please publish new edition of Zope Book often
Hello: I use the on-line version of The Zope Book all the time as a reference and guidebook. However, sometimes its just more convenient to have docs in paper book form. In fact, even though The Zope Book is way out of date, ( and any newer version would become out of date very quickly ), I still recommend it to clients over any of the other books covering Zope. I, for one, would love to see a new edition of The Zope Book published out on a regular basis, say once a year or thereabouts. We have had to deal with many complaints about the out-of-date-ness of The Zope Book from our customers. For example, we have just recently won a large contract using Zope technology for which this is an issue. So, how about it? I personally feel this is a very important step on the "10x growth" road. 2c, --Craeg
Would a PDF version do? There are no plans to paper-publish the 2.6 or further editions of the book. I've been threatening to finish the 2.6 edition for a while (I've been procrastinating a bit). But I could roll a PDF out of what we have very quickly. I might just call it "done" at that point. On Fri, 2003-04-18 at 23:02, Craeg Strong wrote:
Hello:
I use the on-line version of The Zope Book all the time as a reference and guidebook. However, sometimes its just more convenient to have docs in paper book form.
In fact, even though The Zope Book is way out of date, ( and any newer version would become out of date very quickly ), I still recommend it to clients over any of the other books covering Zope.
I, for one, would love to see a new edition of The Zope Book published out on a regular basis, say once a year or thereabouts.
We have had to deal with many complaints about the out-of-date-ness of The Zope Book from our customers. For example, we have just recently won a large contract using Zope technology for which this is an issue.
So, how about it? I personally feel this is a very important step on the "10x growth" road.
2c,
--Craeg
_______________________________________________ Zope-Dev maillist - Zope-Dev@zope.org http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
PDF would help, as its more easily printed out. However, concerns had to do more with marketing than technology. We should not underestimate the value of seeing "The Zope Book, 3rd edition (NEW: includes comprehensive coverage of Zope 2.6)" prominently on the shelf at B&N (or virtual shelf at Amazon). I appreciate that the value of this is difficult to reduce to a set of net present value weighted cash flows, while the costs are (too) easily calculable. As a consultant, I confront issues like this every day, as I propose new projects that may not realize net benefits in 30 days or less :-{ Did the costs of getting the first edition printed really outweigh the proceeds that badly? If not, perhaps you could get a 2.6 or 2.7 edition paper-published as the last 2.x paper edition, and the next one would cover X3... --Craeg PS If addl technical reviewers would help, count me in. Chris McDonough wrote:
Would a PDF version do? There are no plans to paper-publish the 2.6 or further editions of the book. I've been threatening to finish the 2.6 edition for a while (I've been procrastinating a bit). But I could roll a PDF out of what we have very quickly. I might just call it "done" at that point.
On Fri, 2003-04-18 at 23:02, Craeg Strong wrote:
Hello:
I use the on-line version of The Zope Book all the time as a reference and guidebook. However, sometimes its just more convenient to have docs in paper book form.
In fact, even though The Zope Book is way out of date, ( and any newer version would become out of date very quickly ), I still recommend it to clients over any of the other books covering Zope.
I, for one, would love to see a new edition of The Zope Book published out on a regular basis, say once a year or thereabouts.
We have had to deal with many complaints about the out-of-date-ness of The Zope Book from our customers. For example, we have just recently won a large contract using Zope technology for which this is an issue.
So, how about it? I personally feel this is a very important step on the "10x growth" road.
2c,
--Craeg
I don't know about the financial equation of the last publishing. Zope Corporation does not directly support the editing of the Zope Book any longer and hasn't for some time now. The community has picked up its maintenance since. That's sort of where the problem lies. I've organized the editing of the book since ZC dropped it, but really don't want to deal with the hassle of negotiating with a publisher on behalf of the book as its agent. I think it'd be great to have this thing paper-published by someone. If anybody wants to contact the contributors and negotiate releases from them, contact a publisher, negotiate financials, etc. etc., I think it'd be great. As long as I don't have to do it. ;-) - C On Sat, 2003-04-19 at 12:29, Craeg K Strong wrote:
PDF would help, as its more easily printed out.
However, concerns had to do more with marketing than technology. We should not underestimate the value of seeing
"The Zope Book, 3rd edition (NEW: includes comprehensive coverage of Zope 2.6)"
prominently on the shelf at B&N (or virtual shelf at Amazon).
I appreciate that the value of this is difficult to reduce to a set of net present value weighted cash flows, while the costs are (too) easily calculable. As a consultant, I confront issues like this every day, as I propose new projects that may not realize net benefits in 30 days or less :-{
Did the costs of getting the first edition printed really outweigh the proceeds that badly?
If not, perhaps you could get a 2.6 or 2.7 edition paper-published as the last 2.x paper edition, and the next one would cover X3...
--Craeg
PS If addl technical reviewers would help, count me in.
Chris McDonough wrote:
Would a PDF version do? There are no plans to paper-publish the 2.6 or further editions of the book. I've been threatening to finish the 2.6 edition for a while (I've been procrastinating a bit). But I could roll a PDF out of what we have very quickly. I might just call it "done" at that point.
On Fri, 2003-04-18 at 23:02, Craeg Strong wrote:
Hello:
I use the on-line version of The Zope Book all the time as a reference and guidebook. However, sometimes its just more convenient to have docs in paper book form.
In fact, even though The Zope Book is way out of date, ( and any newer version would become out of date very quickly ), I still recommend it to clients over any of the other books covering Zope.
I, for one, would love to see a new edition of The Zope Book published out on a regular basis, say once a year or thereabouts.
We have had to deal with many complaints about the out-of-date-ness of The Zope Book from our customers. For example, we have just recently won a large contract using Zope technology for which this is an issue.
So, how about it? I personally feel this is a very important step on the "10x growth" road.
2c,
--Craeg
_______________________________________________ Zope-Dev maillist - Zope-Dev@zope.org http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 12:29:55PM -0400, Craeg K Strong wrote:
PS If addl technical reviewers would help, count me in.
one thing that i noticed while co-editing the "Advanced Scripting" chapter: Somebody needs to go through and be sure all the cross-references are correct. Many chapter numbers have changed since the 2.5 edition, what with all the new chapters. I'm not sure if Chris has done this yet. Chris? The other glaring problem is that nobody has tackled the API Reference section, to address all the reader comments from the 2.5 edition. In a sane world, the API reference would be auto-generated from the docstrings in the Zope help code, but this does not seem to be the case. --PW -- Paul Winkler http://www.slinkp.com Look! Up in the sky! It's INTRA-EAGLE OF SOULS! (random hero from isometric.spaceninja.com)
On Sun, 2003-04-20 at 18:28, Paul Winkler wrote:
one thing that i noticed while co-editing the "Advanced Scripting" chapter: Somebody needs to go through and be sure all the cross-references are correct. Many chapter numbers have changed since the 2.5 edition, what with all the new chapters. I'm not sure if Chris has done this yet. Chris?
Yes, I believe I have fixed up all the x-ref problems...
The other glaring problem is that nobody has tackled the API Reference section, to address all the reader comments from the 2.5 edition. In a sane world, the API reference would be auto-generated from the docstrings in the Zope help code, but this does not seem to be the case.
Yes, this should be done. It's a large task. I am considering calling it good enough and putting out a "Zope Book 2.6 Edition 1.0" without the API ref changes, however. - C
participants (4)
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Chris McDonough -
Craeg K Strong -
Craeg Strong
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Paul Winkler