I’m glad to learn the book was set in Bookman. I like that font. I
have impaired vision, and I find Bookman much easier to read than the
more common Times Roman or Garamond.
Regards, Morton
“Steven R.” [email protected] writes:
CSS can be used to format pretty much anything (within reason) in a
custom’ manner.What would stop an author from writing a book, publishing it online
with watermarks and a EULA (or equivalent) holding purchasers
responsible for the watermarked editions of the book, and then
selecting a format for the book (font size, style, etc.) that could be
used to generate a CSS file through which the book would be printed to
.pdf (for example) and downloaded by the purchaser?
Watermarks are mostly an cosmetic feature—I’ve seen originally
watermarked PDFs without watermarks. In doubt, all you need is a full
version of Adobe Acrobat, but I don’t know the details.
Is there a reason an author would not use such a system, were it
available? Is the retail channel so powerful, it makes such a scheme
unworkable to content creators?
It’s probably “just too much work”. And I don’t know of a CSS
solution that does really high-quality typesetting. (With XSL-FO,
that’s different, but even less people know this.)
“John G.” [email protected] writes:
Although a pdf might be nice for searching, since the cookbook is
categorized I don’t think it will be much of an issue. Also, I don’t
For me, it’s how I’d be able to actually have the cookbook with
me when I need it. It takes up a lot less space in my backpack…
Besides, I prefer the quality typesetting of a real book to reading on
my flat panel.
I do print out the pages of small sections of books sometimes,
especially sections I use all the time (ie. reference pages).
But I don’t need to haul around telephone-book sized books.
On 8/5/06, Dave T. [email protected] wrote:
to see what fonts worked for them. The Bookman we use turned out to
give people the sense of being approachable while still being
readable. Everyone is different of course, and I understand what
you’re saying about the width. At the same time, I get a fair number
of e-mails from folks saying they love the layouts.
As an aside (regarding layouts), one amazing thing about the PickAxe
v2 to me is how, all over the place, there’s notes that say, “see page
#n”. I’m guessing this is done using some LaTeX magic. It’s very
impressive and helpful. 
I lot of other books just say, “see chapter
n, section m”.
Regarding Bookman, I will say that although the glyphs are rather
wide, they have nice … um, “balance” I guess (that is, the
difference between the thickest and thinnest parts of a given glyph
isn’t too large), and it’s indeed a handsome font. I think David
Black’s recent Ruby for Rails book suffers (IMO) from the font glyphs
being too thin in the thin places, which gives the text a kind of
uncomfortable high-contrasty look (great book, by the way).
Every now and then I experiment with changing the fonts around (we
recently changed the code font in all our books to make it narrower)
and I’m still open to suggestions. But approachability is still
important to me, and I wouldn’t want to go with anything harsh.
Dave, I just grabbed a sample pdf (exerpt) chapter from your site and
had a look.
-
Whoa! The source code snippets are colorized! The graphics
(including the occasional screenshot) are in color too! And on Ubuntu
using Evince, the text is much more readable and clear than I’d
expected (I’d previously been using xpdf). I will definitely
reconsider buying your pdf versions. -
The sans-serif font that you use interspersed with the Bookman to
indicate filenames, urls, variable names, symbols, chapter outlines,
etc. (“Avante Garde” maybe?) seems like a weird choice. It seems artsy
for artsy’s-sake, and not particularly readable. Last time I saw it in
print was in the earlier editions of some Core Java books from Sun. -
The source code font looks nice – like Bitstream Vera Sans Mono,
which I see a lot of And clickable “download source” links – yow
that’s nice.
—John
On 8/5/06, Leslie V. [email protected] wrote:
[snip all of Les’s great comments]
+1 for everything Les said.
Its obvious publishers like the Pragmatics and 37signals “get it”, in
that they sell totally unrestricted PDF’s. O’Reilly PDFs can be found
easily if you really want to pirate, regardless of the controls they
have on their Safari program.
Trying to lock down pdfs or other electronic versions of books is
about as futile as game publishers trying to place SafeDisc or
similiar protections on their games. All it does is frustrate legit
buyers, as the pirates crack each version within days, if not hours.
If O’Reilly had been offering a combo pack with an unrestricted PDF +
hard copy of the Cookbook, I would’ve bought it already instead of
hesitating due to the lack of a pdf.
- Rob
On Aug 5, 2006, at 10:45 AM, Steven R. wrote:
Is there a reason an author would not use such a system, were it
available? Is the retail channel so powerful, it makes such a
scheme unworkable to content creators?There are ‘civilian’ versions of such, but I was thinking of ‘real’
books designed for a mass audience.
We’ve experimented with most of the XML -> PDF direct generation
systems, and with going via HTML. Our experience is that float
placement is still a major issue, which is why we don’t do it.
Our online-only books (the Fridays) are formatted wildly differently
(landscape, not portrait, larger fonts, big side margin etc), but
they come from the same markup used to created the printed books. We
have the capability to produce the different formats–we just don’t
get have the solid technologies.
