EDM/2 - From the Editor

From the Editor

ell, here we are again. Last month was incredibly hectic, writing an article, a column, and then this spot. And then putting the issue together, with a new look, and many small, but tedious changes. If I didn't enjoy doing this... :)
And then I sent out a ton of mail to various people, trying to get things going again. So, if you are reading this, and have a few spare moment, throw together an article for us. We would all appreciate it. Remember, it is very easy to read it every month, but very hard to keep it going, so the more people help out, the longer we will be around. I will try to keep the wanted list up to date.
This month there are some more minor changes. There are now little buttons on every page to take you sequentially through the magazine. The right arrow takes you to the next page, the left arrow to the previous page, and the up arrow to the index. This will take you through all the columns and articles, respectively. I hope this is helpful for those of you who read all of EDM/2 every month. I have integrated these buttons into all three mags with the new format (0101, 0408, 0409), and all future mags will have them too.
The gold links have been made a darker brown, since I had two people who had trouble with the light gold on light grey. The brown is unfortunately rather close to black, so if this causes trouble for anyone, let me know, and I will come up with a better colour scheme.
As Robert McDermid pointed out, there is a tool called inf2html which I will try out, in an effort to help me convert all the old INF issues to HTML for the site. If this tool is good, it is likely that I will convert (maybe) one magazine a week, or perhaps even more. At the moment, I have converted Volume 1 Issue 1 (0101). I will work from both ends, to see which end gives the best results. Thus, expect to see both 0102 and 0407 converted soon.
I have merged a couple of the administrative pages, and renamed and edited a couple, so under Miscellany, expect to find things in a slightly different position than previous months. Also, I have renamed all the .shtml pages to .html and fixed all the references to these. I think. If you find a reference to any page ending in .shtml please let me know. The old index.shtml will still be around to point to the new one. The .shtml extension caused trouble for some browsers, notably WebEx.
As I mentioned last month, there are a few inconcistencies on the site at the moment. As I get around to it, these will all be fixed, but at the moment, the older articles all point to the old part of the directory tree. As I convert the issues, this will be fixed. Eventually, there will only be 0101, 0102, ..., 0409, common, and zips directories.
It looks like I may have found a new site, or rather, a new site has found me. I can't tell you any more at the moment, but next month we may be somewhere else. Look in the newsgroups for the announcements. I would like to buy the name www.edm2.com, but I am stone-cold broke. It doesn't cost too much, though, so if anyone here would like to help sponsor that name, e-mail me, and I will accept all contributions. Any extra will go towards buying a few e-mail addresses at that site. On the other hand, I am also considering shortening our name to DM - The Developer Magazine, or DevMag for short. This dumps the Electronic bit for which the novelty has worn off, and also leaves out the OS/2 bit, at least from the name. We will still be OS/2-only, though. In this case, I would want to buy the URL www.devmag.com or www.dm.com instead. Give me lots of feedback on these thoughts, please. Is it stupid to change the name after all these years, or will it be a fresh change? My reason for changing it at all is that EDM/2 is quite a mouthful, and noone ever really seems to remember it right. This hurts our reputation, since everyone calls us something a little different.
We have an exciting new column this month, which will discuss networking. As a slightly altered direction, I have decided to make EDM/2 more of a technical AND development publication from now on. This means that we may see more articles about the mechanics of things. This should be useful to developers, and may get us more contributions as well. The new networking column embraces this new direction, and will sometimes be about technical networking news, and other times will include actual code. Let me know how you feel about this slight shift, and join me in welcoming Tom Brown as the columnist for the new OS/2 Routes networking column.
Also, you may have noticed that news has returned to EDM/2 via a great Swede, Oscar Gustafsson. He will be reporting the news in the OS/2 developer community every two weeks, provided that there is some material. Some weeks are just dead, so the occasional column may be missing. The first one will be available on the first Monday of each month, and the second one will be added to the site and downloadable issue two weeks later. If you have some related news for us, send it to oscar@edm2.com.
Well, that is all for now. Read through our magazine, see how you like the new changes, and let me know how you feel about it all.