[MacPerl] MacPerl: the book (http://www.ptf.com/macperl/ptf_book/)

[Rich Morin <rdm@cfcl.com>]

Vicki Brown and I are both enthusiastic about MacPerl; hence the MacPerl
Pages described in my earlier note.  Vicki has been thinking for some time
about doing a book on MacPerl.  Although I have been encouraging her to do
one, recent events (the advents of Perl 5 and Rhapsody, Apple's travails,
etc.) have made both of us a little uneasy about making this commitment.

A while back, however, we decided to go ahead.  We contacted Matthias, to
see if he wanted in on the project.  He begged off, pleading a surplus of
commitments (Gee, how could that be? :-)  Fortunately, however, he got us
together with Chris Nandor, who also wanted to see a book happen.  We met
(first electronically, then in person) with Chris.  It turned out that our
goals and approaches are very much in line, so we asked Chris to join us.

Only a few weeks later, things are moving along quite smoothly.  We have
a reasonable outline, several chapters in Beta-level versions, and good
procedures for exchanging material and resolving philosophical disputes.
Our only real problem is that we need some reviewers!

We need to know about dropped commas, inexplicable examples, confusing
explanations, poorly-covered (or omitted) topics, and more.  We need, in
short, a crew of picky MacPerl experts (and their Perl-shy relatives) to
help us get the bugs out of our copy *before* it gets into print!  And,
of course, we need your help yesterday...  (Seriously, we are on a very
fast track with this product, trying for publication in early January.)


By helping us debug this book, you will have the joys of early access to
our golden prose, add to the fund of human knowledge (:-), and get your
name into our acknowledgements section.  Really helpful reviewers will
get a free copy of the resulting mixed-media (book/CD-ROM) publication!

Still with us?  Great; now for some details.  We already have a few of
the chapters available for your inspection.  They are stored under
"MacPerl: The Book" (technically, http://www.ptf.com/macperl/ptf_book)
on the MacPerl Pages, in both PDF (Adobe Acrobat) and PostScript forms.

Look over what we have, then email your comments and suggestions to:

	mp-book@ptf.com

We will fold in the input we receive, then "publish" the new chapters
to the web pages.  At that point, you get to take another look; if we
missed your point, send us another note!  If you can help us meet your
needs, the product will be more successful, and everyone will win...

Yours, Rich Morin
Editor, MacPerl: Programming for the Rest of Us
President, Prime Time Freeware


Rich Morin, Canta Forda Computer Laboratory | Prime Time Freeware - quality
  UNIX consulting, training, and writing    | freeware at affordable prices
  P.O. Box 1488, Pacifica, CA, 94044, USA   | www.ptf.com      info@ptf.com
  rdm@cfcl.com            +1 650-873-7841   | +1 408-433-9662   -0727 (Fax)



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