to render fonts in Linux: through XFS (core X11 apps,
deprecated), through Xft (Qt3), through Cairo (GTK), through Qt4 font
subsystem.

This image demonstrates the effect of LCD filtering (LCD filter enabled
on the right, disabled on the left, subpixel hinting enabled, BCI
enabled, hintstyle set to hintslight):

http://david.smidovi.eu/libxft-nolcdfilter.png