I used to occasionally babysit a couple of kids when I was a teenager. Babysitting wasn't really anything I had much interest in, but I would do it for this family. I couldn't wait to get the kids to bed, so that I could fire up Sundog on the family's Atari ST.
This is an interesting intersection between the printed magazines with cover disks and the floppy collections containing "public domain" software, but without editorial content (e.g. the famous Amiga "Fish Disks": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Fish#The_Amiga_Library_Di...), which were both more widespread.
Back then I wanted to publish collected stories in floppies as Windows .HLP files. The SDK was... discouraging.
And then the web happened.
The company I worked for managed to publish a couple e-commerce (we didn't call it that) CD's using Windows remote access clients to dial up a server (as in using a phone) to post orders that would be delivered next day. Fun times.
From a user perspective, I’m still fond of WinHelp/CHM. It’s a rather consistent and predictable format, with a standard hierarchical TOC, index, full-text search, and hyperlinking, distributed as a single file you can open on any Windows PC. The AutoHotKey documentation is a good example.
Oh yes, but that ship sailed really fast. The idea would start from RTF files, but by the time we hit the market, the distribution channel would be gone.
Reminds me of the big blue disk and gamer's edge from which ID Software grew. We now have an abundance of software to enjoy but I wish I lived through the early days.
I was searching on the net but couldn't find it: does some one remember the floppy zine on the Amiga with releases of Flip the Frog and Banana Man comics? I will otherwise look in my old floppy stack if I find time ..
Ah, memories. I was a member (and even secretary for a bit) of a 16-bit Atari user group for a bit back in the late 80s/early-90s. We used to put out a disk "magazine" for members and distribute others. The latest shareware and the like.
So much was about magazines back then, even after BBSs and the early Internet came on the scene.
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