A century since the earthquake in Ljubljana

Apparently, NUK also found (a few years behind the rest of the world) that days of books are numbered. A collection of pictures, texts and newspaper clippings from the days after the Ljubljana earthquake was published on a CD-ROM. To run the program – as for 90% of all Slovenian CD products – a Windows environment is required, but the program runs magnified across the entire screen and does not allow the user to minimize the window.

Um, isn’t it an advantage of Windows to be able to run multiple programs in the background at once? However, I can’t complain about the user interface. Nicely finished, with 15 icons whose meaning is immediately clear. It is also commendable that each photo can be enlarged or reduced as desired, which is especially important when reading newspaper clippings. The program runs reasonably fast already at 386dx / 40 with 4 MB of memory, although the recommended configuration is 486dx / 40 with 4 MB of memory. The photographs of post-earthquake Ljubljana are the work of Wilhelm Helfer, a photographer who responded to the tender of the Ljubljana City Council. They represent houses that were meant to be demolished. He also took a series of small-format photographs in which he managed to capture Ljubljanas atmosphere in the days after the earthquake. Postcards illustrate the post-earthquake construction of Ljubljana and are the medium with which the news of the earthquake spread around the world. Two city plans from 1896 and 1902, as well as regulation plans by Camillo Sitte and Max Fabiani, have also been added. Finally, there are a few more articles from the daily newspaper and magazine press, which present the first news of the earthquake and records of the planned reconstruction.

In short: the CD is nicely finished graphically as well as in terms of content. It filled the gap that has existed in this area until now and proved that NUK is also keeping up with time. It is also nice that the program can be run directly from the CD and thus save valuable disk space. The errors are that the window in which the program runs cannot be set arbitrarily and that the program itself does not allow direct export of texts and images (which there is a lot of) to other applications, but you have to go a long way and pick up the images saved in the “bmp” format directly from the board. You also have to be a little lucky here and guess which picture you are looking for, as the name just doesn’t tell you anything. The CD is appropriate for anyone who needs such information or is just in love with Ljubljana. It is also suitable as a business gift, as the text is both in Slovenian and English. But the pictures speak for themselves anyway.

Made by: i-Rose, LAŠKO