Editorial: Your Association Needs You

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 3

Bringing VECTOR into existence and nurturing its post-natal twelve months has been most enjoyable. But it’s time for others to take part. So please don’t assume that the post of Journal Editor, or indeed any of the other positions in the British APL Association, are already taken up for 1985/86. Write to Anthony Camacho (address inside rear page) now to nominate yourself. Browbeat your colleagues, or better still come to the A.G.M. and raise your hand in person. An illustrious future awaits you, while for ourselves there is the heady and hard-won prospect of early retirement.

This fourth issue of VECTOR brings us to the end of a full year of the new format of the journal. Six hundred pages and about three megabytes of copy later (including the blanks), your editorial team is a little older, a little wiser, and just a little wearier. We look forward with some relish to handing over this particular Olympic torch to our successors following the elections at the forthcoming Annual General Meeting of the British APL Association. Should, however, exhaustion cause us collectively to predecease those who follow us, perhaps these reflections on our experiences this last year may not come amiss. They may bear superficial resemblance to the Ten Commandments, but they are intended as words of guidance rather than coercion.

1. Never publish distribution dates in advance.
2. Never make announcements about the periodicity of a journal which is maintained by the unpaid work of its editorial team.
3. It is unrealistic to expect contributors to a computer journal to deliver their copy in computer-legible form.
4. The greater a contributor’s insight into computing, the lower the probability that he or she can write in English.
5. The average number of entries to a competition is inversely proportional to the length of its rules.
6. Bribes such as prize money have no effect on swelling the ranks of competition entrants. Glory through print is its own reward.
7. Books should be accepted for review only from those publishing houses which regard a delay of a year before the review appears as fast work.
8. The expansion of a journal’s scope does not of itself increase its circulation. There is no substitute for house-to-house inquiries.
9. After five years there is still nothing to match WORDSTAR.
10. The world-wide demise of the APL symbol set will continue to be exacerbated by the difficulty of typesetting APL code.

I would like to acknowledge the impressive contributions made throughout the year by the VECTOR editorial and production team. Following my own lapse into catatonia as a result of producing Issue 1, David Preedy masterminded Issue 2 effortlessly (at least in comparison), Adrian Smith single-handedly commuted from York to London to sign off Issue 3 (rattling off the presses as I pen these lines), while David Ziemann and Jonathan Barman have taken collective responsibility for Issue 4. Finally, especially not to be forgotten is Paul Whelan of Copyprint, whose appearances at midnight half way down the A3 festooned in galleys have become reassuring by their ephemerality.