After all the work of writing and reviewing the articles, the first time they were brought together in magazine format, all I got from the reviewers were comments like" You can't just launch into an article" and "Where are the lighter articles?". Not having the faintest idea of what to put in an editorial, I was advised that I should ramble on for a page or so, and then say "Hope you enjoy the magazine" and "lets have some letters from you". So here goes.
A SIG is born
The Turbo C++ SIG has been formed because of my inability to find a user group specific enough to cater for my needs. When I originally looked around for a user group to join, their appeared to be two candidates: ECUG and CUG(UK). After an admittedly brief investigation into both groups, I rejected joining either on the grounds that ECUG seemed expensive and CUG(UK) was too general.
I wondered what other people with my tastes in programming (i.e. 00 C++) do under these circumstances. People I talked to at work seemed to like the idea of a user group dealing with only Turbo/Borland C++. Steve Cameron, the chair of the DBase User Group, gave me plenty of good advice and help in getting the idea together. I managed to get a group of enthusiastic friends together to form a committee to start up a user group, eventually deciding on the name UK TURBO C++ USER GROUP. Yes, I know that's original, but it at least would leave members in no doubt as to what we were about.
Steve Cameron put us in touch with the user group coordinator at Borland. Sadly, at this point Borland International wielded the axe upon 15% of its staff worldwide, and one of those to go was the user group coordinator! A new meeting was set up and the magazine structure was formalised by the committee and a name for the magazine was sought. This was probably the single most difficult task. After going through names such as 'Cout', 'Os-tream', 'Xstream' etc we eventually decided on 'Overload'.
The chair of the as-yet-unborn user group met with representatives of Borland in order to gain approval for the UG. Borland were enthusiastic, but asked us to consider being a SIG under the CUG(UK). It was agreed that we would meet and talk with Francis Glassborow of CUG(UK).
The meeting went well, and I left impressed with Francis and what the CUG(UK) had to offer, and was pleased with the improvements in CVu made under Francis's editorship. The committee held a meeting and I proposed that we form a SIG rather than the independent user group. After some discussion and a few pints at my local, the proposal was carried.
So here we are! Edition one of Overload. We don't know what the composition of our membership will be apart from that they will be C++ programmers or C programmers with an interest in C++. Much of the original idea of what to present in the magazine originated as a result of a statement by Mike Bana-han, chair of ECUG, in his C++ column of .EXE, that although many people have the C++ compiler, very few are using the 00 additions. As a result the main initial thrust of our magazine is biased to tutorials, to assist C programmers with the conversion to C++ and the paradigm shift required.
What are your opinions on this approach? I want to know what you want to see in your magazine. I am also interested to hear from you, about your hobbies and interests (computing-related); others may have programs that are of interest to you.
If you have any suggestions for articles, or are interested in writing, or you want to get involved with the magazine, please contact me. Oh, and before I forget, "Hope you enjoy the magazine" and "lets have some letters from you".
