Submissions to the Stratosphere

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Largely reprinted from the 12/93 Stratosphere, however some editing has been done.

The EOSS Stratosphere is always looking for good articles. You wouldn't believe how difficult it is to collect enough material to publish a newsletter. So, EOSS would like to extend YOU an invitation to participate.

I'd like to call on our far flung membership and all those who visit our home pages on the WWW, to assist us in collecting interesting articles. Our membership is now world wide. Doubtless there are dozens of interesting topics that are discussed by folks who deal with the various geographic anomalies they have in their areas. If you know of anyone in your area who wants to submit to the Stratosphere, please encourage them to do so. They need not be members to be published. All the Stratosphere editorial guide requires is that the material be germane to the art of high altitude ballooning.

Authors don't have to come up with a voluminous article to be accepted for publication. You'll notice that we often have short, interesting and pertinent blurbs in our newsletter. In this issue (see Stratosphere12/93) there is one article under 400 characters in length. It's interesting and pertinent to the group so, it is being published. If you have something of importance, brief though it may be, SUBMIT!!

The Stratosphere editors prefer that you submit your article in a computer readable format. ASCII text files are the preferred method of submission as we send all articles into Adobe InDesign for layout. 

If you use some word processor, most of these programs can export the finished files in ASCII. 

To save you time and energy upfront, remember that any fancy fonts or other text layout designs you incorporate in your article will be stripped to allow for import into our newsletter format. 

If you would like to specify text enhancements, use an HTML style tag or something similar in the file to indicate that style. For instance if you want to indicate <italic>italic</italic> text follow the preceding example.

Do not indent paragraphs. InDesign likes flush ASCII files.

Attempt to stay away from tabular data formats. However if it's absolutely necessary (and I realize that sometimes is the case) then submit the data as you would like it to appear. Use spaces, not tabs, to align your columns. However, realize that I'll be reformatting anything you do in InDesign.

We will also accept computerized image files in accompaniment to your article. If you have graphs, other artwork or photos in your article, include that artwork as a separate file in your submission. We prefer image files be bit mapped images. If you are using a CAD program see if it has a BMP, TIFF or other similar output capability. It's usually quite time consuming to convert a plotter file to a graphic file and you can save us some time by having your CAD program do this on your end. Space in the newsletter is at a premium, so, consider that your graphic probably won't be reprinted as a full page. With this in mind, you may want to select bolder lines, larger fonts than you might select for a full page. Create your graphs for a quarter page insert.

The word separate above is an important consideration. Some (most) word processors allow you to import graphic files into the document. However, these files will be stripped out when you create the ASCII file. Also, if you send a word processor format file, I may be unable to recover the imbedded graphic. So, write the article in ASCII, note a location where you believe the graphic should be inserted and include that graphic as an independent file. I'll do the placement.

And finally, if you have more than one file to submit (article and image for instance) use a ZIP archive program like PKZIP or WinZip to squeeze them down in size and combine all the separate elements into one convenient file.

Submission of articles in plain ASCII text via E-mail is the most desirable path. We get your article instantly, in electronic form, and can most easily deal with any editing and layout problems. 

Send your article to <webmaster@eoss.org>. Always ATTACH your article. Do not send the plain text article itself as an E-Mail. This makes it easier to work with.

On behalf of the editorial staff I'd like to thank you in advance for all the forth coming articles I know you'll all be forwarding to the group for publication.