Hugi (magazine)
Hugi is one of the longest-running demo scene , computer culture and underground disk magazines ( Diskmag for short ) for the IBM PC and one of the most well-known of the genre beyond the demo scene.
history
The first, still purely German-language editions appeared in 1996 based on the Hugendubel bookstore under the name "Hugendubelexpress" (HDE). The short form "Hugi", which was coined by the readers themselves, was later adopted as the official name. From issue 11 the magazine appeared bilingual in German and English. With issue 18, the German-speaking part was split off and the independent Hugi.GER was created. In addition, there was the weekly Hugi newsletter between 1998 and 2000 , which unofficially continued the series of earlier formats such as Demonews .
In terms of content, Hugi developed from the style of a school newspaper to one of the most successful and long-lasting digital demo scene and underground magazines. Most of the content is contributed by the readers and only edited for editorial purposes. Thematically, the articles cover all areas of digital art and net art . The focus is on programming and reviewing graphic demos, reports from demo parties and creating computer music . In addition, political, literary and philosophical topics are dealt with, for example magazine splinters, short stories, experience reports and tests of other electronic magazines.
expenditure
Up to June 2014, 38 main editions were published at irregular intervals, 17 of them wholly or partly in German. Twelve editions have also been translated into Russian . The amount of output is given in bytes ; on average, it contained about 1 megabyte of text. In addition, seven issues of the German-language branch Hugi.GER , 38 newsletters and four special issues focusing on programming, music and interviews were published. Issues 11 to 38 and the special issues were republished online in a web browser readable form .
Hugi's 38 main editions can be roughly divided into four periods, with ten editions forming the first three periods and the remaining eight editions forming the fourth period:
- First period (1996–1998): The early phase in which Hugi appeared in German and developed from a “school newspaper on diskette” to a more serious magazine - mainly about computer topics.
- Second period (1998–2000): The heyday in which Hugi tried to fill the void left by the disk mag Imphobia (1992–1996). Hugi appeared in English from this period and focused on the demo scene.
- Third period (2000–2005): The decline. Due to the increasing spread of broadband internet connections and web-based demo scene forums like Pouët, diskmags gradually lost their importance. In addition, Hugi's main editor, Adok, had different priorities due to his studies.
- Fourth period (2005–2014): The late phase, in which (from issue 32) co-editor Magic took over the content design, while Adok limited himself to design (layout) and error correction. During this time, some very nice issues were produced again, which were well received by the readers.
Currently (as of August 2017) no new issues are planned until further notice.
meaning
- Hugi was one of the first disk mags to appear as a Windows version (issue 12 from September 1998). For six issues it was a DOS and a Windows disk mag at the same time (issues 12 to 17 from September 1998 to August 1999). Both facts were very remarkable at the time and led to many discussions in the demo scene, which was critical of the Windows operating system.
- Hugi was mostly discussed more than other disk mags because the “underground” demo scene also brought newcomers closer to it. This was intentional because no “scene” can live without newcomers.
- Hugi was an important medium for hobby software developers because it promoted the exchange of algorithms , graphic effects, etc. even before the general spread of the Internet .
- Hugi was one of the best looking and most user-friendly disk mags. Several well-known artists (in the demo scene) drew pictures and surface graphics for the magazine.
Authors
Hugi's main editor, the Austrian Claus D. Volko, is known in the demo scene under the pseudonym "Adok". The Hugi editorial team is divided into "Hugi Core" (active members) and "Royal Family" (honorary members). Many other people contribute to Hugi without being part of the editorial team.
Since Issue 18 used in December 1999 Panorama - Engine was created by the Polish programmer Chris Dragan for the magazine. The engine forms the basis for numerous other electronic magazines outside of the demo scene.
Hugi Size Coding Competition
The Hugi editorial team also organized a series of assembler programming and size optimization competitions called the Hugi Size Coding Competition . The aim of the competitions was to reproduce a given program in as few bytes as possible . This resulted in executable files that were usually well under a kilobyte in size. From 1998 to 2009, 29 competitions were held. Usually 20 to 80 people from all over the world (including North America, East Asia, South Africa, Australia) took part. After each competition, the submissions were published with their source texts . In a subsequent discussion, the validity of individual contributions could be questioned. If such an objection was accepted, the author received penalty points. Once a year, a "world ranking list" was generated with the total number of points that the participants had achieved in the individual competitions.
Web links
Footnotes
- ↑ PC Magazin , 1999.
- ↑ "Der Hugi", netART community congress 48 ( Memento of the original from August 27, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Austria 2001.
- ↑ "origami digital - Demos without Restrictions" , exhibition at the Museum of Applied Arts Frankfurt , 2002.
