Re: [ATM] List "reference material"

[Mark Holm <mdholm@telerama.com>]

If you write a web page(s) with narrative, illustrations, tables, 
programs, etc. atmsite.org would be happy to host it.

Link lists are a bit more problematic.  Even with the www being over 10 
years old, url's, even for established organizations, still have a 
dismaying habit of changing or disappearing.  atmsite.org really isn't 
set up to host something that requires regular maintenence.

The original purpose of atmsite.org was to make a web home for pages 
that people had originally posted somewhere else, but were in danger of 
disappearing because the original author/hoster no longer wanted to be 
bothered with keeping it online.  Since then, atmsite.org has accepted, 
in addition, material that has not been previously on the web.

atmsite.org does list a few external links, but that is not its real 
purpose, and we try to keep them to a minimum.  We prefer to have the 
actual files on atmsite.org's server and serve them from there.  Some of 
the external links we have are to a few very useful articles at S&T's 
web site, and to the web pages of programs, e.g. Plop, whose authors are 
still tinkering with the programs.  In those cases, we either can not 
host the files for copyright reasons, or the author wants to have easy 
access for on going updates.  We hope, that when the program authors 
decide to take down their personal pages, that they will forward the 
files to us for (more) permanent hosting at atmsite.org  Sam Michael at 
ID communications has graciously provided the server for atmsite.org 
without charge.

I have a more radical suggestion.  I think it is about time that 
somebody write a new atm book.  I haven't read the LeClare's book.  My 
impression from what I have heard, and the description at Willman-Bell 
gives the impression that it recycles a lot of Texerau's material.  The 
basic advice that experienced atm's are now giving out to beginners has 
diverged significantly from Tex. and the other older books.  It is time, 
in my opinion, to put the new methods between solid covers.

Although I am a big fan of the web, and the internet as information 
media, I think a good, old fashioned, hard bound book has a lot going 
for it.

My own suggestion would be a book, somewhat along the lines of Tex, that 
gives a serious treatment of mirror making, but morphs Tex's standard 
telescope into a Dob.

-- 
Mark Holm
mdholm@telerama.com

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