Around the time I was faced with writing this editorial, I had just attended the
celebration of my friend Mrs. Robertson's 100th birthday, and my 85-year-old
father had flown over from Florida to celebrate it with us. With the subject of
longevity on my mind, I got to thinking about how it relates to develop .
develop 's goal is to provide you with articles and code that will have a long life -- that
can live in your applications happily and compatibly even as new Macintosh systems
are introduced. We do all we can to ensure this (at the risk of incurring the wrath of
our authors, who may wonder why it takes so long to see something in print after it's
submitted to develop ). We'd rather an article "have legs" than be published
prematurely and get you into trouble further down the line. We do our best to test the
code and get our technical reviewers' opinions on whether a particular method is safe.
This should be a primary concern of all developers, especially now in light of the
whole new world of Power Macintosh systems.
Evidence that we're succeeding is that we still get requests to reprint articles as far
back as Issue 2, and we often hear from readers who save every issue because they
retain their usefulness. (Remember that, the next time you're thinning out your
bookshelves!)
Our being an Apple publication gives us the distinct advantage of being able to have a
thorough code review with future systems in mind, but at the same time it puts us in a
unique position to have early articles on new Apple technology. So we also try to give
you articles as soon as possible after the API for a new technology has frozen. And if we
can, we give you a prerelease version of the new software along with the code on our
CD. These articles may have somewhat shorter legs, but the bulk of the information
should remain accurate for a very long time.
In the past we've given you early QuickDraw GX versions and articles; now that
QuickDraw GX has shipped, the two articles on that subject in this issue are only the
most recent in a long line. Also in this issue we're pleased to bring you our first
article on OpenDoc, Apple's new cross-platform compound-document architecture,
even though the final version of OpenDoc will not have shipped by the time you read
this.
Further evidence that we're succeeding is that we've again won in the International
Technical Publications Competition of the Society for Technical Communication, this
time the highest award in our category. But nothing would please us more than to hear
from you, the most important judges of all, on what we can do to make develop an even
better publication; please let us know at AppleLink DEVELOP.
Caroline Rose Editor
CAROLINE ROSE (AppleLink CROSE) As a child, Caroline wrote a one-page
newsletter about the goings-on in her neighborhood; it included news items, a gossip
column, and a comic strip. Her readership was small, and the operation folded after
one issue. She's happy that develop has lasted longer than that, because after various
jobs at Tymshare, NeXT, and Apple as a programmer, writer, editor, and manager, she
feels she's found her niche here. These days when Caroline's not at work she's likely to
be sailing, swimming, jogging, dancing, gardening, or otherwise not being sedentary.
She hopes to live 100 very active years. *