> The long version of the manual still requires a lot of work. > Imagine if the long manual were inserted back to the > distribution, who would continue enhancing it? It couldn't be > me could it? I mean how could I maintain the manual and at > the same time write a book?
I'd be happy to help maintain the documentation as well as I could. It's not something I've put any energy into yet, but I certainly could do. I've reviewed a few technical books before now, and am getting reasonably adept at proof-reading, so it that's a useful talent for the manual, I'm happy to help. > Assuming I started to write a book based on the long manual, > wouldn't this create friction between me (the book author) > and the author of the manual? This has already happened to me, in fact - there's a game called Worms: Armageddon, and when I finished all the missions on it, I wrote a walkthrough. When the official gameplaying guide came out, it was practically identical for the missions. I didn't mind at all, as I knew that would happen and was credited. > If the manual were both complete and polished, who would buy the book? Plenty of people, I suspect. Others have given more examples :) There are different levels of completeness, of course. For instance, a book may well want to deal with use-cases in various different situations, covering lots of different specific cases such as "best practice" under each of various app-servers/servlet containers etc. It strikes me as reasonable for a long manual to either do these *briefly* or explain the theory behind what you should do in general, leaving some of the details to the intelligence of the reader. Does that makes any sense? Jon -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
