I used to occasionally babysit a couple of kids when I was a teenager. Babysitting wasn't really anything I had much interest in, but I would do it for this family. I couldn't wait to get the kids to bed, so that I could fire up Sundog on the family's Atari ST.
Back then I wanted to publish collected stories in floppies as Windows .HLP files. The SDK was... discouraging.
And then the web happened.
The company I worked for managed to publish a couple e-commerce (we didn't call it that) CD's using Windows remote access clients to dial up a server (as in using a phone) to post orders that would be delivered next day. Fun times.
From a user perspective, I’m still fond of WinHelp/CHM. It’s a rather consistent and predictable format, with a standard hierarchical TOC, index, full-text search, and hyperlinking, distributed as a single file you can open on any Windows PC. The AutoHotKey documentation is a good example.
This is an interesting intersection between the printed magazines with cover disks and the floppy collections containing "public domain" software, but without editorial content (e.g. the famous Amiga "Fish Disks": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Fish#The_Amiga_Library_Di...), which were both more widespread.
I was searching on the net but couldn't find it: does some one remember the floppy zine on the Amiga with releases of Flip the Frog and Banana Man comics? I will otherwise look in my old floppy stack if I find time ..
Ah, memories. I was a member (and even secretary for a bit) of a 16-bit Atari user group for a bit back in the late 80s/early-90s. We used to put out a disk "magazine" for members and distribute others. The latest shareware and the like.
So much was about magazines back then, even after BBSs and the early Internet came on the scene.
Somebody commented in the post that the little devil logo is Beastie:
https://www.goto10retro.com/p/faster-atari-st-digital-magazi...
Interesting that it shows up on an Atari ST magazine. Maybe somebody there was a BSD fan in 1987?
Specifically, it's a rendition of the daemon from the cover of the 4.2BSD UNIX System Manager's Manual[1].
“Cover design by John Lassetter [sic], Lucasfilm, Ltd.”[2]
[1] https://archive.org/details/smm-4.2bsd/mode/1up
[2] https://archive.org/details/smm-4.2bsd/page/n1/mode/1up
Sun dog and gold runner !!!! I had forgotten about these, but they were somehow hidden in my brain.
I used to love diskmags ( Imphobia on pcs in particular ) but the format has afaik completely disappeared, and has been superseded by the web.
Thanks.
I used to occasionally babysit a couple of kids when I was a teenager. Babysitting wasn't really anything I had much interest in, but I would do it for this family. I couldn't wait to get the kids to bed, so that I could fire up Sundog on the family's Atari ST.
Back then I wanted to publish collected stories in floppies as Windows .HLP files. The SDK was... discouraging.
And then the web happened.
The company I worked for managed to publish a couple e-commerce (we didn't call it that) CD's using Windows remote access clients to dial up a server (as in using a phone) to post orders that would be delivered next day. Fun times.
From a user perspective, I’m still fond of WinHelp/CHM. It’s a rather consistent and predictable format, with a standard hierarchical TOC, index, full-text search, and hyperlinking, distributed as a single file you can open on any Windows PC. The AutoHotKey documentation is a good example.
This is an interesting intersection between the printed magazines with cover disks and the floppy collections containing "public domain" software, but without editorial content (e.g. the famous Amiga "Fish Disks": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Fish#The_Amiga_Library_Di...), which were both more widespread.
I was searching on the net but couldn't find it: does some one remember the floppy zine on the Amiga with releases of Flip the Frog and Banana Man comics? I will otherwise look in my old floppy stack if I find time ..
Seeing the articles penned by "Alain Plouffe", "André Lafrenière" and "Serge Vaillancourt" makes me realize they were _french_ canadians.
Funny to imagine a clique of – old like my parents – québécois geeking out about Atari computers and making a floppy zine about it.
Ah, memories. I was a member (and even secretary for a bit) of a 16-bit Atari user group for a bit back in the late 80s/early-90s. We used to put out a disk "magazine" for members and distribute others. The latest shareware and the like.
So much was about magazines back then, even after BBSs and the early Internet came on the scene.
I remember Softdisk for the Apple IIe. It has an ASCII "tv show" call Alfredo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-OQ4eheYKc&list=PLWOBhBZEPZ...
This was a quite common way to publish in the demoscene, see Hugi.
diskmags[0] are a still a thing.
Back in the day, we called them ezines.
0. https://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?type%5B0%5D=diskmag&page=...
Some insightful stuff about open source.
Loadstar (a C64 magazine) for me is still the gold standard for magazines on disk. Every issue was a pleasure and so well put together.