Frans P. de Vries (Xymph)

Frans P. de Vries (alias Xymph) is a webmaster, programmer, and system administrator who was an early anchor of the Doom community from its inception in 1993 up to 1997.

Community activities
Frans was a founder and maintainer of the Usenet hierarchy of news groups. Aside from other basic administrative duties, he authored the RGCD FAQ and Other 3D Games FAQ spelling out policies and conventions governing the groups' usage.

Frans was the primary maintainer of the idgames archive from 1995 to 1997, and was occasional backup to Ty Halderman during the latter's period as maintainer. On the side, he also administrated the non-Doom related (for Quake) and  archives, and still acts as system administrator for idgames, the gamers.org server, and all its other gaming archives.

He was a major contributor to Hank Leukart's Doom FAQ.

Frans was instrumental in obtaining permission for release of the alpha and beta versions of Doom to the idgames archive, where he appears as their uploader.

Utilities
Frans is the author of the following editing utilities:
 * DooM PostScript Maps Utility (DMPSMU) - Allows creation of a PostScript file containing the map of a Doom level.
 * DooM TeXtures LiSter (DMTXLS) - Generates cross-reference lists of used textures in Doom engine games.

Other notable activities
Frans was a co-founder of the now defunct 3dgamers.com site, which amongst other games, had significant Doom coverage. He is also a programmer, system administrator and former editor for Blue's News, and an active member of the TrackMania community.