** 0.5 page / 476 words **

** STMAGFRE.JPG here **

ST Magazine

An overview of the French Atari ST Magazine by Colin Monro...

Some things transcend language barriers. The first thing you can't miss is the impressive and stylish design - just what one would expect from a French publication! Full colour graphic icons, filtered swirls around Atarian logos, cut-outs, drop shadows at every turn. The magazine is produced using Atari software, we all know it's possible but we rarely see the proof and it's easy to forget just how powerful our favourite platform is. OK, so they're using the mighty Hades Atari clone with 128Mb of memory, a Medusa with 64Mb, several TTs and a Falcon but they're Atari machines at heart!

ST Magazine covers a wide range of topics, from Jaguar games to interviews with software houses to tutorials on the Persistence of Vision raytracer - complete with sumptuous colour screenshots. There's also serious stuff including a series on Linux 68K - the UNIX-like operating system for Falcons and other 68030 Ataris. It's a tricky subject, even trickier if you don't understand French, but don't let that stop you!

The most obvious thing which struck me was the number of products either not available in the UK, for example:
** BL **
* Calligrapher Gold - supposedly long since dropped here but still for sale new in France.
* Le Redacteur 4, a new Falcon-friendly version of the word processor I use for all my professional work and which ST Magazine use for their word-crunching.
* Webspace, part of a complete Internet package from Oxo, that claims to be up to five times faster than its competitors.
* Connection kits and drivers from PARX for the Casio QV-100 Digital Camera and excitingly, the development of a driver and connection for the QuickCam video camera, the golf-ball-on-a-plinth job that's popular on Macs and PCs which costs a lot less than a standard video camera.
* Calamus enthusiasts will drool over the range of exotic (and often expensive) modules from Adequate Systems and other companies for Calamus SL (Image Applications plans to distribute these in the UK).
* OXO's planned Falcon Evolution model, which features a re-engineered motherboard to enable it to fit into a standard PC tower, support more than 14Mb memory and remain compatible with add-ons such as AfterBurner and other add-ons.
** end BL **
I'm pleased to see foreign packages, such as Jeremy Hughes' ImageCopy 4, get extensive reviews. There is also a detailed section covering Public Domain software releases and other Atari magazines throughout the world - including, you've guessed it, Atari Computing!

The magazine includes a floppy disk which features a selection of PD games, demos and utilities.

** Product boxout **
Publisher: ST Magazine, La Terre du Milieu-216, Rue de l'Essert, 74310 Les Houches, France
Tel: +33 04 50 54 49 77
Cost: Each issue costs 39F (about £4) and a one year subscription costs 352F (about £48)
** end boxout **