Editorial

Our newsletter has been evolving. Soon after the Chapter started back in 1996, the editors produced Forward as short black and white paper documents. These were duly printed and posted out to members. In July 2001 David Farbey introduced professional printing, which allowed colour.

In 2004, after much deliberation, we moved to PDF. At this stage the editors were using Framemaker, which could easily generate PDF files. This move saved the Chapter postage and printing costs and had the advantage that the documents could be stored and accessed online. Now, members could easily consult back issues.

Of course, technology and expectations don't stand still, and before long people wanted a web-based newsletter. Other chapters were producing them and we wanted to make our material more accessible. Our first online newsletter was issued in February 2005 while Liz Hale was the editor. Poornima did the layout.

Once online the newsletter suddenly expanded in size. The May 05 issue was 4,500 words long, August 5,800 and October came in at 7,300 plus supplements. Online documents of this size need easy navigation and a simple way to enter the content. Poornima had burnt the candle long into the night with the mountains of coding and hand layout. In the current newsletter, which John Clarke built for us, the navigation issue has been addressed and entering content simplified. Thank you John!

Now, what we need is lots more content from our readers. We'd like more contributions to the "News from Home and Abroad" section and articles about solutions to your problems. Anything to do with technical communication is welcome. This time there's even a Humour page!

Please send your contributions to newsletter@stcuk.org.
Cathy and Poornima