I think MagPi should have mobi/epub version too

Well, I must say I really enjoyed that. Fantastic job–the creators are to be commended. I love the direction this is going! Ditto on the epub or even a pdf version.

I find the irony of a magazine for a device that lacks Flash relying on such for its website quite amusing.

This truly is a great community. Thank you for sharing!

Java picture and then content about javascript? oO

Fix it!

What a great magazine!

A didicated magazine for Raspberry Pi, this is AWESOME! Thanks for such a great job.

Talk about timing! I’ve got Top Gear in Vietnam on in the background (I’m not proud but I’m fed up with The Voice!) and Adagio for Strings is playing while I’m reading this post. Wow, I’m not sure if it’s the red wine kicking in, but I got really emotional. This magazine is just what we need, it really harks back to the days of Sinclair User. I used to love the anticipation of the listings when I was younger. That’s exactly how I learnt not how to program :)

My Pi was due for delivery today, alas it didn’t happen, but it’s been shipped and it’s imminent, and it’s not going on Ebay either!

Much love x

Why are there semicolons in python code that is likely to be the first introduction to the language of most readers? That makes it look like C and doesn’t show how python uses whitespace and newlines as its main statement terminators.

Another thing- the spacing between the print function/statement is inconsistent. I realize that it may be valid python to put a space there, but it should be kept consistent with the rest of the language and not have any spaces.

print (“Hello World”) # Works fine
print(“Hello World”) # Also works
int(7.5) # Works
int (7.5) # Doesn’t work

Nice idea, but they used tha java logo for javascript :(
That’s a big NO NO!

Hello, I have been looking though the magazine, It looks good but the first few pages were atrocious; there were too many different fonts, this is a big no-no, stick to a maximum of four fonts:
1x Sans Serif
1x Serif
1x Mono Spaced (DejaVu Sans Mono is good b/c it has a clear difference between “1” and “l”, and “0” and “O”.)
and one other for what ever.

Keep a consistent style, use the same styles in all articles (layout of text boxes can vary).

An other big no-no is using Sans Serif it the body of the text, use Sans Serif only in titles, and it lead paragraph. Use Serif for text bodies.

Red on white is a no-no too.

There is no text under listings and/or images, this is not a biggie but would be nice.

One last thing: Keep it simple and no flash, flash is the last thing people want to deal with, the non-flash site looks awesome BTW.

PS. If you want to make it look real grate a pro-tip is LaTeX, but it can be a hassle…
Latex has some nice things like the “Listings” and “graphicx” packages…

Just sayin…

I run Debian GNU, and gnash since I only trust Free software, so I can’t see the site, what a sad irony :(
Really a bad presentation for a magazine about a device that wants to spread the idea of freedom and knowledge.
If some kind soul can post here the url of the pdf version maybe I can take a look at the magazine. Thanks!

To all the Haters,

Get a life! This is good, no critisism required thank you.

What a great magazine, this is just what the community needs. The tutorial on virtual box is very helpful, it will be great to try out the new sofware whilst waiting for my Raspberry pi to arrive.

Fantastic first effort, to all of the people pointing out the not so good bits get involved and help improve it. The magazine is a community effort put together by enthusiastic people not professional magazine editors, so if there are improvements to be made help make them.

oh my goodness what a fantastic 1st edition it’s like being back in the 80’s again.
absolutely brilliant.

Outstanding, well done everyone. Look forward to the next issue.

@gustav criticism is always good for anybody starting up a project but ehm you need to learn to spell. Secondly don’t list fonts for them to use, they can use wingdings if they want and last but not least red and white stands out, they have to make this appeal to everyone including children if this mag ends up in schools it need to hold people’s attention so in my opinion it works. Keep up the good work peeps. :)

Nice work…. One comment: The pic of the Raspi is not the production board. But that’s a small issue. :)

I had a few problems finding a working PDF link, but the one off the non-flash WordPress site worked for me: http://goo.gl/Xxqy6 (goes to skydrive.live.com)

Thanks everyone for the feedback.

There is a non-flash website for those who don’t like/have flash (it was also requested on the forums, so we added it),
http://themagpi.wordpress.com/
We don’t have a website professional on-board, so any help with that would be welcome.

As mentioned above, it is available in pdf format as well as the live magazine version, so you can use which ever suits you best. There is also an issuu mobile app (in beta) which supports reading on smaller screen, and language translation of the text (no idea how good it does it though).
I did try converting to mobi format, however but the conversion software did not handle the layouts correctly, if someone is interested in making a mobi/epub version then contact us if you need help doing it (such a format should also work better for those who need to use text-to-speech). I have tried the pdf on a kindle, it is very small but it can just about be read.

