Trainz Magazine is out.

[Lo_Poly]

Thanks, I got the email!

Cheers.

 

[twarner]

I would rather continue to use power point.

Power point? Surely that's a presentation package?

You are just sending a series of jpegs. Using word or a pdf document would mean that you send one complete document as your attachment.

The jpegs you use could be simply dropped into Word exactly where you want them and the text added around them. It would also mean the end of all the empty space on some of your pages.

This would then meet all of the criteria you stated and make things a lot easier for your members to print.

Terry

 

[deeelare]

Over the years that I have been a Forum member , this/these offsite ideas , mostly/almost always , go down the tube !
Continue developing what you would like other members to enjoy , how much grass one can create as a world Trainz record is to me , totally disinteresting .

Simply my thoughts ---, DLR

 

[JRT]

Power point? Surely that's a presentation package?

You are just sending a series of jpegs. Using word or a pdf document would mean that you send one complete document as your attachment.

The jpegs you use could be simply dropped into Word exactly where you want them and the text added around them. It would also mean the end of all the empty space on some of your pages.

This would then meet all of the criteria you stated and make things a lot easier for your members to print.

Powerpoint is actually a presentation software and it was designed for both creating pages on paper and doing presentations. The end of the empty pages are my fault by rushing to get it done.

Over the years that I have been a Forum member , this/these offsite ideas , mostly/almost always , go down the tube !
Continue developing what you would like other members to enjoy , how much grass one can create as a world Trainz record is to me , totally disinteresting .

Trainz World Records is not really designed for things like the most grass in a layout it is designed more for things like fastest speed in trainz which is ??????. Get trainz magazine to know the speed.

cheers,JRT

 

[Johnk]

JRT and deeelare. I guess I'm looking into the future. The magazine started off at a humble 5 o 6 pages. Now it's 15. What will happen when it's 20 or 30 or even 60?

Sending 30 jpegs to individual email recipticants which could easily grow to 100 or 590 as I predict is just crazy. Always plan for the future before it actually arrives!

twarner, you are so correct. PowerPoint is not a desktop publishing medium in any shape or form. JRT would be better off using MS Paint! (Yuk!) I'd love to recommend Serif PagePlus which is totally free and a fantastic Desktop Publishing program but it doesn't have PDF conversion. The $20 payware version does. A free PDF converter will probably do the job however.

JRT, if you're doing the magazine to increase your publishing skills, PowerPoint won't do it. It's a toy used in some commercial establishments to make overhead projector or multi-media presentations. It's not a very popular program and I don't think that being PowerPoint proficient will get you a job.

Regards,

John

 

[transitguard]

I would try OpenOffice. It's a free home office suite and the word processor portion can save as a PDF. It also has some limited compatability with MS Office.

 

[deeelare]

...snip...Trainz World Records is not really designed for things like the most grass in a layout it is designed more for things like fastest speed in trainz which is ??????. Get trainz magazine to know the speed.
cheers,JRT

Exactly my point , fastest speed , best crash , most engines , longest jump etc. ,etc , whatever , the majority of members are brought here to the Forum for information regarding Trainz , the most realistic routes , engines , rolling stock , structures .
A simply reiteration , "I am not interested in the fastest speed , or most grass ! Please do not reply with , "we also list the " Most baseboards - untextured !""

IMHO , This is not what members are interested in , drop the silly 'Trainz world records' , (threads have been started on these items and died ), possibly you can continue with things more interesting to the veterans and newbies that are seeking info and/or posting their screenshots ?

Best of luck with your "Mag" .

My thoughts --- ,DLR

 

[JRT]

Exactly my point , fastest speed , best crash , most engines , longest jump etc. ,etc , whatever , the majority of members are brought here to the Forum for information regarding Trainz , the most realistic routes , engines , rolling stock , structures .
A simply reiteration , "I am not interested in the fastest speed , or most grass ! Please do not reply with , "we also list the " Most baseboards - untextured !""

IMHO , This is not what members are interested in , drop the silly 'Trainz world records' , (threads have been started on these items and died ), possibly you can continue with things more interesting to the veterans and newbies that are seeking info and/or posting their screenshots ?

I guess it's true everybody likes different things but I can have more then one ebook like Trainz World Records, like you suggested something for the newcomers and the veterans. For the newcomers I could create a ebook about frequently asked questions and for the veterans........I will have to think about that. Great ideas deeelare

PS.I have had many Trainz members tell me that they like Trainz World Records

Thanks,
JRT

 

[JRT]

Oops I forgot to thos that would like the magazine as PDF I will think about it.

cheers,
JRT

 

[Wessex_Electric_Nutter]

The reason I wanted to do an email magazine is so I can keep track of how many members read the magazine. Also, I wanted to send the magazine to everybody automaticaly so they did not have to download it over and over again.

Website counters are useful for this, hit counters aren't but theres another type I forgot the name of, which allows you to track how many "unique" connections to that page.
Some more expensive web hosters, also allow you to view the stastitics of what files are the most popular.

That is an idea to turn it into a PDF file but it is just as easy to save it as a JPG.file. Letting people download it is good but that means that people would have to download it over and over and if I had to make a change to the magazine there is no way to tell them that I have an update. I will look in to changing the back ground.

JPG's have one flaw when it comes to DTP. Size, its ok for large image prints, but when you get text involved and a lot of white space, PDFs are far more efficent, plus you can send all the pages in one file. Besides, PDF's compress images for you anyway. Play with the settings when you get a chance.

I would rather continue to use power point.

As far as I know of, thats not a proper DTP tool. Its a presentation tool and should be used accordingly. Although, it does have its uses, the VBA functionallity is quite powerful, combine with PDF documents and modern plug-ins and you would probably have a "killer mag".

Another reason to go PDF than JPG, is you can insert next page links at the bottom of the page and the viewer gets directed to the page, rather than scrolling down or loading another image.

Heres a free one you could always download and use.
http://www.go2pdf.com/product.html
The only drawback is that you need to tell viewers that they need a PDF viewer, not a problem on some systems, as PDF reading ability has been incorperated to the OS, windows needs a free viewer to look at them.


EDIT: I think I've asked this before, but it didn't get anywhere. The thing is, JPG is meant for image viewing, gifs for internet image viewing and movemet, PDFs for documents. I haven't seen the latest magazine, but I guess interactivity is Nil, a problem with JPGs. See here for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF

 

[Lo_Poly]

I must agree with what the others are saying. It would be a lot better if you could do this magazine in .pdf format instead of separate .jpgs. And in my opinion, mainly because of how ugly the .jpgs are. Needs more compression artifacts!

 

[Wessex_Electric_Nutter]

I must agree with what the others are saying. It would be a lot better if you could do this magazine in .pdf format instead of separate .jpgs. And in my opinion, mainly because of how ugly the .jpgs are. Needs more compression artifacts!

Actually, JPEGs files (guess what the acronym means) is suitable for only photographs, after all, that's what it is designed for, photographs which have an infinitive amount of colours.
GIF which is another popular format, is perfect for text or flat colours, but absolutely useless at photographs, as it is limited to 256 colours and you will get quite a substantial amount of dithering which degrades the image.

There's always PNGs (Portable Network Graphics) which have 2 problems, the first is that they aren't widely supported, even if they are, some features may not be. Look at Internet Explorer 6 and notice how it renders the alpha transparencies. In some cases, the file size is also larger.

 

[JRT]

I will look in to the PDF.