Dave
Perfect timing! I bought the cookbook, and I wanted to play with one of
the programs, but did not feel like copying it. I was disappointed the
cookbook did not come with code.
thank you for posting the link. I had seen the unofficial page but had
not noticed the link to the code.
On Aug 5, 2006, at 3:51 PM, John G. wrote:
Dave, I just grabbed a sample pdf (exerpt) chapter from your site and
had a look.
- Whoa! The source code snippets are colorized! The graphics
(including the occasional screenshot) are in color too! And on Ubuntu
using Evince, the text is much more readable and clear than I’d
expected (I’d previously been using xpdf). I will definitely
reconsider buying your pdf versions.
Thanks. That was another consideration when it came to using Bookman
as the body font.
- The sans-serif font that you use interspersed with the Bookman to
indicate filenames, urls, variable names, symbols, chapter outlines,
etc. (“Avante Garde” maybe?) seems like a weird choice. It seems artsy
for artsy’s-sake, and not particularly readable. Last time I saw it in
print was in the earlier editions of some Core Java books from Sun.
Heh–you’re right–good eye. It is Avant Guard. I don’t love it, but
it turned out to work nicely in body text-a monospaced font is way to
wide, but the Avant Guard somehow gives the impression of being
monospaced(-ish), I think because it’s fairly light. However, if you
have suggestions for a replacement I’d seriously love to hear them.
Thanks again
Dave
On Aug 5, 2006, at 1:11 PM, Christian N. wrote:
It’s probably “just too much work”. And I don’t know of a CSS
solution that does really high-quality typesetting. (With XSL-FO,
that’s different, but even less people know this.)
Yeah, but pure FO just doesn’t hack the book stuff (and indexing is a
serious, serious hack… 
One day it’ll happen, and we’ll try our best to be there.
Dave
Much in the tradition of Slamdance connected to the Sundance Film
Festival,
the not ready for prime time programming fellows ^1 announce the RUBY
For
The Rest Of Us Conference. RUBY ROUC
Held at the same time as the Denver located “Ruby Conference 2006” we
will provide an opportunity for more Rubyists to attend the fun of
the 2006 event. ^2
Scheduled presenters are invited to contact us to submit a video of
their presentation
or to schedule a time to do a second presentation. Wanna-be
presenters are invited
to submit proposals immediately. Those who cannot attend may submit
videos.
We are working on have video conferencing presentations. But if you
are not in Colorado
you can’t have all the fun. ^3
Schedules will be posted on a Wikki. Registration will come with a
money-back guarantee. If you
are not satisfied with the conference, your fees will be refunded, no
questions asked. If you sign
up for hiking or boating or camping or tree climbing or horseback
riding and are unhappy, we cannot
refund those fees since they are out of our hands.
Food will always be available at events including world famous
Colorado Italian Meatballs. Of course prices
will vary depending on whether you are buying a gourmet cheese
sandwich or a CIM outta.this.world !
We figure we can handle a max of 300 to 600 people. Still working
out those details. Registration is $75. ( see guarantee )
Send in $25 now to hold a spot in the RUBY ROUC. Paypal is nice.
Checks are okay. Gold Bullion, check. Chickens and potatoes, NOT.
http://nope9.com/projects-axxx/tiki-index.php?page=A326
^1 ( yellow bellied uber rebels )
^2 plans are underway for an annual event in Denver.
^3 fun events are planned for Denver and for the mountains and for
the limited amount of water located in Colorado. Please bring a
gallon of water with you to increase the Colorado water sports
capabilities. We plan to have go-go girls ^4 ( at least two ) and
some guys in tights along with dancing bears. Tractor Hayride.
^4 gives you an idea of when I was born
Gus S Calabrese
Denver, CO
720 222 1309 303 908 7716 cell
Please include and do not limit yourself to “spam2006”. I allow
everything with “spam2006” in the subject or text to pass my spam
filters.
( yellow bellied uber rebels )
On Aug 5, 2006, at 8:35 PM, Dave T. wrote:
Heh–you’re right–good eye. It is Avant Guard.
Or even Avant Garde… 
On Aug 6, 2006, at 7:20 AM, Gus S Calabrese wrote:
Much in the tradition of Slamdance connected to the Sundance Film
Festival,
the not ready for prime time programming fellows ^1 announce the
RUBY For
The Rest Of Us Conference. RUBY ROUC
Two people have asked you nicely to spell Ruby correctly when hosting
events in its name. If you aren’t going to listen to that, I guess
we know all we need to know about whether or not we should be
attending events with your name attached to them.
James Edward G. II
“John G.” [email protected] writes:
- Whoa! The source code snippets are colorized! The graphics
(including the occasional screenshot) are in color too! And on Ubuntu
using Evince, the text is much more readable and clear than I’d
expected (I’d previously been using xpdf). I will definitely
reconsider buying your pdf versions.
One thing I don’t like is that the colorizer they use seems to screw
up when coloring XML - take a look at the sample chapter from “Data
Crunching”, for example. It can’t handle tag names that contain
dashes, apparently.
- The source code font looks nice – like Bitstream Vera Sans Mono,
which I see a lot of
that’s nice.
