I used to occasionally babysit a couple of kids when I was a teenager. Babysitting wasn't really anything I had much interest in, but I would do it for this family. I couldn't wait to get the kids to bed, so that I could fire up Sundog on the family's Atari ST.
This is an interesting intersection between the printed magazines with cover disks and the floppy collections containing "public domain" software, but without editorial content (e.g. the famous Amiga "Fish Disks": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Fish#The_Amiga_Library_Di...), which were both more widespread.
Growing up I had an Amiga but my uncle, who was a semi-pro musician, had an ST and this was connected via midi to an Akai sampler and a Roland synth that were mounted in a rack near the computer; in the rack there were some effects too. This was a dream setup in the late 80's. On the Amiga I would use tracker software[1] to make music and until I finally got a cheap sampling interface[2], I had to just use samples that I would find in the accompanying floppy of various Amiga magazines. Obviously my uncle's setup was extremely hi-fi compared to mine and so to this day I have this idea in the back of my mind that "ST is for people who have money" LOL.
Back then I wanted to publish collected stories in floppies as Windows .HLP files. The SDK was... discouraging.
And then the web happened.
The company I worked for managed to publish a couple e-commerce (we didn't call it that) CD's using Windows remote access clients to dial up a server (as in using a phone) to post orders that would be delivered next day. Fun times.
From a user perspective, I’m still fond of WinHelp/CHM. It’s a rather consistent and predictable format, with a standard hierarchical TOC, index, full-text search, and hyperlinking, distributed as a single file you can open on any Windows PC. The AutoHotKey documentation is a good example.
Oh yes, but that ship sailed really fast. The idea would start from RTF files, but by the time we hit the market, the distribution channel would be gone.
After spending all week reviewing and commenting on gdocs, I have to say that the Papyrus interface looks really beautiful. I love how they implemented sticky notes!
The Atari colour screen was so ugly :( I loved the black and white display though. For the times it was really high-res and very smooth refresh.
I went from Atari 8-bit to the Amiga though. Never really was a commodore fan but I found out later that the Amiga was mostly developed by the Atari team and the Atari ST by the Commodore team - lol. A side-effect of all the business skullduggery by Jack Tramiel in those days.
I often wonder what the world would look like now if those companies had survived like Apple did. And also Sun Microsystems. I could see one of them partnering with Sun like Apple did with NeXT to bring their OS into the next century. Or BeOS perhaps.
I was searching on the net but couldn't find it: does some one remember the floppy zine on the Amiga with releases of Flip the Frog and Banana Man comics? I will otherwise look in my old floppy stack if I find time ..
Reminds me of the big blue disk and gamer's edge from which ID Software grew. We now have an abundance of software to enjoy but I wish I lived through the early days.
Ah, memories. I was a member (and even secretary for a bit) of a 16-bit Atari user group for a bit back in the late 80s/early-90s. We used to put out a disk "magazine" for members and distribute others. The latest shareware and the like.
So much was about magazines back then, even after BBSs and the early Internet came on the scene.
'For All Atari ST' would to me imply it's a SSDD disk, since the 1040STs came without a DSDD drive, at least initially.
Somebody commented in the post that the little devil logo is Beastie:
https://www.goto10retro.com/p/faster-atari-st-digital-magazi...
Interesting that it shows up on an Atari ST magazine. Maybe somebody there was a BSD fan in 1987?
Specifically, it's a rendition of the daemon from the cover of the 4.2BSD UNIX System Manager's Manual[1].
“Cover design by John Lassetter [sic], Lucasfilm, Ltd.”[2]
[1] https://archive.org/details/smm-4.2bsd/mode/1up
[2] https://archive.org/details/smm-4.2bsd/page/n1/mode/1up
Sun dog and gold runner !!!! I had forgotten about these, but they were somehow hidden in my brain.
I used to love diskmags ( Imphobia on pcs in particular ) but the format has afaik completely disappeared, and has been superseded by the web.
Thanks.
I used to occasionally babysit a couple of kids when I was a teenager. Babysitting wasn't really anything I had much interest in, but I would do it for this family. I couldn't wait to get the kids to bed, so that I could fire up Sundog on the family's Atari ST.
