From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2004-02-17T13:55:38+09:00
Subject: Re: A good way to do a book?

>> I don't know of an affordable PDF editor. Minimalistic HTML plus CSS?
>
> OpenOffice will export to PDF.
>
>
> Also, there was an attempt at a community-driven Ruby book at
> http://www.rubydoc.org/book.
>
> Good writing is time-consuming, and hard to do well.  A Ruby book,
> unless its something along the lines of a cookbook or "Ruby Hacks,"
> should have a consistent author's voice and theme.   If it purports to
> teach people Ruby, then what is offered in the early chapters should lay
>  the foundation for more advanced and interesting topics later on.
>
> I've worked on a few Wrox books where 8-to-12 writers were all pitching
> in on different topics.  While the books were constructed to have a
> central theme, they often came off as a collection of magazine articles.
>
> This can be useful, but I don't think we need to think in terms of a
> book in order to assemble a collection of tutorials.

IMHO the most sensible technology to use for a new collaborative Ruby book
would be WikiMedia.  See http://www.wikibooks.org.

However, http://www.rubydoc.org/book/ is an existing collaborative Ruby
book.  Why start another when you can help that?

These things just don't tend to happen, for the reasons James mentioned:
difficult and time consuming.

Gavin