>>I don't know that this is a bad thing, though I know some will disagree.
>>You don't see many C books published, either, and it is still widely used.
>>There just isn't much left to say about C. For Perl, that clearly isn't
>>the case, but it may be that it is more the case with Perl than with Java.
>
>You make an interesting point here. O'Reilly is the dominant Perl
>publisher but maybe that isn't a good thing. If there were more publishers
>publishing good Perl books that would probably make for a far richer
>editorial ecology. In the Java world for example the editorial space is
>dominated by several publishers vying for the top dog position. Any food
>for thought.....
Plenty of food. Some digestion now, some in a few days when I can talk more
about it.
I know for a fact that other publishers are nervous about approaching any
project involving Perl. With good reason because ORA has covered most of the
bases and there's not much left to explore. Even when a high quality book
comes out where there is direct competition with ORA it gets set aside for
the ORA title. (I'll spare the list the long rant on that...)
However, this doesn't mean the Perl market is impenetrable. ORA's turned
out some dogs in the last few years. Advanced Perl Programming,
Learning Perl/Tk were both...well...disappointing. The Llama is woefully
outdated and needs a revision (I've stopped recommending it and am sending
people to Elements now). Perl in a Nutshell was also disappointing. (I
have a long rant about that title, but again I'll spare the group....)
But the homogenious environment certainly isn't helping things much.
Inbreeding only works to a point...