This is an interesting intersection between the printed magazines with cover disks and the floppy collections containing "public domain" software, but without editorial content (e.g. the famous Amiga "Fish Disks": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Fish#The_Amiga_Library_Di...), which were both more widespread.
Seeing the articles penned by "Alain Plouffe", "André Lafrenière" and "Serge Vaillancourt" makes me realize they were _french_ canadians.
Funny to imagine a clique of – old like my parents – québécois geeking out about Atari computers and making a floppy zine about it.
Growing up I had an Amiga but my uncle, who was a semi-pro musician, had an ST and this was connected via midi to an Akai sampler and a Roland synth that were mounted in a rack near the computer; in the rack there were some effects too. This was a dream setup in the late 80's. On the Amiga I would use tracker software[1] to make music and until I finally got a cheap sampling interface[2], I had to just use samples that I would find in the accompanying floppy of various Amiga magazines. Obviously my uncle's setup was extremely hi-fi compared to mine and so to this day I have this idea in the back of my mind that "ST is for people who have money" LOL.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker
[2] it was something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gTWf6IGCJM
Back then I wanted to publish collected stories in floppies as Windows .HLP files. The SDK was... discouraging.
And then the web happened.
The company I worked for managed to publish a couple e-commerce (we didn't call it that) CD's using Windows remote access clients to dial up a server (as in using a phone) to post orders that would be delivered next day. Fun times.
From a user perspective, I’m still fond of WinHelp/CHM. It’s a rather consistent and predictable format, with a standard hierarchical TOC, index, full-text search, and hyperlinking, distributed as a single file you can open on any Windows PC. The AutoHotKey documentation is a good example.
EPUB is a fairly modern counterpart to CHM. The old WinHelp file format (.HLP) was RTF-based as pointed out in a sibling comment.
Oh yes, but that ship sailed really fast. The idea would start from RTF files, but by the time we hit the market, the distribution channel would be gone.
Fun fact, some software developed for the Atari ST survives until today. For example one of the fastest word processors https://www.papyrusauthor.com
After spending all week reviewing and commenting on gdocs, I have to say that the Papyrus interface looks really beautiful. I love how they implemented sticky notes!
The Atari colour screen was so ugly :( I loved the black and white display though. For the times it was really high-res and very smooth refresh.
I went from Atari 8-bit to the Amiga though. Never really was a commodore fan but I found out later that the Amiga was mostly developed by the Atari team and the Atari ST by the Commodore team - lol. A side-effect of all the business skullduggery by Jack Tramiel in those days.
I often wonder what the world would look like now if those companies had survived like Apple did. And also Sun Microsystems. I could see one of them partnering with Sun like Apple did with NeXT to bring their OS into the next century. Or BeOS perhaps.
Using the "outline" style for fonts is, sadly, a lost art. I feel like that went away almost entirely around the turn of the century.
I was searching on the net but couldn't find it: does some one remember the floppy zine on the Amiga with releases of Flip the Frog and Banana Man comics? I will otherwise look in my old floppy stack if I find time ..
Reminds me of the big blue disk and gamer's edge from which ID Software grew. We now have an abundance of software to enjoy but I wish I lived through the early days.
My dad use to take us to Atari conventions in the Bay Area and LA and I grew up with it. I never heard of this magazine!
Ah, memories. I was a member (and even secretary for a bit) of a 16-bit Atari user group for a bit back in the late 80s/early-90s. We used to put out a disk "magazine" for members and distribute others. The latest shareware and the like.
So much was about magazines back then, even after BBSs and the early Internet came on the scene.
I remember Softdisk for the Apple IIe. It has an ASCII "tv show" call Alfredo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-OQ4eheYKc&list=PLWOBhBZEPZ...
diskmags[0] are a still a thing.
Back in the day, we called them ezines.
0. https://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?type%5B0%5D=diskmag&page=...
This was a quite common way to publish in the demoscene, see Hugi.
Amazing to see these examples still around and working.
Some insightful stuff about open source.
Loadstar (a C64 magazine) for me is still the gold standard for magazines on disk. Every issue was a pleasure and so well put together.