Hi Shekar, Likely echoing a lot of people - books take time, and they are highly unreliable for at least the first few iterations of any software. Given the rate of development in the Zend Framework, a version late 1.x/2.0 would have to be seriously considered as a possible publication target (otherwise the risk of outdated texts is likely quite high - at least if one makes a few assumptions about publication dates, likely demand, and time-to-write). 2.0 is probably out on the horizon - depends.
That said, now would be a good time to get started on the bulk of the standard unchanging elements (actually the release of 0.9 would have been ;)). We have a stable API, and ongoing changes are unlikely to prove rapid (or blatantly off the map). Also, one would lack a sponsoring publisher at this time which will only get worse over the next few months as publication houses grab up experienced writers and ZF users (or at least writers who can gain familiarity in time) - something I gather is happening already from comments elsewhere, in a few places, given the publicity of the ZF and its growing mindshare. It probably wouldn't be all that hard to round up a few interested persons however, if there was a little more certainty about the future of such a proposed book, what one would seek in an author, and how the copyright/licensed distribution would play out (assuming the immediate lack of an interested publisher). I'm sure Cristain has more ideas here - he's at least penetrated the Irish market judging from my bookshelf where he's noted at least twice ;). Not to be a discouraging note - a book definitely would have an audience. It would be interesting to hear more obviously. Regards, Pádraic Pádraic Brady http://blog.astrumfutura.com http://www.patternsforphp.com ----- Original Message ---- From: Kevin McArthur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Richard D Shank <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Shekar C Reddy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: Zend Framework General <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2007 8:40:21 PM Subject: Re: [fw-general] ZF Book FYI There are actually several Zend Framework books in production. I will be featuring some framework (but by no means the focus) in my upcoming book and I am aware of other ZFW feature books in development. Remember it takes a LONG time to publish a book, and the reason there is nothing on the market right now is the framework's extremely high rate of change. No one wants to write a book that is dated by the time it hits shelves. Kevin ----- Original Message ----- From: Richard D Shank To: Shekar C Reddy Cc: Zend Framework General Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2007 1:35 PM Subject: Re: [fw-general] ZF Book The biggest problem with writing a book is the time it takes verses the payoff. Its a great way to get recognition (and credibility) but not a great way to make money. That being said, I have toyed with the idea of doing that. I have done a little writing in the past and I have been playing with ZF. My plans are to write a CMS with ZF and I thought I might write a book about the process. Thats the extent of what I have played with in my head. It would be nice to know what the community felt would be needed to make a great book. If there were enough interest, I would consider pursuing the idea further. I definitely don't want to get into a situation like is going on right now with jQuery community, with several people writing books at once. Richard Shekar C Reddy wrote: Hi All, This has reference to: http://devzone.zend.com/article/1795-The-Definitive-Guide-to-symfony http://devzone.zend.com/article/1795-The-Definitive-Guide-to-symfony---Sample-Chapter#comments-1820 ZF has matured into 1.0 but no books or discussions about bringing one out yet other than some tidbits found on the internet (no offense intended; most of those tidbits are indeed great pieces of code!) and the alphabetical API reference guide. Joining pieces together and cross-referring to the reference guide is no easy task - most times it results in half-baked knowledge, not to mention - code with bottle-necks! What we need is a complete tutorial book that does a project and utilizes all the components in concert and shows how they integrate with each other. I interacted with Cal earlier on this matter (email chain pasted below) about collaborating with an experienced author - Cristain Darie. I understand writing books takes a considerable amount of time. Any takers with some time to spare on producing a book on ZF? Cristain would be glad to help/guide you with getting started... Here is another to consider: http://devzone.zend.com/article/1118-Symfony-used-in-Yahoo-Bookmarks-Beta (QUOTE: The documentation was the first reason for Yahoo to choose Symfony. It reaches a unique quality and coverage in the open-source world) Regards, On 4/26/07, Shekar C Reddy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Hi Cal, Would you like me to post this idea to the gw-general list to see if there are any folks with writing skills that would collaborate with another author? On 4/6/07, Cal Evans <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Hi Shekar, I'll have to check my notes as I don't recall Christian contacting me. I know rumors of a couple of projects in the works right now but I'm not currently involved with any of them. =C= Cal Evans Editor-in-Chief, http://devzone.zend.com AIM:CalZend Skype: CalAtZend From: Shekar C Reddy [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, April 06, 2007 3:11 PM To: Cal Evans Subject: Re: ZF Book? Cal, Well! I was wondering about the current fate of the ZF book as the framework is reaching 1.0 soon. I introduced you Cristian Darie who would help you with anything you folks might need from project planning, writing, editing, publishing.... Was Cristian able to answer your questions and guide you in any way? Regards, On 3/16/07, Shekar C Reddy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Cal, Here is the response from Cristian (my Yahoo ID is PowerObject): QUOTE Cristian Darie (3/16/2007 11:44:57 AM): Hey, thanks for this! Please put them in touch with me -- I'm not sure if I'll have the time to start writing a new book, but at least I can give them some advice. The idea of a book on the Zend Framework sounds very exciting though! PowerObject: I sent your email IDs to Cal Evans ( [EMAIL PROTECTED]) and he might contact you. If this idea jells, there may be a couple of writers/developers who might collaborate with you. PowerObject: Hi, Would you be willing to collaborate with another writer at Zend.com on producing a book on Zend Framework that is reaching v1.0 ? Do let me know so I can inform them and introduce you to each other so you can take it from there... UNQUOTE Its your call now... ? :) On 3/16/07, Shekar C Reddy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Cal, No, not postulating :) I know you are a great writer with excellent authoring skills! And I guess you (as an active user of ZF) are a good fit to come up with a book on ZF around the release of 1.0 (or even later). If you think it is too huge a task to handle, you (along with some developers of ZF) could colloborate with other authors. I know Cristian Darie ( www.cristiandarie.ro) - an author who collaborates with other authors and has dished out some great books successfully. Here are his email IDs: [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] and you could contact him directly (I just sent him an IM, too). I'm sure he should be willing to work on this book. We tried to produce a book on PowerBuilder earlier when I used to have some spare time but as the language was dying, there were no other takers from the community other than Cristian so the idea did not take off. As a user, I wish ZF evolves into a very mature framework. The framework already has some good strengths to itself - compared to Symfony - such as: *** Light weight !! Component-based (use just what you need) Non-monolithic Search-engine friendly URLs Placement of source outside the doc-root Based on PHP 5.2 OOP MVC DRY KISS RAD PDO TDD Design patterns Quality code Enterprise-ready Some great components: Acl, Auth, Cache, Config, Db, Json, Locale, Lucene, Mail, Pdf, Rest, Service, Translate... Community (users/contributors) and comparing to other frameworks out there, what we need to come up with for its wider adaptation are: elaborate documentation, tutorials, wiki, books, audios, videos and what not...? A beginner should be thrilled to watch a video and see how easy it is to build a blogging service in 20 mins and be able to send an email in 10 mins using ZF!! Hope that helps... PS: I had a great difficulty with posting the comment as it bombed several times accusing me that my HTML formatting was invalid for no apparent reason :( On 3/16/07, Cal Evans <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Shekar, Something you want to announce? :) Or were you just postulating? =C= No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.476 / Virus Database: 269.11.0/927 - Release Date: 7/30/2007 5:02 PM ____________________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! oneSearch: Finally, mobile search that gives answers, not web links. http://mobile.yahoo.com/mobileweb/onesearch?refer=1ONXIC
