In paper book publishing, a colophon is a statement about the typeface used in the book, the design, and sometimes the mechanical process used to set the type.
As a web publication, Enterzone does not wear one specific set of fonts, line lengths, relative type sizes, and so on. Different Web browsers (www, lynx, Mosaic, Netscape, Internet Explorer, and so on) all may display each specific design element differently. As the reader, in fact, you have ultimate control over the appearance of your web documents.
Because of this, Enterzone has a distinct style based on the logical precedence of headings and the use of standard elements, always coded the same way. Whenever possible, the logical "intentions" of the elements have been preserved, so that a sensibly set-up browser will display the contents of Enterzone in a clear and understandable way.
With episode 13 (our retrospective), we've begun to selectively experiment with the use of stylesheets to impose some essentials style standards on basic pages. This page, for instance, is at the time of this writing, wearing the "generic" Enterzone stylesheet.
We favor logical coding over specific-appearance coding because we believe in the principle of serving as many different platforms and users as possible. Sure, we could apply all of our graphic design and layout skills to create an idealized immutable Enterzone appearance in a single browser (such as Netscape) but then the readers logging onto the Internet via UNIX boxes and running lynx may get a load of crap when they enter the zone. That would not be right.
Designed for easy sharing of technical information, the Web falls short when the exact appearance of text matters. This becomes an issue when we publish poetry. The Web is a beautiful medium for poetry, because it serves poems and other short word creations up so easily that the reader can't help but read them. But in order to force the "shape" of a poem - line breaks, indentation, and so on - we often must resort to coding them as "preformatted" text, the only kind a Web server will serve up as is. This results in the typewriter style font you get on the poetry pages.
Enterzone was and is being created on a large number of sometimes recalcitrant computers, typewriters, notebooks, and telephones.
The following information is out of date as of November 29, 1997, but will be updated forthwith:Enterzone is served to you by some form of httpd? humming along on a a Linux box . Perl keep the forms hopping. FTPd 2.4.0 proved the superiority of ftp uploading over trying to attach documents to emails and then jamming them through uncooperative mail gateways. TIA, Eudora, and WS_FTP all were invaluable, each for its own particular brand of magic.
Among other machines, we used a 486DX2-66 under the evil influence of Windows 95, a Mac 8100 on System 7.5, and a Toshiba 410CS laptop that just could not remember its TCP/IP configuration. Too many text editors, html editors, graphics editors, squeezing, unsqueezing, archiving, unarchiving, converting, uncoverting, coding, encoding, smashing and unsmashing utilities were used to mention all by name. Just be glad they exist.
We also used the U.S. Mail and even retyped some text.