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

[Robert Sedlacek]

On Monday 10 March 2008 08:42:25 Ali M. wrote:
> I was personally always ... mmm... not sure how to describe this ....
> always surprised/annoyed ...  that beside the documentation we always
> needed a book!

Well, you don't _need_ a book. There is documentation which has the 
advantages and disadvantages of being largely community-driven. If that 
works for you, great! If not, you might want to go after additional 
resources, which would--for example--be books.

I don't even own a single Perl book. All I read over the years I got from 
companies I worked with, and those weren't that many or that up-to-date.

> Books are just a way to make money, money makers, that is exploting
> the weakness in the online documentation.

No, it's "exploiting" the fact that nobody was willing or had the time to 
write up that much quality information and work it out professionally for 
free.

> 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!
>
> But if you insist on writing a book, make a free online version, if
> you have found Catalyst useless, this could be something you are doing
> for Catalyst, like returning a favor or something.

I think the author of the book has done enough already for you and the 
community. This is not just someone coming along, this is a core dev who 
invested large parts of his time into the book and the project at large.

The information is already _there_. You have the complete source to Catalyst 
and its dependencies. The knowledge about it _is_ free. A hand-held version 
of it however isn't :)

-rs