Drury:

The Monopoly Board continues to change and evolve as work on Archipelago 2.0 proceeds. Much of the confusing behavior that most of you noted will be rectified now that some of the new features are up and working.

Yes, I have eliminated the package and calendar displays from the center of the main screen. Although I was as fond of them as you were, they had to go for two reasons:

FIRST, they were rather cumbersome to maintain and required reprogramming each time. One of my goals under the new system is to reduce the overhead required to run Archipelago and make it fully automatic so that a non-programmer could conceivably serve as editor someday.

SECOND, they changed with each issue which meant that the entire Archipelago stack had to be retransmitted every time. Although I will continue to retransmit the stack until the upgrade is complete, the eventual plan is to ONLY retransmit when a new member is added. This will save space on the transit disks and further simplify my job.

But don't fret too much about these features; I am planning to add substitute features (probably in the next issue). I will add a series of buttons to the Preface card so that members can skip ahead to gift cards, book reviews, etc. I don't thing there will be a separate button for each gift, but by jumping to the first gift you can use the hand buttons to quickly scan the rest.

I am also planning to revamp the My Contributions stack so that it will have it's own index card. A prominent part of this card will be a deadline reminder to take the place of the missing calendar display.

On consequence of all these changes is that the Monopoly Board screen is no longer as vital as it once was. Although it is still useful as a central hub for reaching various archive stacks and member cards, it is now quite possible to bypass it altogether. That is, you can begin a session by double clicking on the latest voice volume instead of sitting through the seagulls. And it is possible to reach every corner of Archipelago without once touching the main screen.

If any of you have ideas about other functions the Archipelago stack could perform, or if you think we should ease it out to pasture altogether, let me know. There are still some unused buttons and vacant space available.