The draft of Issue 1 of the magazine was compiled live over the last two months on the Issuu site, and we did ask for comment/corrections, so unfortunately the logo was not picked up (or at least reported) by the ~1000 viewers. Since none of us are into java-script it was a simple mistake (hopefully the JS crews will forgive…).
Note: Issue1 is now locked forever…so we can focus forward on Issue 2.

We intend to build Issue 2 in the same way, so please let us know if you spot anything as we work through it (obviously it will get refined as we work on it). As said above, it is intended as a community magazine, which means we would love for you to get involved, be it encouragement, corrections, “constructive” criticism, ideas, articles, or anything else you think will improve the Raspi community.

The team is very small at the moment, so we would welcome more people on-board, the more people we have the sooner we can release and the better Issue 2 will be.

I don’t have a RasPi yet, but I’m just gonna use the mag in the meantime for news and programming tips. :)

I hope the following is constructive, I don’t want to discourage this effort, but it has to be excellent to succeed.

I like the striped sprocket-feed line-printer paper background of the type-in listings, but the metaphor will be lost on anyone under 40! Its a bit like the “floppy-disk tool-bar button for “Save” in may applications, my kids just don’t know what it is supposed to be or why it is relevant to the action performed.

The section on languages to be covered dived straight into terms such as “dynamic, object oriented, imperative, functional, multi-paradigm, weakly-typed, etc.” without explanation – makes it all look unnecessarily scary and complicated. In fact much of the copy in this section is lifted verbatim from Wikipedia. The section on JavaScropt includes a complex introduction, while the part on KidsRuby is virtually free of content. Better audience targeted levelling, and more original content required.

HTML is by no stretch a “programming language”. It is a mark-up language – a way of describing layout of content for display in a web-browser (typically). It is not Turing-complete, and to include it in the programming section is misleading. Similarly Geogebra is not itself a programming language but an application. It does have a scripting language embedded within it, but its inclusion in the programming section without clarification is possibly confusing.

The robot arm project seems ambitious – I hope he can pull it off to conclusion and this does not end up a “Blue Peter Tracy Island” project. Anyone following this will have to purchase a working robotic arm “toy” and modify it possibly irreversibly. It looks like the author is not sure yet how that might be done yet. Readers might be cautious about investing in the hardware until they know where this is all leading.

I am going to play-test the Python tutorial on my children, it looks well levelled with all the useful, necessary, but ultimately tedious bits kept short and leading to the more gratifying game code. I like the “this is what you can do, and we’ll later explain” approach of the final reward, since it shows what all the initial more tedious stuff will lead to, and should raise interest in continuing to learn.

Previous comments on the Java logo being applied to the JavaScript should be accepted, but I suggest that the fault lies with the originators of JavaScript for choosing the name!

Is it worth putting the PDF up as a torrent / gradually collating the issues and putting up a tarball / torrent. Having downloaded the PDF using elinks to find the PDF (lke someone else, no Flash here so webisite not much use) I could now torrent it.

Absolutely marvelous , keep up the superb work ,

A very well well put together issue which, I think, just hits the right note. I know someone mentioned it already but I really like the old line printer paper background to the listings.

Now, how about that ‘difficult’ second issue? You’ve set a high bar already.

I like the mug on page 30 ;o)
Do you have a date for the grand opening of the raspberrypi store?

I think it’s fantastic – great job by all involved.

The only minor thing I think you might like to consider is the brightness of the background images. On the “Scutter” pages, the background image is very faint, which makes the text very easy to read. However, the CD in the background on the next page seems to be brighter, and the text is more difficult to read (for me anyway). The same is true of the raspberry on page 3 – it’s a little too bold and makes the text seem secondary.

I like the images behind the text – makes the layout look interesting, but if you tone them down a tad, I think it helps readability.

Looking forwards to Issue 2!

To all the people picking out the typos…. How many of you are willing to be the proof readers? How many willing to translate into other languages? How many willing to do the layout? I bet there is nothing stopping you from getting involved other than your contact with the people producing this magazine and possibly using compatible software (but I’m betting Open Office or Libre Office being the tool of choice).

The more people sharing the work, the less each person needs to do. If there is more than one proof reader per article then that person only needs to read one entire article in order to put it to bed.

All that said, I’m not the best with grammar or spelling, or even layout. If it starts going to print, then I’ll offer up suggestions on color management, etc.

To all the guys and girls involved… thank you so much for a brilliant first issue of what I am sure is going to prove to be a brilliant magazine! Amazing work!

