Before getting into this month's editorial, let me first apologize for the lack of a new issue last month. I had a lot going on between work, the new and getting ready to move, that I didn't have the time I needed to get the issue rolled. We also had the SGML conversion on our plate, and that too took longer than expected.

Most of the authors were also busy with finals and their real lives as well, and many didn't get a chance to turn in their articles (although we do have them this month, thanks guys). For that reason, we've combined Issue #5 and Issue #6 into one issue, and the result is an excellent article packed issue.

As the title of this article indicates, we, as has been common lately, have been undergoing some more changes. When I first came up with the idea of the 'zine last September, I never thought it would grow to become as popular as it is right now, especially since it took me until January to get the first issue out. Needless to say, I hadn't planned very well for the growth, and had to do quite a bit of restructuring to make life easier on both myself and readers.

Along with the restructuring came the SGML conversion, the CVS tree, a few new layouts, and also, new in this issue, a new and improved search engine. Most of you have probably noticed the old one was broken and not working properly for quite some time. The output doesn't exactly fit in with the site (yet.. I'm working on it), but it works, and works well.

I've also added a Table of Contents to the site, which works as sort of a site map. Readers no longer have to click through each issue to find what they're looking for, they can simply go to the Table of Contents and find it there. This was requested by one of our readers (I forget who, sorry), and I thought it was an excellent idea, so I added it. Keep the ideas for the site coming.. we try to implement anything requested that will be beneficial to readers as a whole.

Another highly requested item has been to make tarballs available in HTML format as well as the previously available text. Starting with this issue, readers can now either download the entire 'zine in HTML format, or as before, download the articles in plain text format.

We've also got a handful of new authors who are first-time contributors in this issue. Thanks for the hard work guys, hopefully you'll continue to write for us. If anyone is interested in writing an article, please get in touch with me.

Last but not least, I have a bunch of emails from folks wanting to provide mirror sites. Right now, our mirror situation needs a major overhaul, which we're working on. Come next issue, interested parties will be able to use cvsup to update their mirrors. We'll have a sample supfile available on the site that you can use, and we ask that if you want to set up a mirror, just do it, and then let me know about it so I can give you a hostname and add you to the list. There's no need to contact me first to ask if you can, but I would like to know about it if you are running a mirror.

That just about does it for this issue, so until next month, happy reading!

- Jim

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