[Journal] Newsletter Draft Status

[Micha Silver]

Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) wrote:

> Sorry for the long note, but please review your section below and 
> comment.  These are just rough comments based on a general review of 
> the content.
>
> -General: mainly spacing issues as Micha noted, around images, at 
> top/bottom of page when new article starts
>     - reviewing/fixing all citations and heading usage
>     - updating the "impressum" to list all our names/info
>     - location of table of contents seemed to move to end of document 
> now ??
>     - I'm not sure I like the (vertical) spacing used in the bulleted 
> lists, it seems to leave a lot of whitespace.  What do you think, 
> should we tighten it up?
I agree. The \itemize line spacing should be the same as the rest of the 
text.
>     - Images: some should obviously be a bit larger and take up full 
> width of page - has anyone found the perfect solution for this yet?
>
> -Cover: I'll have a look at the cover again myself and see what I can 
> figure out.  We can probably make use of some of the OSGeo branding 
> work we got done.  For example that title slide colours/layout from: 
> http://osgeo.org/files/viscom/present/OSGeo_Presentation_OpenOffice.odp.zip 
> or 
> http://www.osgeo.org/files/viscom/branding/Fact_Sheets/OSGeo_OSGeo_FactSheet.pdf 
>
>
> -Sections: Should we have some clearer breaks between section types, 
> perhaps a page feed and a title?
Yes indeed. Currently it's just a continuous stream of articles with no 
separation between sections. The original GRASSNews was one homogeneous 
topic, so one newsletter as a collection of articles was fine. The OSGeo 
Journal, which targets a much broader range of software, could benefit 
by being visually broken into sections or "departments".
>
>
> -Editorial: I have some rewriting and editing to update my articles
>
> -News: Jay, how's your collection going?
>
> -Events: I've converted the documents I received and cleaned them up 
> just enough so they'd compile.  They need to be checked for missing 
> images and formatting and language.
>
> -Case Studies:
>     -MapGuide I thought had two images at some point, perhaps a 
> zoom-in has now been dropped?
Yes. Even tho' Martin worked hard to get the second zoomed image to 
display across the whole page, I've commented it out for two reasons: 
1)the resolution was rather poor, and 2)whatever we did, the second, 
wide image would shift down into the following article. I can live with 
the one image as is, but if you find it lacking, I'll have another go at 
converting and positioning a better image.
>
> -Project Spotlights:
>     -Eichler's article missing figure 3, current one used is identical 
> to figure 2
>
> -Integration Studies:
>     -Erle's article is late and may be dropped
>     -Cepicky had a bunch of ###link### notes in his text, was this 
> fixed or simply removed?  I assume they were notes to remind himself 
> of something?
>
> -Topical Studies
>     -Blake's article still has at least one weird character:
>         "How far along the trail would one have to travel to travel ¡ 
> the length of the creek?"
>     -Ames' article has been reduced to 6-7 pages, so we can leave it
>
> -Programming Tutorials
>     -Sutton's was not able to complete his article in time, he has 
> declined to submit it
>     -No programming section in this volume
>
> -Interview
>     -No interview in this volume
>
> -Developer Announcements:
>     -Various articles that I imported need some artifacts removed and 
> reformatting
>     -Address Micha's question about how to handle it as a section.  
> Perhaps we can have a Developer Announcements "section" but treat all 
> articles as "subsection" - would that work?
That would be my suggestion. If no-one has any objections, I'll give 
that a try over the weekend.
>
>
> That's all for now :)
>
> Tyler

Cheers,
Micha