From: Charles Hixson <charleshixsn@...>
Date: 2004-03-23T16:40:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Need some advice on PickAxe II

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Dave Thomas wrote:

| Folks:
|
| It's looking as if we're moving towards agreement with Addison
| Wesley on getting the rights to Programming Ruby back. This means
| that we'll be able to produce an updated version, covering Ruby
| 1.8. No promises: we still don't have all the signed agreements,
| but AW is certainly being very helpful so far.
|
| Now... I have a question. When it came to documenting the library
| that comes with Ruby (the stuff in lib/ and ext/), the original
| PickAxe trying to document every method in a subset of the 1.6
| distribution: we picked the library classes and modules that looked
|  as if they were being used.
|
| In Ruby 1.8, the library has grown astonishingly: I count almost
| 100 library modules and classes in lib/ alone. If we were to
| document these in any kind of detail, the book would grow to 2000
| pages, and we wouldn't be done until 2008 :) ... Cheers
|
| Dave

I am remembering how wonderful the first "Java in a Nutshell" book
was, and what a disappointment the second edition was.  Be very
careful here.

I agree that you need to cover the basic classes...but better to cover
the main classes thoroughly (as a reference) and leave pointers to the
others.  Don't overkill.

My thought would be the best approach would be, after the initial
language definitions and discussions, to take a series of common
tasks, and show how to do them.   A good addition would be a
cross-index of task and class, but that might be quite difficult, as
people describe the tasks so differently.

Your initial approach of building the jukebox application was an
excellent approach.  Perhaps expand that into things like displaying a
graphic image that goes with the music, simple accounting of which
songs are most popular.  Playing music out of the computer's
speakers.  Synthesizing the music from a score.  Editing the score.
Printing the score.  Etc.  With lots of pointers to places on the web
where more information can be found.

P.S.:  You seem to have settled on FOX as the display kit, so I don't
know if what I was suggesting is practical.  As usual, a discussion of
alternatives, and why you are choosing the direction you are choosing
is helpful.

P.P.S:  Is Ruby2 in the offing?  I seem to recall publishers as having
slow turn arounds...so perhaps you had better be covering that, though
whether as a "soon to appear" or as the standard version I don't know.

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