Hi. I'm C>Lemon, the Leader of Newsletter (author, arranger of art, etc.). I'd like to get some feedback on the Newsletter here. Just a few things first though:

-I haven't quite decided how often it'll be out, so for the moment it's going to be every 'period'. That's why we have Tip Of The Period, Screenshot Of The Period, etc..

-I am ably assisted by tsuren (Doc leader and general advisor), Zwopper (art provider extraordinaire), HER0_01 (possibly the only Assistant To Leader Of Newsletter in the world ), and Shador (he's here for consulting about stuff, and for the Script Tips thing).

-It's short for a reason (viz., I can actually find time to write and arrange it).

-The aims are to involve the support team, and to let the world know we're here. I need you (yes, you, if you are a member of this forum) to step up, vote for packages, tell me that my writing is crappy (don't be too mean ), and whatever else. If this newsletter gets one person onto Zenwalk each issue, I'll be happy. Although that's a little optimistic to be honest...

So get commenting and/or voting! I'm not doing this for me (much), I'm (mainly) doing it for you!

I just read through the Newsletter and I have some issues with it.
First, the formatting is so... un-magazine-like. Some might like it, I prefer a more traditional approach. I'll see if I can put my foot where my mouth is and install Scribus once I get some mess cleaned up here.
The Art work is cool, but too much. The LAME Logo is huge, but it serves no purpose. The dolphins on the top with the "light" colors remind me of an birthday invite of a six year-old.
You could add links to the projects concerning the Apps of the period.

On the plus side: I love the tips part and the apps of the period. Cool idea! Even better since you let the forum vote on it!

On the very plus side: THE FACT THAT YOU ARE DOING IT! AWESOME.

Few Screenshots were blurry, plus the font family used it not of magazines style. Plus it would good to name the newsletter with the month release instead of saying No 1. So that we have to relesse once a month.

The water mark of dolphine isnt attractive, it looks kinda dull. The footer artwork also should be some what a effective. Just see how ubuntufullcircle magazine is. U might get some ideas.

I think we should aim for bi-monthly, so that there should be enough time to prepare, get polls, write documents etc etc. as some one has suggested in the other thread. A long article by one of zenwalk users here may be also attractive. but maybe every month or two.

to be really, honest, i am really happy that the newsletter is out, and also to get some comments about it. and i am sure it will be better and better issue by issue.

>DodoFXP
what kind of fonts and layouts, do magazines use (or at least of the one you have in your mind)? it would be help if you could share them with us.

>Zenwalk addict
the same questions to you as well. and as for ubuntufullcircle magazine... i feel it is a bit unfair to compare our newsletter to ubuntu one (3 contributors vs dozens). please, zenwalk addict, help C>Lemon and do write some articles and make it even more appealing.

best wishes

tsuren, I like the font used by the c't magazin (german). This is their site (which I think is kinda ugly, compared with the mag) http://www.heise.de/ct
I will either test my self (compare c't with fonts in scribus) or post a picture of some text.

I think I get my machine reinstalled today, plus I will need like two to three hours to get back on snapshot. Then I will install Scribus and and see what I can come up with. A thing that magazines do is to set up a color palette defining 3-4 colors which will be used in the magazine / newsletter.

Another cool thing would be to get kind of a mascot! Some funky dolphin!

Thanks for your comments! I appreciate all, even the less constructive...

It's great to have ideas, but you have to be a little more specific or I can't do anything.

Specific addresses:

@DodoFXP's first post:
-Scribus is great for me, but of course it has its problems. One is that I worked on this newsletter on the XP version ( ) and later on Zenwalk, so my original font choices got erased in transit. I don't think much of the font I used either (Bitstream Charter, I believe). The formatting was a conscious choice. This was never intended to be an ezine, really. But if enough people are unhappy with it, I'll change it to a more column-based approach. The large and useless logos were also on purpose: I was just showing that there would be screenshots there each time. It just so happened that there is no real screenshot for LAME and no definitive one for Pygame. The colours and art, OK, fine, but like it or not that is the Zenwalk look, and this is the Zenwalk Newsletter. I'll ask Zwopper if he can come up with something a little more mature...
Also, thanks for the praise as well as the grievances.