That being said, the font is nice and readable in paper too (I’ve got
my “Best of Ruby Q.” right here). Too bad the clickable source
links just don’t seem to work in the paper editions…
Hmmmm I am not posting events in it’s name I guess you are
referring to Ruby whilst I am referring to RUBY.
Should have I included the apostrophe in its ?
RUBY ROUCs just want to have fun
On 2006-Aug 06, at 09:44hrs AM, James Edward G. II wrote:
On Aug 6, 2006, at 7:20 AM, Gus S Calabrese wrote:
Much in the tradition of Slamdance connected to the Sundance Film
Festival,
the not ready for prime time programming fellows ^1 announce the
RUBY For
The Rest Of Us Conference. RUBY ROUC
Two people have asked you nicely to spell Ruby correctly when hosting
events in its name. If you aren’t going to listen to that, I guess
we know all we need to know about whether or not we should be
attending events with your name attached to them.
James Edward G. II
Gus S Calabrese
Denver, CO
720 222 1309 303 908 7716 cell
Please include and do not limit yourself to “spam2006”. I allow
everything with “spam2006” in the subject or text to pass my spam
filters.
I think it is great that someone is going to all this effort to
organize a conference that accommodates the people who won’t be able
to get into RubyConf. He seems to be meeting a demand for a service
needed by the community, in a way that also happens to involve
personal time and financial risk. If it is called RUBY ROUC, it seems
to be spelled correctly, it is just upper case.
So, is that the problem and the reason that people who post about the
case of the name don’t show any appreciation that he is trying to
provide something to the community? I see no big disservice being
done to anyone by the conference name having upper case.
Is it to prevent some sort of brand dilution for Ruby? If so, any
intelligent person will know that Ruby is the name of the language
despite there being a conference called RUBY ROUC. If they can’t tell
the difference, then do you really want them adopting the brand? Ruby
RUBY ruby RuBy. Why get mean about it?. Unless, of course, it impacts
the way Ruby runs on your machine. If so, we should probably just
call it ruby.
I don’t want a flame war over religiously held feelings, I honestly
just don’t understand the reasoning for this uncharacteristically
unfriendly behavior on this particular list which is known for its
friendliness (at least in my experience.)
Have a nice day!
Bob
Robert E. wrote:
Is it to prevent some sort of brand dilution for Ruby?
No. I believe the intention is to prevent nubies from looking dopey
when asking questions or discussing the language. Referring to the
language as “RUBY” suggests that the speaker knows very, very little
about Ruby.
And that’s fine; we all started from pretty much the same place. But
I’d be skeptical of a conference organized by someone who may know next
to nothing about the conference topic, and very skeptical of a Ruby
conference run by someone who may not be all that interested in
listening to more experienced Rubyists.
Bottom line, “RUBY” is simply wrong. It is not one of many name
variations. It is not a matter of preference. It is wrong.
–
James B.
“I can see them saying something like ‘OMG Three Wizards Awesome’”
- billinboston, on reddit.com
I just picked it up at the local bookstore yesterday afternoon, and
so far it looks really good … and big. I checked some of the
recipes on things I already know and they seem proper, which just
boosts my confidence in it :-).
I like the format of the recipes. The Problem statement is really
concise, followed by a Solution section, then a Discussion of larger
issues and consequences, and sometimes a See Also section. That works
well, and in browsing so far I have found good incidental information
that way. At my stage of Ruby usage (10-11 months of full-time
development of several different projects in a commercial setting),
knowing about all the incidental cool solutions that others have
created is the next leap in productivity.
Also, in contrast to the GoF patterns format, I find this one easier
to digest. We’ll see how that holds up since one of the best usages
of the GoF book was referring back to the Consequences section to
make sure that my designs using a particular pattern didn’t hold any
forgotten gotchas.
Nice work on the Roman numeral recipe. That was really fun to read
because we use simple Roman numeral math as a programming interview
question.
All in all, I am looking forward to having this by my side I think it
will be very useful. Good job guys.
Bob
On Aug 6, 2006, at 2:21 PM, Robert E. wrote:
He seems to be meeting a demand for a service needed by the community,
I can’t tell honestly. Sounds more like a mountain getaway that a
programming conference, but if people like that I’m glad it is an
option for them.
I see no big disservice being done to anyone by the conference name
having upper case.
I feel advertisements involving Ruby should spell the language name
correctly and with proper case. We don’t want to confuse users
attending this conference or even just reading advertisements about
the event.
Clearly the conference organizer disagrees with me. Fine. I’ve said
my peace on the issue twice now and I know what I need to know about
the event.
Now, we just need to make sure new users lurking in this thread are
aware of the issue. Hopefully these posts have done that.
James Edward G. II
Well put!
I see your point.
Thanks for your response,
Bob
Dave T. [email protected] writes:
On Aug 5, 2006, at 1:11 PM, Christian N. wrote:
It’s probably “just too much work”. And I don’t know of a CSS
solution that does really high-quality typesetting. (With XSL-FO,
that’s different, but even less people know this.)Yeah, but pure FO just doesn’t hack the book stuff (and indexing is a
serious, serious hack…
I consider FO an output format here, of course you need a toolchain to
generate it.