Editorial

Written by Adok

Welcome to the new issue of our HUGE DISK MEGA ZINE called Hugi!

Yes, we are already here again, less than 2 months and half months after Hugi #11! And we have 1.8 MByte of articles, almost double as much as in Hugi #11!

Why this issue is that huge, has a simple reason: From the beginning to July to the day before yesterday, i.e September 8th, I had my Summer holidays and spent almost all the day during the whole holidays working on Hugi. And you see what has came out of this. :)

Now I have to hurry up to finish this Hugi issue because it should be released at the Evoke 1998 party, which is going to start tomorrow, and as I won't be able to attend it I have to send it to Mr. SEQ and Hellfire in time, i.e I have only about a hour if I also want to sleep a little. ;)

Actually this issue grew in a similar way as most of the previous issues: Until two weeks ago, we had this time "only" 500 KByte of articles (which is still more than what we usually have in this time period), and in the last two weeks more than half of the articles that are now in the mag rushed in. I had to spend the last three weeks actually entirely on correcting, layouting, and putting the articles into the mag. It's a very hard job to make a diskmag, even harder than e.g. organizing a coding competition over the web (like I also had to do ;)! I worked from dusk till dawn, three weeks long... Well, I hope that the result is good and will be appreciated by you!

Before I can finish the mag and hopefully return to real life after those exhausting weeks ;), I want to tell you some news about Hugi.

The feedback to Hugi #11 was awesome. We seem to have become one of the most popular (if not THE most popular) existing disk magazine in the international demo scene over night. At a time when the PC scene seems not be so interested in diskmags any more and lazily just working on their own productions they release at some big demo party, Hugi got well-known worldwide in a rapid time.

As an exampe, I just want to refer to the Hornet Charts, located at http://www.hornet.org/ha/pages/hc/, the currently only decent charts resource in the international PC demoscene. Before Hugi #11, when Hugi was completely in German only, it was on place 20 of the Top 20 Demoscene Publications. Now after Hugi #11, it has finally climbed up to place 3, more than 30 points ahead of place 4. In front of Hugi, there are currently only DemoNews (place 2) and the legendary Imphobia (place 1), both mags that have either been declared dead officially or whose latest issue is more than two years old. So according to the Hornet Charts, Hugi is indeed the most popular diskmag in the PC demoscene today! And I hope this Hugi #12 issue will only increase the popularity!

Enough posing. ;) I want to tell you a little bit about the major changes of this issue.

First of all, as you have probably already noticed (maybe you haven't because the optical difference isn't that big), we have got a new interface, voluntarily coded by Street Raider // DDT Ent. (I think that if he had known what would come to him, he would have never had offered me to code a new Hugi interface. ;) Street Raider is also the coder of Hacker, the leading Russian local diskmag. In fact, the code of the Hugi interface is based on Hacker, but I as a very creative and perfectionistic person had so many ideas that although I could have used the interface from its first beta version on, I flooded Street Raider with new suggestions and other stuff so that we didn't have time to implement everything.

Therefore currently, the Linux version and the HTML export have still not been started yet or are under heavy construction, respectively. :)

Why this new interface?

As you have certainly noticed, apart from the fact that the interface allows us to embedd graphics into the articles (yes, we haven't made too much use of that feature yet), has the long-awaited keyboard support, support for ansi pictures, links directly into the Internet and other nice things you will find out when reading the readme, this new interface has a major advantage: There are both a DOS and a Win32 version.

The Win32 version is necessary because the current development in the computer scene and also the demo scene in particular is going into the direction of Windows. Some readers complained that at their university/school/work they only have Windows NT and therefore cannot read Hugi. With the Win32 interface, those guys and gals will also have the opportunity to read Hugi at their desired location.

Of course, as I said, also a Linux version is planned but might take a little longer, as well as a HTML version or at least export, which would provide us with real multi-OS and multi-system support. Then the whole world (at least all who have computers with HTML browsers ;) could read Hugi and it would not be limited to the PC scene only.

After learning the the interface of this Hugi issue wouldn't be coded by me any more, some people surprisedly asked me: "Why? Don't you make Hugi any more?" That is a question that made me laugh a little (sorry!). In fact, behind making a diskmag there is MUCH more work than coding. My coding tasks only took away the time from the real jobs of a diskmag main editor. That's why I'm glad that Street Raider has taken over the coding job. Spasibo, Street Raider!

In this way I can fully concentrate on the content of the mag and public relations (contacts, advertising etc.), which will certainly have only positive effects for Hugi.

Of course the new interface brings the risk with itself that it could contain bugs. As even huge companies like Microsoft aren't protected of bugs ;), please don't be upset. The beta testers and me really did an awful word checking the interface, and Street Raider spent an even more awful job fixing all known major bugs till the deadline. Currently we only know that there might be problems with the sound system (Midas v0.5.0) in the DOS version. So if it crashes and manually configuring doesn't help either, use the Windows version (as you probably already are doing in this case). It is more reliable because it retrieves the soundcard information from the Windows System Control and doesn't have to autodetect the component.

No problems with using the DOS version in the DOS box have been found, but anyway, it's recommended better to start DOS programs in raw DOS / DOS mode. If you are in Windows use the Windows interface, it works faster and also has more functions. (The links directly into the Internet work in Windows only and even there it depends on the browser installation.)

Again, thanks to Street Raider for his effort! And you, readers, please fill in at least the questionaire about the new interface in the support.sheet (attached as support.txt) and send it either to me or directly to Street Raider, so that we know what features you wish for further versions of the interface.

Okay. Now the most important things have been said, as the content of the single sections is explained in the sections' guiding lines. Just a thing:

I decided to mark all (few) articles that have not been directly sent in to Hugi for publishing in the submenu. There are two marks:

- [net]: texts from the WWW/FTP/NNTP
- [ten]: texts from The E-Mag Network.

Yes, as Hugi is member of The E-Mag Network and has supplied the other member diskmags with some quality articles, this Hugi issue features also some articles from the other member diskmags, although this issue would have been HUGE enough without them, too.

BTW, Cool acronyms, eh? :)

Finally I want to recommend you to read the "German Diskmag Scene Report" in the "Diskmags" section of this issue if you are interested a little bit in the term diskmags. You will learn loads of things about a scene and diskmags you probably know only little about in this truely HUGE article (90 KByte!).

Also check out our news section, with 150 KByte as large as some other recent diskmag in total!

By the way, your articles, music, and gfx is needed! Please check out the article How to get active for Hugi for more information.

If you can't wait for Hugi #13 (hey, first read this HUGE magazine!), read the Hugi #13 preview in the "Closing Words" section.

Now, have fun! And don't forget, life rules, carpe diem!

- adok^hugi

HUGI - the HUGE DISK MEGA ZINE