@Zenwalk addict:
Font and formatting are already answered. The screenshots were as high-res as I could get but I had to resize them in the GIMP so they'd fit. This led, unfortunately, to extreme blurriness. I'm happy with the No. * thing for now, I might change it later (that is in the 'few things' I mentioned above, you know... Art, answered. I'll look into ubuntufullcircle, but I mean, to be fair, this is the first issue of the first thing I've ever published...

@DodoFXP's second post:
A lot more constructive here, thanks. If you could post a picture, and maybe a link to download, I certainly want to change the font, so that'd be great. Colour palette is a little beyond our scope at the moment (i.e., do we really need it?) but what the hell, think big. I'll see what I can come up with. A mascot, hmmm.
(But would that not make it look more like a 6-year-old's party invite, thereby contradicting what you're already asking me to do by changing the art? Give me a small break, please! )

Thanks for your comments! And to you, tsuren, for defending my design choices a little ( ).

Since i read fullcircle mag often, hence i though to make Zen newsletter graphics more appealing, so i took ubuntu mag as a example, no hard feelings plz.

tsuren,
I would be happy to do that, but a lil bit lack of knowledge on what to write a guideline person would kick me moving my hands on the keyboard

C>Lemon:
Mascot-point taken. Touché.
I remembered the color palette thingy because I have an article from Linux-Magazin (again, german) lying around about Scribus. For some reason Linux-Magazin is covering a lot of Scribus.
If you say that you will change the layout to a more column based Newsletter in a later version, then that is fine by me. The big advantage of the column based layout is that you only have to do it once as a master page then just "drop in and adjust" the rest of the text. The layout should be the least of your worries right now though, just getting content out is a good start! I'll see if I can come up with a couple of links about Scribus for some later "advancement" of the newsletter.

About the color: I'd actually be happy with richer, fuller colors. They feel like you reduced the opaciy to 50 percent or so. I like the deep blue of the Forum, for example.

About my color choice.
A used some of the "official Zenwalk gradients" that Fred has sent me... (One of them is used in my current avatar as well).
The reason I chose these particular colors were to make the graphics as unimposing as possible, but I'll be more then happy to redo them.

About the graphics themself.
I tried to make a stylish yet "Zen-ish" wave, I'll try some other ideas and see what I'll come up with.
(By the way I'm glad that my 40 year old head can come up with 6 year old looking stuff, I guess it means that my brain hasn't grown old!)

//Zwopper

I would suggest TribugetMS font family, since it looks kool. What ya guys say? Is it from that crappy M$?

@Zenwalk addict's first post:
No problem, just try not to expect too much from me after only one issue, that's all!

Will post more later, XP crashing... Argh!

Edit: ¬_¬

Aaaanyway.

@DodoFXP:
Couldn't resist the mascot thing, sorry. The thing is I can edit a template every time the way it is now, too, it doesn't need to be column-based.
Other points, duly noted.

@Zwopper:
Phew! Thanks for coming to my rescue, I was getting a tad out of my depth art-wise. (By the way, it was in fact my idea to have the art as 'unimposing' as possible, and I said as much to Zwopper, so it was my fault rather than his that the colours aren't particularly rich. But as I said, this is what Zenwalk looks like. You all use it...) I like the idea about using the forum colours (thanks to DodoFXP for suggesting it), I've always admired them. Could you try putting some backgrounds in that kind of a theme, Zwopper?

@Zenwalk addict's second post:
There is a TrebuchetMS on M$, but I don't know if 'Tribuget' is a misspelling or a FOSS alternative...

No sweat!
I'll give it a go tomorrow and see what I come up with.

Cheers!

so... are you working on the next issue?

@tsuren:
Nothing in the pipeline as of yet. (You mentioned bi-monthly. Is that every two months or twice a month? Just wondering, want to make sure I know what you meant.)

I'll start maybe the Forum Goings-On bit tonight. By the way I downloaded the TTF fonts from http://packages.zenwalk.org but if I start choosing them in Abiword the program often crashes. The fonts are great though, I'm leaning towards one of the Tuffy ones for the next issue. Comments and help with the problem welcome!

-C>L