Re: Subject: Re: Cocoa Book / ok, ok.
Re: Subject: Re: Cocoa Book / ok, ok.
- Subject: Re: Subject: Re: Cocoa Book / ok, ok.
- From: James Duncan Davidson <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 10:59:41 -0800
On Monday, Dec 9, 2002, at 09:35 US/Pacific, Chuck Toporek wrote:
When an author is working in Word, XML, or DocBook SGML to produce
their book, those files get converted to Frame when when the book
comes into production. "Conversion" is part voodoo, in that things can
happen, like double hyphens being converted to em-dashes, and missing
slashes from HTML/XML tags in code examples (e.g., <barf\>) suddenly
disappear. After a book gets converted, we typically have a few days
to review the conversion and find problems. We have to be really
careful to look for and catch these things, but they can sometimes
slip through.
And in the case of Learning Cocoa w/ObjC, the conversion process
actually went "back in time" and ignored some of the revisions that had
been made to the manuscript. Thanks to Word for keeping that old stuff
around in the file format. And the only way I had to correct them was
to make markups on hardcopy and hope that my intent was clear to the
person making the edits. Suffice it to say that I don't ever want to
see another conversion script touch my writing again.
When working on "Learning Cocoa with Objective-C, 2nd Ed." with James
Duncan Davidson, I personally built and ran all the code examples in
the book to make sure it did what it was supposed to, and offered bugs
and feedback to author to help make them right.
Chuck did a great job at this. And somewhere between there and print a
few of the code samples were bunged up (evidently by somebody that
thought that they knew how the ')', ']', and ';' characters should be
arranged in Objective-C) and will give errors now, at least in the
first printing. Personally, I was really bummed about this. But I think
that we've caught all the errors now (with the help of lots of people
who have helped by reporting the smallest of details).
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learncocoa2/errata/
It's not a solo sport. It's a team effort. After an author writes their
manuscript (spending months and even sometimes years in the process),
it suddenly becomes more than just author and editor. All the sudden
there are lots of people that sweep down on the book. And all of them
are experts in areas other than the technology at hand.
Can the publishing industry improve? Certainly. And in my next book,
I'm going to try some things with Chuck to see if we can't do things
better. A lot better. But that's the future.
For now, I suggest making better (and well said) demands of the people
that publish the books that you buy. After all, if there's been a
decrease in quality in the technical books out there, then that's only
because people are buying them. And unfortunately, the book buying
public has shown that they will support the loads of crap that you find
at Barnes & Noble now. Provide constructive criticism, and the
situation can improve.
--
James Duncan Davidson
email@hidden
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