Hi,
On Mon, 7 Feb 2011 08:24:52 +1000 Russell Dickenson russelldickenson@gmail.com wrote:
On 7 February 2011 03:00, Frank Lanitz frank@frank.uvena.de wrote:
Hi,
Sorry for the late coming back. Somehow I missed this mail ...
On Fri, 21 Jan 2011 22:08:15 +1000 Russell Dickenson russelldickenson@gmail.com wrote:
I think this is a *great* idea and am willing to volunteer as a member of the newsletter team.
Cool. Great to hear.
I'm happy to "give it a go" and will let others judge my work. My time is rather limited at the moment but I believe I could make a useful contribution. I speak (and write) only English, I'm afraid, so I couldn't contribute to translations in any way.
As we should start in English, a native speaker could be a great help beside of contributing content also on spell checking, grammar and stuff.
I'll do my best. :)
In thinking about the format, I wonder if a blog-style format might be better than a regular newsletter. I say this only because a newsletter can be delayed solely because one item is not quite ready. I am the author and editor of the Frugalware Linux newsletter, so I have some experience in this area. For the moment I'll await further details and team members. :)
Well, I'm not sure how this could look like. Can you give a more detailed exampled?
For examples of "my" work for Frugalware Linux, look here - http://www.frugalware.org and click on the links in the newsletter announcements.
The question is: in what format would people like to see the newsletter published? The Ubuntu newsletter is published as a weekly email, for example.
I prefer this way in combination with an optional HTML/PDF-offer.
The Frugalware Linux newsletter is published on a web site in HTML format. Personally I would prefer that the newsletter's content be hosted on a web site instead of sent out via email. The hosted method makes it easier to correct errors which may occur occasionally. Of course we could announce the latest newsletter in the usual Geany ML(s).
I do see such a newsletter more like some kind of a snapshot with no need for an update.
Right now I started to put some content together into a LaTeX-file which will be compiled to PDF and plain text and send out later once its done.
Would you mind sending the finished product to me?
The current status is available at http://git.geany.org/newsletter/ There are still a lot of typos inside I guess. You will need to install a LaTeX-distribution to create a PDF from it.
A question to Frank and others - do you mind in what format the newsletter's content is written in?
Not this much.
I only have experience in using HTML and AsciiDoc (http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/). I would *much* prefer to use AsciiDoc because it "is a text document format for writing notes, documentation, articles, books, ebooks, slideshows, web pages, man pages and blogs. AsciiDoc files can be translated to many formats including HTML, PDF, EPUB, man page." I know that there are similar tools such as "plain text" markup languages but AsciiDoc is the one with which I have most experience.
In Geany context we using a lot of ReST. Personally I prefer LateX ;) I'm not sure about AsciiDoc. Maybe its worth a view but persoanlly I'd prefer to don't have a look onto some other markup language....
Assuming we were using AsciiDoc, we could have a master document which then draws in content from various contributors and is then converted to various formats. This method would make the job of the newsletter's editor a little easier since each piece can be edited separately, then combined into one document.
I don't care much about structure as long its a working one. When using git, its not a problem two people working inside the smae document in most cases differing from edit the whole page with e.g. typical wiki software as Mediawiki.
Thanks for your reply.
Another question to everyone - since I am the only person to have volunteered so far I'm putting my thoughts out for everyone to read. Am I going too far in suggesting formats and tools?
No, its fine :)
Cheers, Frank