Hi REBOLers,
Since my last email about a future plan to write a newbie book for the REBOL language, I thought again about the content that would be most useful to everybody for getting the widest acceptance of the REBOL language to every newcomer - that is useful for already programmers as well as completely new to anything near computers (well! excepted using them...). In my first thinking I found the 3 books set entitled Computer Science LOGO Style would be a good start to base my own writing but its content is more geared towards the non-numerical view of CS, something more related to IA and symbolic computing. In another time I also want to have my own REFERENCE book about REBOL, some like other languages have it for the newcomers. And devoted to a similar task recently appeared a very good example of such a book I would like to have. It's been written for the relatively new Ruby Language, and is available online for free to look at. Curiously enough I would like to draft my own one on some part of its interesting and up-to-date enough Table of contents - to be precise. In fact I already know some of its features are completely absent from the REBOL language but nonetheless it semes to me very interesting to keep these subjects present - even if it is toi remember the reader that these festures are somehow left in the vague or not completely achieved by the RT for the moment - this should also be a reminder of what else is left to do on their TO-DO list. A kind of comparison between each way the 2 languages implement some task at hand to resolve would seem to me a good way to start my own thinking and help each other to collaborate on its real content - REMARK : even if Ruby is not known to anybody it seems the way the authors described each task involved and and the code to implement their described solutions, that no more is needed in most cases for everyvody to understand these Ruby snippets. In fact what I would have from all of you that are interested in a collective rework of the TOC is this : Each ppl interested to collaborate to this work will privately submit me - not via the ML because of the eventual flow of messages - his own ideas about each part of the actual TOC and what he sees as not pertinent of the actual TOC, what he sees should be added or even how the details could be worked out using REBOL instead of the proposed actual way the authors attack the subjects using Ruby. Your own feeling of what could be done for each part of the TOC should be taken into account - but will be splitted one part at a time - just to be TIME realist. According to the material submitted by the many voluntaries I will receive - or my own draft if no submission is done - I plan to keep you in touch with the progress of the planned REBOL TOC book before going on further on the main work. Then after a couple of exchanges in the revision process I envisage, I could begin the work to write a first draft. It will be done in FRENCH first but almost simultaneously a translation will be done because of the discussions involved and also because of my better native thinking in FRENCH than I do in ENGLISH. I understand that I am not a REBOL guru - instead think of a newbie trying to write something useful for other programmers new to this great language. My work will be put at the disposal of everyone on common Web site used to keep the many necessary reviews simple to do between the involved members. It should not take many time from each contributor since I will do the first drafts myself and I understand that this will be a part time project. Nevertheless I don't want to do it without help form the "gurus" and from the other "not so gurus" too since this is to be understood by everybody in the World commmunity that has some knowledge about some programming language but not necessarily much of other more advanced CS concepts (like how to implement Linked or circular DATA Structures using pointers and the like...). However I want to talk about the included subjects in the actual Ruby book TOC even if some programmers don't know about them. They will just have to skip the not used or less understood sections in a first read - like everybody does almost all of the time when reading such a book. What do you think about it ? I wait for some feedback before I will start with this one but I really think it could be more useful than my first suggestion - that was to do a rework from the Brian Harvey's series of 3 LOGO books. I will rather work on this latter rewrite myself at my own pace when I'll desire to do so... Don'Mt forget I count on you all to help me to clarify what I don't understand well enough to clearly explain and translate to each other. So if everything is choking your head when I wil try my hands at it, don't hesitate to let me know what else you would see insted to replace it. I will then decide how the "litige" will be eliminated for the better. So here is my work basis submission for you to delight until I begin to really work on it. http://www.rubycentral.com/book/ Don't misunderstand me, I don't want to do a mere copy of it since I already got it and paid for it myself but instead think of it as a start-up platform for a newer one, dedicated to the REBOL community. In fact I don't plan to kill the work already done by other writers like the authors of the 3 current books either - I also got everyone of them - "The Official Guide" and the "REBOL for Dummies" to. What I would like ios getting a real updated "newcomer" dedicated book and neither of the other ones cited can reclaim to be one except for "REBOL for the Dummies" but it lacks to treat many of the subjects I would like to see in a SERIOUS reference book that could further be used for teaching REBOL in HighSchool and College classes. This is my objective but I don't want to sell it. I just want to return it to the REBOL community - at least the ENGLISH version since it will be more useful than the FRENCH version. And for the ADVANCED parts that deserve some reference to the other already written books - particularly the one written by OLIVIER AUVERLOT - don't be afraid. I will not duplicate its contents. I will refer to it instead. and this is also valuable for the 2 other books too. I just want to keep together most of the information that every newcomer to the REBOL community has to gather from a lto of places. And this also includes all of the work done by many of you on the ML - old timers and youngers too that took much of you time to create, test and explain a lot of features. I don't plan to rework all of them but what I understood from all thise places I want others to know about and if possible, get to others the most of them without duplicating any work already done by others. Hope that is clear about my intentions! a smooth intro but that demonstrates clearly how to use it when someone has to develop some idea using the REBOL tool instead of the many others already availables on the market. Now I am ready to begin with any suggestions that will come to me - be it positive or not !! Even the format coudl be discussed but I planned to use the Make-to-doc PRO to help keep uniform the presentation and use the easy-VID.r script to put together the interactive part of the examples. So this will be a first step done for at least 1 of my other projects! "To be or not to be" could soon become "To REBOL or not to REBOL" that's now the answer to the question ... ;-) Regards Gerard -- Binary/unsupported file stripped by Listar -- -- Type: application/octet-stream -- File: Programming Ruby The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide.url -- To unsubscribe from this list, please send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe" in the subject, without the quotes.
