[Catalyst] So, what do we want in the -next- book?

[Matt Pitts]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ali M. [mailto:tclwarrior at gmail.com]
> Sent: Monday, March 10, 2008 3:42 AM
> To: The elegant MVC web framework
> Subject: Re: [Catalyst] So, what do we want in the -next- book?
> 
> I just want to suggest, since soon Catalyst will move to a new wiki,
> why not celebrate the opportunity, by improving the documentation.
> 
> I was personally always ... mmm... not sure how to describe this ....
> always surprised/annoyed ...  that beside the documentation we always
> needed a book!
> 
> For commercial software I always thought of its as a conspiracy with
> the book publishers to make us buy books, specially since many
> software companies are also book publisher (MS Press), and you can add
> to this the scheme of certification and courses and things like oracle
> university kinda like extortion.
> 
> I was kinda saddened to see that this was kinda true for Perl, the
> Perl documentation large parts of it are from the Perl Programming
> book by Larry Wall and others, and the documentation also in many
> place suggest that you need the book for more details. Okay the Perl
> documentation is huge and I probably don't need more detail, plus the
> book also reference the manual, so in a way, they were built to
> complement each other .... anyway its strongly suggested you need the
> book!
> 
> The web, blogs, wikis are a great way to publish knowledge, we really
> dont need more books, we more knowledge, more documented knowledge,
> more documentation.
> 
> Books are just a way to make money, money makers, that is exploting
> the weakness in the online documentation.

I have seen this in some realms or projects, but very, very rarely in
the FOSS community.
Actually, I think it's the opposite in most cases - good, even amazing,
online docs
are created and maintained simply to make the software more popular,
which may ultimately
lead to a commercial license and/or support program that supports the
developers. Example: ExtJS.

Besides, it takes a lot of work to code, document and maintain even an
internal application, much
less one you are releasing to the world. If you take the time to write a
book or even PDF doc and
some folks are willing to pay for it to know your software better, I
don't see anything wrong with
that.

> So please, don't be an extortionist, don't make a book ... write a
> wiki page in the new wiki!
> All we really need are more pages on wiki not a book!

If you think you're being extorted by the purchase of a book then, by
all means,
please don't buy it.

As for me, I'm not a big-time hacker that is a core dev on a very
popular FOSS
web framework, so buying a book is a simple way that I can support the
author's
FOSS intentions and real-world need to feed him/herself and his/her
family.

> But if you insist on writing a book, make a free online version, if

How about free with the purchase of the book.

v/r

-matt pitts