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ols
Members
Greetings nixers,

I've been thinking about doing some sort of nix-related webzine for a while now, and I know that the idea has been floated on IRC a few times already.

My thoughts are a monthly publication with a couple of short articles (350-500 words), with one longer form (800-1000 words) and then possibly some sort of recurring theme like "shell one-liner of the month".

Interested to hear thoughts and ideas for submissions; if all goes well I would like to get issue one launched before the end of the month (optimistic I know)

Mock up below

[Image: image.png]
venam
Administrators
That's a fantastic idea! Let's hope it catches on.

I'll try to come up with something for it.
pyratebeard
Long time nixers
I like this idea. Short articles are really handy when you're skimming the internet on a coffee break.

How would the submissions work? Would anything be excepted and then someone takes on the role of Editor and selects similar themed articles for each issue? Or would a theme for the month be announced and all submissions are taken before a deadline?
ols
Members
Probably the former pyrate, with themed editions around milestones and anniversaries. Off the top of my head maybe like a Perl one for a major anniversary
pyratebeard
Long time nixers
That sounds good. I would be happy to write something up but due to life commitments it may take a while.

We have a great community here, I look forward to seeing how this takes shape.
z3bra
Grey Hair Nixers
Good idea ! I tried to start a similar thing in the past, but it never caught up…

A few links:

Wish the best for the webzine ! If I can give an advice, try to make posting articles as low-effort as possible (eg. sending an email), and hidden from the public before publication. This way shy and/or lazy people can still participate.

I can set up an email to receive them if you want.
ols
Members
Thanks z3bra. venam was going to set me up a forward I think but now he's away I've just created an alias on my domain for now, will change this later

for those interested, i've done a landing page with details of the zine on

https://zine.nixers.net/
prx*
Members
We did it for openbsd on webzine.puffy.cafe.
This is very funny.
You may be interested to look at the sources (shell and templates, that's it).
Nice mockup btw

https://tildegit.org/solene/openbsd-webzine
ols
Members
prx it was seeing the OpenBSD one that gave me the reminder it was something we'd been talking about haha

thanks, will take a look at the sources shared
josuah
Long time nixers
Articles from Nixers.net (not post themselves, references to nixers.net) have just been published on Gopher on the first edition of a new newspaper!

gopher://bitreich.org/1/tgtimes

Code:
curl -O gopher://bitreich.org/9/tgtimes/archive/2021-10-23-errata1/tgtimes-2021-10-23-opus1.pdf
curl -O gopher://bitreich.org/0/tgtimes/archive/2021-10-23-errata1/tgtimes-2021-10-23-opus1.txt

It is using plan 9 troff with custom macros, for an input syntax looking like -ms.

Because it is published as both text and pdf, there is no support for inline images, but https://fqa.9front.org/ uses a workaround to make it possible.
ols
Members
OK I’m on holiday this week and back next weekend by which point I hope to have enough together to publish edition one… any input greatly appreciated otherwise it’s just me rambling about swap >_< which ain’t that interesting
josuah
Long time nixers
A two-column layout was just added to The Gopher Times (troff-based): https://gopherproxy.net/bitreich.org/9/t...-opus4.pdf

I am not as good as Seninha about this, but that is the best I can do. :)

Although, for trying, I suppose ols know that the difficult part is gathering and writing the content: a team of journalists!

Thankfully, the Nixers community is itself a team of journalists, submitting the most exciting news to the forum. :)

Ols on top of what are you basing the typesetting? Anywhere we could have a look?

There was also a new release of OpenBSD this webzine two days ago \o/
https://webzine.puffy.cafe/issue-9.html
venam
Administrators
(23-04-2022, 06:36 AM)josuah Wrote: A two-column layout was just added to The Gopher Times (troff-based): https://gopherproxy.net/bitreich.org/9/t...-opus4.pdf

I had a blast reading this! These are some quality articles, kudos to the people putting this together.
ols
Members
josuah not sure why you mean by what am I basing the typesetting on: it’s been up to now a responsive 2-col (1-col on mobile) layout with the option to make an article 1-col to “feature” it
josuah
Long time nixers
My question was weird. So a HTML/CSS-based typesetting, ok. I used that, and noticed how good HTML/CSS was at producing a paper-style document. After-all, it was meant for this from day one, and the annoying behavior of "floats" suddenly become perfect for interleaving figures and text.

We are using a paper-based document system for producing interactive applications. Yee-Haw!

What about combining the newsletter and the Zine? The content of the newsletter and their volume are already pretty decent for filling a web-zine.

https://newsletter.nixers.net/ for subscribing.

https://zine.nixers.net/ for browsing.

Add to this all the recurring threads could have a dedicated section:

- https://nixers.net/Thread-Web-Tag
- https://nixers.net/Thread-UNIX-Diary
- https://nixers.net/Forum-Community-Forum...iscussions (introduction threads)
- https://nixers.net/Thread-Unix-screen-shots-thread
- https://nixers.net/Forum-Community-Forum...iscussions (nixers book club)
- https://nixers.net/Thread-ASCII-ANSI-Art...ight=ascii
- Or external sources that nixers user contribute to, like Impure ASCII art group releases: at least two(!) users here (not me sorry!).
josuah
Long time nixers
In the end, a lot of the regularly contributed content of Nixers forum is summarized here: https://nixers.net/showthread.php?tid=1939