Design philosophy: all information in this web site should be accessible to the intended audience regardless of platform, browser, or size of screen. Graphics are kept to a minimum to reduce download times. If you see a frame or an animated GIF, feel free to flame me mercilessly.

This site uses fully compliant cascading style sheets (CSS). Older browsers should display text in their default fonts, while more recent browsers will all display fully formatted text. (However, the styles sheets will look best viewed in Internet Explorer 4.0 or above.) The site also complies with major accessibility standards.

Colophon

The base font for this page is Trebuchet MS, a free font from Microsoft designed for on-screen readability at small point sizes. The headlines are 32 pt Times bold italic, combining elegance, classical proportions, and compactness.

The logo is variation on the original logo from Aldus PageMaker and depicts Aldus Manutius, a student of Johannes Gutenberg and inventor of italics. This is to echo the roots of desktop publishing, both in the 1450s and the 1980s. The logo uses Courier from ITC to evoke the feel of metal type and Poetica from Adobe Systems to evoke the era of hand lettering.

Made on a Macintosh using Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia DreamWeaver.

PAGEMAKR Mailing List Etiquette (“Netiquette”)

(adapted from Carl V. Phillips' Charter for the "Science-Vegetarian" mailing list. Used with permission.)

As a subscriber to PAGEMAKR, you are able to send messages to the group. Before you post, however, PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING. Most of this is standard netiquette, so most subscribers should be familiar with it. A bit of it is specific to this list.

Ask yourself whether the subject matter and tone of your post are appropriate for the list. If you are not sure, "lurk" for a while and watch what other people post. Or write to one of the list owners and ask. The owners are listed at the bottom of this message.

In particular, be careful never to send listserv commands to the group. (Listserv is a computer program by L-Soft International that processes mail and subscription commands automatically. Commands like SIGNOFF PAGEMAKR and CONFIRM PAGEMAKR should always be sent to the listserv computer at LISTSERV@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU, never to the list. When in doubt, write to one of the list owners at PAGEMAKR-Request@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU or at one of the addresses below.

Replies:

When replying to a post, please keep the subject line the same, unless you are genuinely changing the subject (or it has already been changed and you are acknowledging that). If you are replying to something from the digest version of the list, do not leave your subject line as "Re: PAGEMAKR Digest...." Find the subject line that is being used by the thread and type it in, including a "Re:".

Specifically, messages that just say "me too" or "I agree" should not be posted to the list. Neither should simple questions of clarification about a post (vocabulary, etc.). If you have the urge to start your reply with "Well I am no expert, but I heard somewhere that..." then you should probably not post it.

When quoting previous posts, please delete any lines that are not relevant to your reply. Leaving them at the bottom of your post is not a good substitute for this. If you have ever read the digest version of a list, you know how annoying it is to page through all the superfluous text that people leave at the bottom of their posts.

Sometimes a post does not call for a public reply. Ask yourself how widespread the interest in what you are saying might be. If it is general enough and substantive enough to be worth telling thousands of people, then please post it to the list. If it is not of general interest, please only send it to the person you are replying to. (This is not hard -- just make sure your To: and CC: lines say the right thing.) Examples might include explanation of a basic concept or an item that was discussed a short time ago.

Subject Lines:

When starting a new thread, please use a useful subject line that is as descriptive as possible. Something like "PageMaker" is bad. Something like "PageMaker 6 vs. Win 95" is better. You should never use something like "Some Questions" -- if the questions are so diverse that the topic cannot be summarized in a subject line, then they should be asked in different posts.

Since PageMaker is a cross-platform product, most topics will be of general interest. However, is your post is tangential to the topic of PageMaker, e.g. paper suppliers, please use the prefix TAN:. If it is specific to the Mac or Windows operating systems, please use the prefix MAC: or WIN:.

Signatures:

If you have a long .sig file, please chop it down for posts to this list. Again, it is especially annoying for digest readers who cannot just quit reading and delete the message when the .sig starts. Three lines is optimal. Ten is way too many.

Other:

Do not cross-post with other lists or usenet. Cross posted threads tend to get out of control, especially since they can generate separate discussions that interested parties may only see part of. Excessive cross-posting is the same as "spamming." This can be done in moderation (cross-posting a typography question to PAGEMAKR and TYPO-L, e.g.) but it is rarely a good idea.

Keep in mind that this is an international list. This matters less on this list than it does on some other lists, since most of the information should be pretty universal. However, little things can really annoy non-U.S. readers. For instance, "the Times" is not a New York newspaper to everyone. "This country" is undefined on the net.

Politics is off-limits, not only because of the subject of the list, but because we have subscribers in Australia, Brazil, Japan, India, Ukrain, Kuwait, and others, as well as the U.S. How could all of them find one political statement relevant?

STEPPS -- Stop Tax Exempt Private Property Sprawl -- Framingham