[ruby-talk:04224] O'Reilly and a Ruby Book

I just got back from the Open-Source Convention up in Monterey, otherwise 
known as OSCON 2000. It was incredibly fun and there was a huge amount of 
enthusiasm for all the amazing projects taking place. There was a huge amount 
of talk about Perl and Python, but I didn't hear much about Ruby. Since the 
conference was sponsored by O'Reilly Books, I decided to ask them if they had 
any plans on publishing a Ruby book. I've attached their reply below. I'm 
anxious to get my hands on a good Ruby book! I know Dave and Andy are working 
hard on one and I'm really looking forward to buying a copy.

Steve

>My name is Paula Ferguson -- I'm an editor for O'Reilly.  Your
>book idea was passed to me, as I'm responsible for our 
>web and scripting editorial group.  
>
>Here's the scoop on Ruby from our perspective.  We know that
>the language exists and we know that it has a lot of buzz in
>Japan.  In fact, our Japanese office is working on a Ruby
>book.  
>
>But we don't see very much buzz about Ruby in the U.S. as of yet,
>so we aren't interested in signing a book on it right now.  We
>plan to keep our eyes and ears open though, and if Ruby seems
>to be gathering a following, we'll explore book options at
>that time.  Or, depending on the status of the Japanese book,
>we might just translate it instead.
>
>One final note.  Lots of coordinated mail supporting Ruby will not 
>persuade us to publish a book on it -- we have other ways of
>gauging when there's enough interest in a technology to publish
>a book.  I would, however, be interested in hearing about 
>specific interesting uses of ruby in the U.S., Canada, or Europe. 
>
>Thanks for writing to us.
>
>Paula
>
>-- 
>Paula M. Ferguson * Executive Editor * Web and Scripting * O'Reilly
>[e-mail] * http://www.oreilly.com/people/staff/paula