Marty Alchin wrote: > Hello all, > > I'm an author working with Apress on my second title, Pro Python. It > expands on the Python-level chapter I included in my first title, Pro > Django, which received overwhelmingly positive feedback. Basically, > I'm writing for people who are already familiar with Python, but > haven't looked into some of its more advanced features, like > decorators, magic methods, metaclasses and the like. I'm trying to > focus heavily on examples throughout, finishing up with a complete > build-up of a Django-esque declarative framework for processing CSV > files. > > One of the main questions I find myself asking, though, is how much > should I repeat from other works? I don't want to rewrite the wheel, > but I'm having trouble drawing the line. For example, chapter 2 of Pro > Django covered my Python features, focusing mostly on decorators and > metaclasses. I obviously want to cover those same topics in Pro > Python, but I tried very hard to expand on them in much greater > detail--particularly with regard to the examples--so that it wasn't a > direct copy. I also included a really basic plugin framework I wrote > up on my blog a couple years ago, with some added features and a whole > new write-up. > > The frustrating thing about doing this is that I feel like I'm torn > between copying something that's already available and throwing away > something that's really good. Neither of them seems like a good way to > go, so the answer must be somewhere in the middle, but I'm having a > lot of trouble finding it. Is it enough to rewrite the description of > a piece of code, so that it's perhaps more clear or more relevant to > the audience at hand? Or is the author expected to expand on the code > itself in some way, offering up some unique value (feature? > optimization? simplification?) that wasn't available in the original? > I'd repeat the material so that new readers can understand it without being required to read the other book.
regards Steve -- Steve Holden +1 571 484 6266 +1 800 494 3119 Holden Web LLC http://www.holdenweb.com/ UPCOMING EVENTS: http://holdenweb.eventbrite.com/ _______________________________________________ Python-authors mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-authors
