Editorial

"The scene has exploded so large that you just don't see the edges anymore. It's no longer a small group where everyone knows everyone else's name."

- Ranger Rick at slashdot.org

Hello and welcome to a new Hugi issue!

The demo scene has indeed grown a lot during the last year. It's more difficult to keep an overview of it than ever. In order to watch and listen to every production that gets released, one would have to do nothing else - and the length of the day would have to double. The quality of the top demos released at big parties such as Assembly (latest edition held on August 2-5) is steadily becoming higher, as it's professionals who create them. Demos are being covered in the media of the "real world" such as TV and radio, they are presented at exhibitions, and are soon even going to be shown at ACM SIGGRAPH, the leading computer graphics conference in the entire world. Newssites are bursting with messages, party calendars have grown huge. More and more knowledge as well as experience is required to make a state-of-the-art demo.

In these hectic days, diskmags provide an opportunity to sit down, relax, drink a cup of coffee and read articles intended to give an overview about what's going on in the scene, as well as texts on various matters, some of them being for information, others for pure entertainment.

The contents of this Hugi issue are very diverse, the topics range from Mathematics to International Law. The Real World corner of this issue is very big, including some special kinds of articles. One thing is especially worth mentioning: Tomcat has translated his report on the Hungarian army to English - go and read a whole book, written in an entertaining, humouristic and very informative style, in this Hugi issue.

We have two scientific dissertations in this issue: one of them deals with the demoscene from an outsider's point of view. It was written by Ashton Simmonds to obtain the Bachelor of Arts degree in Design and Visual Communication from the University of Technology, Sydney. The other comes from Leonie Schultens from Singapore; it is about with Humanitarian Intervention and the AIDS pandemic - a topic that is uncommon for Hugi, but of great relevance for the future development of this planet.

The coding corner features a lot of different tutorials, for beginners as well as advanced programmers, both on theoretical/mathematical and practical aspects. Iliks starts his Linear Algebra Course in this issue; it is supposed to teach you maths at university level. Two texts show you how to approximate non-polynomic functions using Taylor series and Minimax interpolation. There are also articles on raytracing, written by delta9 and lycium.

As always, we also have a literature corner as a part of the Real World section. TAD is back with four chapters of his Wake-up call. For the first time also Sol is publishing his short stories in Hugi.

Regarding the graphics, Partikle has fulfilled one wish I've secretly had for a long time by creating a set of pictures based on the jungle theme. Really, really thank you a lot, Partikle! Also congratulations for placing 1st in the Assembly 2001 handdrawn graphics competition!

The music of this issue comes from Steffo/Cryonics, Gopher and CoaXCable. Steffo submitted his tune back in 1998. Now after three years of waiting in the Hugi internal modpool, it has finally been used, as it fits the graphical theme greatly. So, to all people who submitted tunes to Hugi already some time ago: The waiting is not necessarily in vain. ;)

The Hugi staff has recently been enriched by a new member: iliks. Iliks is a 17-year-old student of computer science living in Novosibirsk, Russia. He has been very active since the latest issue of Hugi, writing and translating articles, and composing music. As already mentioned, the Linear Algebra tutorial is one of his projects connected with Hugi. Russian readers owe him a lot: Without iliks, Hugi 23 Russian Edition probably would not have been released simultaneously with the international edition - if it would have been released at all!

Huge thank is also due for the other members Russian team that made a lot of effort to get the issue translated in time. Elmm, Netrat, ygrek, Aquila, zZz, nigilizm, Heaven Aeroplane, nevidimkas - you're great!

I would also like to thank Ghandy, who has recently left the staff, for his contributions to Hugi. It was him who helped establish the fruitful contact with the Amiga scene.

Thanks to Salami for continuing to host and sponsor the www.hugi.de site.

In fact there are so many people who ought to be thanked for making it possible that a free magazine created on a voluntary basis is still alive after five years that it would be sheer madness to make an attempt at listing all of them. Thank you all, people - everybody who's been active for Hugi in some way, and everybody who has been written about has been important for the development of this magazine.

You may be missing Poetry by eyes of repulsion. Morph is very busy at the moment but as soon as he will have some spare time, he will continue the story.

Perhaps you're also missing the party calendar... It has been dropped because there's already a very complete one out at Orange Juice; it is regularly updated, which isn't possible in a diskmag, and as parties are often announced only a few months before they take place, online calendars make more sense.

Enjoy reading, enjoy life, be happy and productive, yet know when it's time to relax.

Adok/Hugi - 11 August 2001