Title: Editorial

After eleven years, the time has come to hang up my editorial keyboard and move on to new pastures. Fear not, you have not read the last from me. I will continue to contribute to ACCU publications, perhaps even more so now that I am relieved of the burden of getting them to print.

I started out as editor of C Vu out of frustration with missed deadlines by earlier editors combined with being unhappy with the content and presentation. I felt that I could do better given that I had just retired from teaching. The first editorial decisions I made were to throw out DTP as a tool for presentation of material, reduce the format to A5 and increase the publication frequency from four to six issues per year. Hindsight suggests that the last was a brave decision though one that, the then much smaller membership, backed by delivering material in ever-increasing amounts. The result was that the font sizes dropped, as did the line spacing so that more could be packed into the available space. Over time I became increasingly adept at using my tools though still as an amateur on the production side.

Two years ago I made an effort to go but was waylaid. The result was that I continued to work as editor but also worked alongside the professional editors and production editors of Centaur Communications Ltd. Curiously history repeated itself in that I became so frustrated with the overheads of that mode of working that I went out and purchased my own production tools and learnt to do the job myself. This was just as well because it meant that when Centaur pulled out of IT publishing after less than a year as our publisher, I was in a position to continue to deliver well-presented publications for ACCU. Nonetheless this departure meant that I still did not have time to move on to the new things that I wanted to do, write books (and not exclusively programming ones) learn to edit digital video and enjoy the waning years of my life.

Now that ACCU have found people who are willing to take on the work that I have been doing so it is time for me to let go after passing my acquired skills on to my successors. Stopping is not something that I will find easy. I have too many memories of moving on in the past and watching others destroy what I had spent years building. I would not be going now if I were not certain that those that come after will continue to build on the strong foundations that ACCU has acquired during the fourteen years of its existence.

I will miss writing these editorials. I started out with the idea that editorials should stimulate the readers by challenging their thinking. I had in mind the editorials that John Campbell wrote for Astounding Science Fiction (later retitled as Analog Science Fact & Fiction) which were usually original, often controversial but always thought provoking. That, in my opinion, is what editorials should be. I like to think that while never reaching the standards of John that I have managed to raise readers blood pressure and made many of you think. I have always tried to follow the doctrine that ideas should be stated in a robust fashion and that pushing extremes expands the mental space in which we can think. If I have sometimes annoyed you, sometimes seemed ridiculous or sometimes seemed to ignore that this is a publication for programmers, I make no apology. You, the readers, are first and foremost human beings, only secondly are you ones who program. That provides a thread of commonality that allows us to communicate, it should not restrict the thoughts we choose to share.

I only once felt deeply aggrieved by a reader's response and that was when a writer in another publication suggested that C Vu was sexist. I have only once outright refused to publish a contribution and that is because I do not believe that an article about the relationship between programming languages and the structure of the human brain had a place in these pages.

For those that like statistics, this is my sixty-seventh editorial and I have written almost fifty thousand words in editorials alone. The issues that I have been responsible for span eleven years and almost four million words. Parchments have printed all but four issues and I hope that relationship continues because they have always given good service and those few mistakes they have made were promptly admitted and corrected. Like ACCU members, they take a professional pride in their work and I hope that ACCU will continue to use their services.

In the early days we had Sunday work parties to pack and distribute our publications. Later we used several fulfilment houses. Able Types, who we currently use, have proved helpful and have coped with short deadlines and complex requirements (up to six different packing lists per distribution). You should know that they are a company who, apart from the directors, only employ disabled people particularly those with non-physical handicaps. I hope ACCU continues to use them.

In my early days, a member once questioned my motivation for editing C Vu. I have forgotten what response I gave at that time but looking back I can say that the job has greatly enriched my life. It has brought me into contact with many people, experts, enthusiasts, authors, students etc. who I would not otherwise have met. The vast majority of those contacts have been positive and rewarding. Volunteering to edit C Vu was one of the best decisions of my life and handing on to my successor will be tinged with a certain feeling of loss.

I hope you will give my successor, James Dennett, at least as much support as you have given me and help him feel comfortable with the job. Feedback is vital, without it editors (as well as contributors) feel isolated and wonder if anyone is actually reading what they write. Let me finish with a piece of advice that was given to me just before I got married (by the father of my best friend, the latter was - and still is - married to my wife's best friend).

If you do not like the way your wife dresses, never tell her so. Find something you do like and make an effort to praise it. She will appreciate the praise and experiment with her dress to see if she can get more of it.

Try the same with editors. It is too late to change me, but you will get a much better successor if you take the time to praise all the many good things he will do.

Well, James, it is up to you. I'll look after book reviews for a couple of years and write the occasional article. If pressed I might continue to handle the Code Critiques but I am sure someone else could do a better job.

Francis

Francis has invited me to write a few words to introduce myself as the new editor of CVu. Most of you will know that Francis has been doing this job, and many others, for a long time, and it's finally time for someone else to take their turn. So, how does it come to be me -- and who am I anyway?

I'm a member of the ACCU, like most of you reading this now. I happen to sit on the ACCU committee, so you can read just a little more about me in the member's handbook which you should all have.

The editor's job comes to be me simply because I volunteered. I'm sure that preparing C Vu will be an interesting challenge, and a great opportunity for me to learn. Hopefully this learning will happen without much of a (temporary) drop in quality, and when I make mistakes there will be others around to help.

Does editing C Vu make it my magazine? Not at all. I won't be writing more than a small fraction of what goes into the magazine. The editor's role is to pull together what's written by you, the ACCU membership. Don't look around - I don't mean some small elite subset of the membership. We need articles written by all kinds of people. With an organisation like the ACCU, what you get out really does depend on what you put in. I'll look forward to hearing from you with articles, suggestions, questions about anything about C Vu which is unclear, and hopefully after a while I'll get a note saying "Wow, you're now doing as well as Francis did."

James Dennett.