RCL 20 book contents -- first draft

Last update: 24th July 2002

Revision history

2002/07/24,15:30
added section on submission formats

Introduction

Welcome.

This site contains information for the contributors, and other related visitors, working on the RCL 20 book project.

The intent of the project is to create a book that marks twenty years of the U.K. handheld users' club, HPCC. As far as possible, we want the book to be written by club members and those, who in one way or another, have helped shape the development of the club.

Editors

The project has developed from conversations between the two editors, Wlodek Mier-Jedrzejowicz and Frank Wales. Both are founder members of the club, and both have written or contributed to the club over the years. In addition, both have a lot of experience with writing for both the audience that the club addresses, and other audiences.

You can e-mail Wlodek or Frank with your comments about the project.

Timescale

For reasons too sordid to explain without the availability of legal counsel, we're on a bit of an abbreviated schedule. Having said that, most of the actual effort is in the hands of your esteemed editors, so we're kind of in autohoisting mode, petard-wise.

Anyway, this is the timetable we're working to at present:

23 July
Send out invitations to participate
26 July
After they stop laughing, participants accept the challenge
10 August
Participants submit outlines or initial drafts
26 August
Final date for contributions
6 September
Editing completed
7 September
Large amount of swearing at various copy-preparation products
8 September
Copy delivered to printers
14 September
Sample book checked and corrected
20 September
Books delivered from printers
21 September
20th anniversary conference, London

Initial contents lists with suggested contributors

In order to have some kind of plan to start with, we hashed out a list of potential contributors, and a list of topics, and put them together as follows. This will undoubtedly change as we get responses and information from those that we contact.

Our initial hope, which we don't think will actually work out (but we're still looking into it) was to get permission to reprint the Beep short story that Gordon Dickson wrote for HP Journal twenty years ago. That would provide some context for how handheld computing devices were seen when the club was formed, and would give us a point of reference now that we're about halfway to the year when the story was set. Even if we don't get permission, we will still write something that sets the context, and shows where we are now, and where we might be going. As such, there's still mention of this in the draft contents list below. This will undoubtedly change over the next few weeks.

In the table that follows, the word count relates to the page count by assuming that there will be about 250 words per page, on average. The priority column is how important we think it is for the item to make it into the final work, with 1 meaning must have, and higher numbers indicating progressively lower priority (obviously). The contributors column shows our current thinking on who could write each section -- this will undoubtedly change.

Topic Section word count page count contributors priority

Why we're doing this book

Intro

250

1

WMJ & FCW

1

'Beep' article preface/intro

One

50

0.2

WMJ & FCW

3

'Beep' article

One

1000

4

Gordon Dickson

3

David Burch's letter to PPC Journal

Two

250

1

David Burch

3

RPN

Two

1000

4

1

HPCC founding

Three

500

2

David Burch

1

Other clubs -- RJN's motives in founding PPC

Three

500

2

Richard Nelson

1

HPCC Early Days

Four

500

2

1

History of Educalc

Four

500

2

Jim Carter

3

HPCC first conference: why; how arranged; programme

Five

1000

4

1

Other clubs (not PPC)

Five

500

2

3

HPCC history; name of club, constitution

Six

500

2

Neville Joseph

1

Zengrange

Six

500

2

3

Datafile; early days

Seven

250

1

3

Datafile; timeline

Seven

500

2

1

Datafile; editors

Seven

250

1

3

Mark Cracknell

Seven

250

1

3

HPCC other conferences; mini; main

Eight

500

2

3

Gerry Rice

Eight

250

1

3

How HPCC matured

Nine

500

2

Neville Joseph

1

Hardware hacking

Nine

1000

4

Tony Duell

3

HPCC meetings; where; regular; topics; members

Ten

500

2

1

Calculator design

Ten

1000

4

3

Hall of fame (most interesting)

Ten

500

2

3

HPCC.org; web as an information resource

Eleven

500

2

Mark Power

3

Recent clubs; university; web

Eleven

500

2

3

Where we are today: HP

Twelve

500

2

3

Where we are today: technology

Twelve

500

2

3

Emulators for palmtops

Twelve

500

2

Brian Walsh

1

Where we're going

Thirteen

1000

4

Jeremy Smith

1

Reality compared to 'Beep'

Thirteen

500

2

3

HP History

Appendix

1000

4

3

Calculator history

Appendix

1000

4

3

Index

Index

5

Contents

Contents

2

Total pages

81.2

Help needed, part one

We're taking suggestions for the project motto. At present, it's "this will undoubtedly change".

Other features

We want the book to be both good-looking, and be something that a reader can dip into, as well as something that has sufficient structure that it can be read straight through. As such, there are a few things we'd like to incorporate on an opportunistic basis throughout the book, bearing in mind the time to do it, and how disruptive such things might be on the design of the book:

Our expectation is that we'll trawl through what's been published in Datafile and other sources during late July and early August, to amass a bunch of things like this that we can dip into, and that we'll then decide exactly what to use where as we put the book together. Again, contributions of little snippets like these are welcome.

Potential contributors

This is a list of people we figured might make good candidates to approach for contributions. Other suggestions are welcome, bearing in mind the insane timescale we find ourselves up against.

Help needed, part two

We don't have current e-mail addresses for a few of these people. If you happen to have one for those with yes in the E-mail address needed column, please let us know what it is, so we can attempt to rope them in too. Thanks.

E-mail address
needed
Potential Contributor
  Valentin Albillo
  David Burch
yes Sharon Butterfield
  Chris Bunsen
yes Jim Carter
  Graeme Cawsey
  Dave Conklin
  Jim Donnelly
  Tony Duell
yes Ken Emery
  Graham Fraser
yes Gary Friedman
  Joe Horn
  Neville Joseph
  Richard Nelson
yes Mike Markov
  Mark Power
  Jake Schwartz
  Megha Shyam
  Jeremy Smith
yes Bruce Stephens
  Bill Wickes
  Raan Young

Submission formats

We'll be assembling the final work as one or more PDF files for processing by our printers. We therefore need material in a form that we can readily convert. Try to submit in one of the following formats:

We'll consider other formats too, within reason. We do have access to machines running Windows, Linux, Unix and MacOS. If you have special requirements or want to submit in another format, get in touch.

Book design

We intend to convert all submitted documents to a consistent typographical style, which we'll be designing during August. We'll be using professional standards of presentation throughout, so the result will have all the design characteristics of a properly-prepared and edited book. We'll put up samples of the design here as they become available.