> On Sun, 29 Jan 2023, 18:41 Jim Hall, <jh...@freedos.org> wrote: >> >> If anyone here is interested in writing articles about FreeDOS, >> Opensource.com is interested in running FreeDOS articles. I write >> articles for them sometimes, and the FreeDOS articles perform very >> well on the site. In fact, they recently listed FreeDOS among their >> list of "topics we're interested in for 2023." Also included in the >> list: conio and C programming. >>[..]
On Sun, Jan 29, 2023 at 1:19 PM John Vella <john.ve...@gmail.com> wrote: > That sounds like the sort of thing I'd be interested in doing, but > what sort of article are they looking for? Are they after a "history > of FreeDOS" type article, because that's been done so many times it > would be hard to write anything original, wouldn't it? I think the editors would say they don't need another "history of FreeDOS" article right now. The best time to write a "history of" article is in June when our anniversary comes up again (June 29). The best articles on Opensource.com are "how-to" articles, so you could write an article about "how to use (command) on FreeDOS." Pick a package in the FreeDOS distribution, and write about that. For example, you might show how to use the E3 editor. Or you might show how to use SORT to sort a file starting at column N (such as SORT /+2 to start sorting at column 2). Or you might demo how to use DOjS to do some simple Javascript programming. DOS programming articles are good too, such as the conio and C programming articles that have done well. In my experience, the more focused you can make these, the better. Don't write an article about writing a full game from scratch. Write about a specific programming topic instead. If you have a programming background, you could write an article about "how to write a DOS version of __" such as "how to read an arbitrary-length string in C on FreeDOS" [like Linux getline] or "how to read keyboard input in C on FreeDOS" or "how to play sounds on a SB16 in C on FreeDOS." Those are just some C programming examples; Assembly or Pascal articles are good too. Don't worry about overlap, if Opensource.com already has an article on that topic. As long as the other article isn't too recent, they are glad to run another perspective on the same topic. Especially if your article is at a different difficulty level (maybe the other article was "entry level" and yours is more "for the experienced DOS user"). Also don't worry about it being too "basic" or "entry level." As one of the editors once commented to me (when I asked about "entry level" articles): they have a variety of readers; some are more "expert" folks, some are just getting started. They need articles at all skill levels. (And these days, not a lot of readers had used DOS in the 1980s and 1990s, so it's all new to them anyway - but they are interested to read about it.) For Opensource.com, they only run articles about open source software. So an article about "how to run Lotus 1-2-3 on FreeDOS" will get rejected, because Lotus 1-2-3 is proprietary software. Even "how to run As Easy As on FreeDOS" will get rejected; while As Easy As is free (gratis) it is still proprietary (closed source). But "how to play Freedoom on FreeDOS" is more likely to be accepted because Freedoom is open source. Jim _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
