Dean S Wilson writes:
> Uncross those fingers. ;) Since your in the know what perl books are
> forthcoming? Anything on Perl XML?
I'm shit-scared of talking about books in progress, in case I jinx
them. I can say that Tom and I have begun talking about a second
edition of the Cookbook. I've got my eyes on XML, Tk, Gtk, mod_perl,
and XS as topics we should cover more. I'm very open to your
suggestions for recipes or sections to add, delete, or fix.
Beyond that, we have a mod_perl book by Stas and Eric coming along.
It's going to be enormous. I'm in awe of the amount of writing
they've done on it. Stas and Eric are pretty well known by their
writing (look for Stas's mod_perl columns in apacheweek), talks, and
tutorials. They know their stuff.
XML is obviously a topic we need to cover, and we're working on it.
We had a few false starts with authors, so I don't want to say too
much in case it fizzes again. One thing you learn quickly in the book
biz is that as many, if not more, books fizzle than ever make it onto
shelves. I don't carry rabbits' feet with me for luck, but some days
I think about it.
Your suggestions for books are, as always, welcome. Actual
manuscripts are, of course, even more welcome :-)
> Your probably right, i would have prefered something with a higher
> emphasis on hands on. I'm curious as to how you view the book though,
> to me it is an OK reference. Its not a tutorial or an intorduction and
> it's not really for advanced principles. I lumped it in as a reference
> as that was what i thought it was best at.
I learned tcl/tk at Uni, in 1992 or so, and so I knew the
fundamentals. What bugged me was that I couldn't find anything
definitive on how it worked in Perl. I might have been playing with
Perl/Tk before the webpages were written, or maybe I'm just a lousy
web searcher, but I definitely felt information pain that the book
helped to alleviate.
> Building Linux
> Clusters which was a waste of paper but i was contacted by someone at
> ORA over my views on that and i was satisfied by their responce (They
> saw my comments on (void). Beware ORA agents are everywhere! :))
Yeah, not our most glorious moment. *sigh* That's the trouble with
having such a great reputation for books ... any slipups and they're
*really* noticed. You can bet that if SAMS published a shit book,
nobody would notice. Some say this has already happened :-)
> Good question, I can't see it either. And they seem to have dropped
> the "Perl Tools" book.
Like I said, it's a long road from idea to a printed book. Sometimes
authors lose interest, sometimes they have babies, move, divorce, burn
out, or something else intrudes that prevents them from finishing.
Sometimes the publisher messes up and drives an author away. Just be
thankful for the books that do, miraculously, make it through this
minefield.
Nat
