Re: Magazine Question

[dbromage@metz.une.edu.au (David Bromage)]

Earl Brimshaw (ebrimshaw@hotmail.com) wrote:
>a very valid point, I certainly cant argue on that aspect. However, it
>does still remind me of those old cheap B&W porn magazines from school
>days! :-) With publishing technology as easy and sophisticated as it is
>nowadays, surely it wouldnt be difficult to "tart" it up.

Had you subscribed to RNV from the start, you'd know that a lot of changed
have been made. It started as a simple newsletter, printed on a dot matrix
printer and photocopied. Since then it's moved to proportional fonts,
glossy paper, professional printing (including bromide photographs) and
occasionally colour. If it was tarted up, it would just look just that -
tarty. if you can't present concise reports of events in plain text (as on
this newsgroup), tarting it up isn't going to make it any better. 

Pretty fonts and other fancy things is just going to make the mag more
expensive.  I'm sure Rod would rather be researching an article than
tarting up the presentation of same. It's the actual _information_ that
the readers want.  I doubt many subscribers would be willing to pay more
per issue simply because it's "prettier".

It's exactly the same with RailPage. I haven't taken the time to add
whizbang bells, whistles, flashy graphics and Java applets to impress the
easily amused. Instead, I'd rather spend the time maintaining and
improving the actual information at the site. I work in the KISS principle
(keep is simple, stupid). Tarting it up would be a wombat (waste of money,
brains and time).

Cheers
David