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Hi!

There was an idea to create a KDE-magazine:
http://spread.kde.org/handbook/writers- ... e-magazine
The topics or good but there should be some concrete work on it.
First we could try an online magazine. But there should be some decisions:
-Technology (LaTeX, KOffice... - SVN, Web-System...)
-Authors
-A name
-Other solutions

The User

Seems like a good idea, voted.

I don't think it would be a problem for most developers to write some articles. And I'm sure there would be also some other users.
Things like layouting and technical realization would need much more work, because I think there would be less voluntaries.

Publishing for free would require not only voluntaries but some EUR too.

Publishing for fee... What's the target market? How about handling shipping? How many copies will there be? and more very important questions.

Active KDE users would be interested for paying for it, since most of the news they get faster on the RSS, also spending all the price on printing itself, not supporting community, wont do a good job.

Offset printing starts from 1k copies. Will there be demand from the beginning?

However, if some sponsors would join this project ... Like hardware manufactures, commercial software companies specializing in remissness sector, or or even major distros, sending copies of newest releases with magazine...

The best would be, if Adobe would release like CS5 series capable with linux. This would give huge impact in making Linux and KDE more known and used (no more gimp vs PS). A Live-USB-stick-PhotoShop-demo-edition. I know many people who would really pay for this. As far as I know CS4 runs smooth under wine so its really possible

There's Krita.

But I think first there should be some online editions.

The User wrote:There's Krita.

But I think first there should be some online editions.

If you are comparing krita with PS, well its uncomparable. And not only becouse PS is more Raster graphics editor, Kirta - vector. But its not the place for discussions PS vs XYZ...

Krita isn't a vector-graphics program. Of course it has much less features than PS or even Gimp. But it has a great GUI, nice scripting functions and fast underlying libraries.

I agree that it should start as a downloadable .pdf. If that doesn't receive many downloads, then there would be no need to further worry about paying the cost of printing, since we know there wouldn't be any demand.

I'm not a developer, but I would be willing to contribute articles.

@Kmetamorphosis and others: the only (really ONLY) problem with this idea is someone taking it up and moving it forward. The core promo/marketing ppl don\'t have time for it ($DEITY knows I have a todo list reaching into $HEAVEN).

So if any of you want to make this happen: simply come to kde-promo, announce you\'re going to do it and DO IT. No idea how? come on, just start. What do you need? ppl to write articles. So ask a few if they are willing. Then a way of doing layout. If you can\'t do it yourself, ask someone etc.

Basically, it\'s not that we don\'t have ppl willing to do the work (eg write, layout, publishing) but we don\'t have someone who wants to/has time to coordinate it, get it going... If you are willing to do that, and really, it\'s not even hard, please do so!

BTW this (almost desperate) plea is true for many things, not just in the Promo area. Many ppl think it is hard to contribute. Far from it. It is easy. Just do it. Pretty much anyone can do it, it\'s fear that they can\'t which keeps ppl away. So spread this sentiment and tell ppl to just do it if they want to make something happen

It\'ll make you very happy and proud and you learn a lot if you pull it of so it is seriously worth it.

@jospoortvliet : I don\'t want to pour cold water on the idea, but looking at the problems I have trying to get people to write for UserBase I seriously doubt the availability of contributors. My advice to the originator is to try to get your contributor list set up, then ask them to commit to a specific date. Without that well-meaning people will say \'of course\' but never get around to it because they are busy with other things.

Layouting is simply much more work than writing some articles. But layouting is also very important. So you have to search for volunteers.

Would be great to have one to read. Especially if there will be some performance tips. And actually there\'s no need for now to have this magazine printed. <1% of all computer users use KDE so there will be little to no demand on the printed edition.

Why not publish for free online, and then use something like lulu.com to provide print-on-demand paper copies to those users willing to pay for them ?
It will make a bit of money probably not a fortune but since it\'s a magazine you can use the cheapest printing options and still have a solid thing that users will be willing to pay a fair price for.

If the paper-prints start getting popular enough, we can then look at getting a more bulk-printing thing going which will be cheaper, but I wouldn\'t make the upfront investment it requires until we know there\'s a market.

One suggestion for articles, how about a monthly section highlighting a particular KDE focused distro ? Thus users can get a feel for how other distro\'s present, theme and set up KDE for comparison and helping them choose the one they like best. Ideally - these should actually be written by people from those distro\'s no ?
I\'d be more than willing to write on Kongoni\'s KDE setups (so yes, I have some bias in favor of such a section but nobody is unbiassed and I still think it\'s a good idea in general), update schedules etc.

Print on Demand: Great idea.
Distros: I think when somebody suggests a section and writes a text for it, it will be integrated.

@The User
The layouting is *much* easier than writing the articles.

I\'ve been a technical/executive editor and writer of one of the local FLOSS related publications, so trust me on this.

Layouting took me approximately 2 hours per issue, while writing an article usually took more than twice that time.

Writing articles is far from writing blog posts to put on the planet.

----

The greatest problem is finding the competent contributors. Competent in a sense that they know what they are talking about and that they can write 1, 2 or more pages on that subject.

And then keeping them in the project, or making a constant stream of new contributors to replace the ones that leave is even more impossible.


p.s.
You can not expect the developers to write that much stuff because of a few things:
1. developers like to develop, not to write articles
2. developers know how to develop, not to write articles
3. not all developers are fluent English speakers
4. developers are usually spending all their free time to develop - reducing the development time in order to write is really not the way to go