Editorial to Hugi Sixteen
Ahalen va sahalen!
Unlike my customs, this will be an editorial completely focusing on Hugi. Most diskmags complain that they have too few articles. With Hugi, the opposite is almost the case now: There are so many articles in each issue that a single article does not get as much attention as it deserves. The solution: We will release Hugi in shorter periods in the future, preferably monthly. In this way the single issues are not so big, but the average amount of articles per month will most likely stay the same.
This, however, does mean a change: It means that you, the readers, have to be a tad faster with your contributions. There won't be two months to wait till the article deadline anymore, there will be about three weeks.
We will still see how we will handle this with the charts, as it is hard for me and the few vote collectors that help me to collect a decent amount of votesheets (100+) within a month again and again. We will try to build up an efficient vote collector system. There should be one person in each of the large scene countries who spreads the Hugi votesheet in his country, asks people to fill it in, collects the incoming votesheets and sends it to the Hugi staff. This person of course should have many contacts, be it online or snailmail contacts, and having a regular e-mail address is mandatory. If you are interested, immediately contact me at hugi@netway.at.
The index might also be slightly reconstructed, reducing the number of demoscene sections and increasing the number of miscellaneous sections, such as the literature corner. This has the reason that Hugi's potential in the demoscene is pretty exhausted; nearly every active scener knows Hugi, and there is not much what could be done to improve Hugi's popularity in the demoscene. We now have to try to reach other communities and 'scenes', too. For the demoscene part of Hugi, this will mean no change; as said, the sections might get reorganized a little, and we might drop party-results of parties which we do not have a report of (so, if you want to get your party-results into Hugi, write a party-report!), but nothing else will change content-wise. However, we could attract more new talented people to the demoscene than before, from which the scene will only benefit. And, we want to make the demosceners known outside the scene, too. Maybe we can manage to establish the demoscene as an officially respected form of art.
To stress it once again, we need feedback. A lot of letters reach the Hugi staff every day, but they mostly do not contain more than "Hugi rules, keep it up!" or the like. We are of course grateful for that. However, the authors would be interested in more detailed opinions on their articles. It would be best if you could write down your first impressions after reading each article. For this reason, you can now find a feedback-button at the end of each text. Click it, and your e-mail program will start. You are able to write down your thoughts, save them, and send them to the Hugi staff the next time you log on Internet.
In order to release Hugi more regularly and in shorter periods, we are in need of graphicians. The music support is already running fine. Currently there are 25 tunes in our music pool which will be used in the upcoming Hugi issues. They will be selected according to the general character of the individual issue. But regarding title pictures, our pool consists of only two of them at the moment. That is, we have enough title pictures for Hugi #17 and Hugi #18 but none for later issues yet. Also, we need more main/background pictures. So far we have been able to use a different main picture in each issue, but at times I already thought we would have to use the old Imphobia strategy and use the main picture of the previous issue again. Don't forget that having your graphics in Hugi is one of the best advertisements for yourself. If you need an example, just look in the charts and check out Hellfire's ranking. He had not been mentioned in any graphician charts before he started drawing for Hugi.
Prose writers and poets usually do not only care about the contents of their texts but also about the way their texts look. From this point of view, a lot of things still have to be done about the Hugi interface. We would need multiple text columns, various fonts, including non-fixed-width ones, various font style such as bold and italic, and various font sizes. Of course this would have to come along with justified, left and right formatted, and centered text paragraphs. Street Raider is working on implementing some of these features in the Hugi interface, but it is a difficult task because large parts of the code rely on the fact that the font has a fixed size. We are hence looking for coders who would be interested in helping him upgrade the interface. A complete rewrite is also possible, but it would be a lot of work to implement data-handling techniques as sophisticated as these we are currently using; they are very important, otherwise the creation process of Hugi would last much longer. If you are interested in coding for Hugi, contact me at hugi@netway.at and Street Raider at sraider@aha.ru.
A team around flux/t-rex called hugi[rd], which stands for "Hugi Russian Division", is currently working on a Russian edition of this Hugi issue. It is to be released a few days after this international edition. The Russian Hugi will contain translations of the International Part and perhaps in addition a local Russian part.
Late issues of Hugi have also been reviewed in large computer magazines in France and Germany, both having a print-run greater than 100,000. The daily average number of hits to http://hugi.home.pages.de has since increased by about 200 percent. I hereby also want to thank Salami/Nothing and snotrag for donating free web-space to Hugi. By the way, thanks to Salami we might soon move to http://www.hugi.de.
Last but not least, the list of people who found the hidden part in Hugi #15 and sent a copy of it to the Hugi staff. Congratulations!
1. Tiberius & Omega - 1999/05/11
2. Mesios/Image - 1999/05/11
3. Maharaja/NoLogic - 1999/05/11
4. Dario Phong/PhyMosys - 1999/05/12
5. tmbinc/dazed - 1999/05/15
6. FatCrazer/Storm Studios - 1999/07/01
The hidden part is located in the German Part. To get to it, select "Szene", press Enter, then press TAB until a corner in the bottom-right edge of the index has been selected, press Enter once again, and click the arrows in clockwise order starting with the arrow pointing to the top.
This issue contains two hidden parts - one for the public and one for Unreal of CNCD. We are quite sure that Unreal will find his part; just don't switch off your ego-mode, Wojtek. The other hidden part, however, is tough to find. Just a little hint: It is still no command-line parameter but inside the mag. However, it is not in an index but in a regular column. Also, you should have a good knowledge of Israeli sceners in order to solve the last puzzle. Good luck!
- adok^hugi