Well done on getting this first issue of MagPi out. Appreciate this must have taken a fair bit of work to produce.

I was thinking it would be great to have a printed copy of this, especially as it is the first issue, so I tried uploading it to Magcloud who provide a print on demand service for magazines such as this. ( I have no affiliation with this website or service other than I once ordered a copy of the Hacker News monthly just to try out their offering, the quality was great )

So I tried uploading your PDF but it appears that a lot of the text is too close to the edges and would be cut off during the print process. There was also an issue with the large images being too low resolution but I realise that your intention was for this to displayed at screen resolution rather than print. Now I could probably resize the PDF (badly) to allow it to print but I wondered whether there was any better way?

P.S. I would be happy to help out with future issues if that is needed, proofreading etc..

BTW, this comment form wouldn’t work for me from the Safari (Mac) browser, had to switch to Firefox

Thank you so very much, this is truly wonderful!

hope next issue will have a comparing test of all raspberry_pi cases available on the net !!

There’s a saying…
You can’t please all the people all of the time….
If we use one font, someone will say we should’ve used another one, if we didn’t make it PDF, people would say we should have done. All I will say is this:
Write an article and send it to us. You can use whatever font you like and we won’t change a thing if you don’t want us to. If enough people like it – we will include it in the mag, and if enough people hate it, we will remove it from the mag (Whilst the mag is in draft). We will try to be democratic about it. If you don’t like the layout I used for my issue 1 articles – tough! because nobody gave us a better alternative. Write a better article than mine, and I’ll happily remove mine and replace with yours – especially if there is a general consensus. For issue 1 – I just wanted to get a magazine together of some description – There was no content – so I made some. I asked for submissions for the last 2 months and got 2 articles. The two people are now on the team. I have to say – the people on the team are awesome. Tzj made a special trip to the supermarket at 11.30pm to buy raspberries to photograph. He also spent 4-5 hours using GIMP to make the header for The Scratch Patch. Meltwater has done photos, articles, all sorts of admin stuff. Ash was answering your emails since 11am this morning until 11pm this evening – non-stop. You can either spend your time trying to pick at and pull apart someone Else’s work or you can do some work of your own. I know some of you are genuinely offering constructive advice and some have other motives. I’m not here because I want to bicker with you lot about font styles and the brightness levels of background images. You wanted a community magazine – We have given you one.

You could incorporate some basic programming, wiki pages, and look on the forum for important issues, questions, faqs, and answers

You could start the first episodes for complete beginners, explaining the hardware, some software variants; and in further versions dig deeper into the OS, and operating the different OSes that will work OOB (Out Of the Box) on the R-PI.

After that you could focus on specific topics, like using the R-PI as a media center, and gaming console, how to install, what software to find, the performance, and benchmarks.

In later episodes (eg: after ep5), you could go deeper into certain software packs, like programming, using the R-PI in businesses, and educational programs.

Then lastly focus on hardware hacks.

with each consecutive release spending less time explaining what’s already explained in previous versions, and expanding in deeper, more difficult topics.

as a bonus you could add at the end of the document examples, demo’s, and exercise pages. The first book how to install each OS, consecutive books how to install software, and how to use the software, lastly how to program some basic programs, and how to modify the hardware of the PI to make it do things the original pi can not do.

You could also have a section to address main issues and concerns of the time (eg bugs, manufacture errors, mods, new software, remarkable results (eg unexpected well performance of the PI under certain conditions) etc…

Like this you could have 12 releases, keep it monthly or 2 weekly, and packed with information!

That would be my suggestion for running a magazine!

I’m sorry I don’t understand the question?

this is really great. i think my two boys would love this magazine and. i love how its geared just to their level.

It’s spam! (take a look at the website!)

If you want to download it please can you use the torrent for now? Thank you!

r314.co.uk/themagpi-issue1.pdf.torrent

Another way to present the mag. Not that there is anything wrong with the original one.
http://dbojan.50webs.com/rpi/magpi/

Great magazine. Although you could also activate http://themagpi.com (without the www)

Broken link heads up.

The first mirror link (http://fotopanda.zapto.org:8080/TheMagPi/The%20MagPi%20Issue%201%20Final.pdf) is broken.

Are you aware that there was a huge global scandal in the early 1980’s regarding a magazine called ‘MagPie’ for an illegal organisation called the ‘Paedophilia Information Exchange’? Its owners were imprisoned and its subscribers were investigated with many of them also being convicted of child abuse. Just thought you should know, as many other old enough may remember the same thing, you may also set off certain search systems.

I find it *really* silly that all download links goes to a …. URL shortener.

Yeah, have fun with that :/