jw@pan.UUCP (Jamie Watson) (09/12/88)
I've just read the announcement in comp.newproducts about the new release of the O'Reilly books on X. I would like to make a few comments about these books, for the benefit of those who haven't had time to investigate them yet. My first complaint about these books is their binding. The earlier editions were loose-bound, so they were at least convenient to use on a cluttered desk. The new editions are "perfect bound" - glued down the spine. This makes it impossible to get them to stay open to a particular page, and thus essentially useless on a cluttered desk. My second, and more serious, complaint, is about the books' content. One of my colleagues bought the first edition of these books when they were first available, at the winter Usenix meeting in Dallas. They had seemed fairly impressive simply from the sheer size of the two volumes. Once we started to look at them in detail, though, we found that they were absolutely full of mistakes and inaccuracies - to the point that they were essentially useless. We decided to keep our mouths shut, since O'Reilly was already talking about a "new, improved" edition. Well, I picked up the new edition while at Xhibition last month. The worst of the errors are gone, but I am still very, very disturbed by the fact that it seems obvious to me that the authors of this book do not understand what they are writing about at all. The books contain quite a lot of conceptual discussion, and the author(s) repeatedly show a serious lack of understanding of their topics. For example, in the Introduction to Volume I, they discuss window managers. In the space of two paragraphs, they display a total lack of understanding of the concepts involved, and manage to completely confuse the issues of real estate management, input focus, and listeners. This situation is repeated in their discussion of optimization and networking; they are unable to distinguish between general performance issues and network dependencies. The problem with these kind of errors are that they undermine your confidence in the entire presentation. I find that I am not willing to believe anything that they say with which I am not already familiar, since I don't trust their basic knowledge, so I gain very little from reading the books. I do quite a bit of consulting and teaching of the X Window System, and I tried to imagine what it would be like to have learned X only from these manuals. The picture of misinformation and misdirection that I saw was not encouraging. The second volume is essentially a reproduction of the reference manual from the MIT documentation, but alphabetically organized, one function to a page, in Unix man page format. While this didn't take any great talent, it is something that has been needed for a long time. It would be really wonderful - if I could just figure out how to keep the blasted thing open to a particular page on my desk... jw
jim@athsys.uucp (Jim Becker) (09/13/88)
From article <469@pan.UUCP>, by jw@pan.UUCP (Jamie Watson): > > I've just read the announcement in comp.newproducts about the new release > of the O'Reilly books on X. I would like to make a few comments about > these books > > My first complaint ... > > My second, and more serious, complaint ... > > jw I just received my updates to the O'Reilly books, and they appear to be a top notch job, especially considering the infancy of X windows. They are professional in nature, yet guide the reader through the material in an interesting way. I find them to be well laid out and information rich, and would be hard pressed to program for X windows without them. Although more detailed and better books will inevitably follow, they have done an amazing job in the short amount of time they have had to create a comprehensive guide to understanding and programming X windows. They have also published professionally and created an amazing wealth of information. For all those critics of these books, I await your complete and rich versions of the same information... professionally produced, et al. My hat is off to the efforts of O'Reilly and Associates for a job well done -- it has been well worth the wait !! -Jim Becker
tim@ora.UUCP (Tim O'Reilly) (09/13/88)
In article <469@pan.UUCP>, jw@pan.UUCP (Jamie Watson) writes: > > I've just read the announcement in comp.newproducts about the new release > of the O'Reilly books on X. I would like to make a few comments about > these books, for the benefit of those who haven't had time to investigate > them yet. > > My first complaint about these books is their binding. The earlier > editions were loose-bound, so they were at least convenient to use > on a cluttered desk. The new editions are "perfect bound" - glued > down the spine. This makes it impossible to get them to stay open > to a particular page, and thus essentially useless on a cluttered > desk. > I'd like to leave replying to other comments to Adrian Nye, the author of the book...but I'd like to take this opportunity to poll readers on whether they prefer comb- bound or perfect-bound books. We've always done comb-bound books in the past, for precisely the reason that they lay flat. However, we had feedback from a number of readers (as well as from bookstores) that they considered them less professional ("not quite a real book"), and generally less desirable. We're more than willing to publish our books in comb-bound format if the general consensus is that this is preferable. Please reply by mail if you think this topic is worth addressing. -- Tim O'Reilly (617) 527-4210 O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., Publishers of Nutshell Handbooks 981 Chestnut Street, Newton, MA 02164 UUCP: uunet!ora!tim ARPA: tim@ora.uu.net
klee@daisy.UUCP (Ken Lee) (09/15/88)
In article <137@tityus.UUCP> jim@athsys.uucp (Jim Becker) writes: > I just received my updates to the O'Reilly books, and they appear >to be a top notch job, especially considering the infancy of X windows. >They are professional in nature, yet guide the reader through the material >in an interesting way. I find them to be well laid out and information rich, >and would be hard pressed to program for X windows without them. > Although more detailed and better books will inevitably follow, they >have done an amazing job in the short amount of time they have had to create >a comprehensive guide to understanding and programming X windows. This is beginning to sound like an advertisement. My impression is somewhat different. I have the O'Reilly books for X11R1 and X11R2. I've heard that an X11R3 edition is in the works, but I haven't seen that. I've found that 99% of the material in the O'Reilly books is the same, almost word for word, as the material on the MIT tape. It kind of bugs me that the material is regurgitated in the O'Reilly books with only minimal acknowledgements of the original authors. The O'Reilly X11R1 book is laced with typos, some really obvious, like references to tables that appear on the MIT tape, but not in the O'Reilly book. The X11R2 books are much better, but still contain misleading or biased information. For example, the section on colormaps says: "The only time when you should really need to create a special colormap is when you are doing smooth shading, or similar applications that need many, strangely distributed colors. But if you are doing that, you will probably be on a high-performance workstation, which allow multiple hardware colormaps, which will solve the problem." I wish my boss believed that. On the plus side, the O'Reilly books are formatted a little more nicely than the MIT manuals. I generally turn to the O'Reilly volume 2 (man pages) before I go to the MIT manuals. I still go to the MIT manuals when I suspect the O'Reilly material (often with the X11R1 O'Reilly books, infrequently with the X11R2 books). I never use the O'Reilly volume 1. For X Toolkit stuff, I always go to the MIT manuals, as the O'Reilly books don't include anything from the MIT X Toolkit manuals. Ken Lee Daisy Sytems Corp., Interactive Graphics Tools Dept. -- uucp: {ames!atari, ucbvax!imagen, pyramid, sgi, uunet}!daisy!klee arpanet: daisy!klee@sgi.com or daisy!klee@uunet.uu.net I'm not a tourist, I was born in California.
tim@ora.UUCP (Tim O'Reilly) (09/15/88)
In article <1625@daisy.UUCP>, klee@daisy.UUCP (Ken Lee) writes: > I've found that 99% of the material in the O'Reilly books is the same, almost > word for word, as the material on the MIT tape. It kind of bugs me that the > material is regurgitated in the O'Reilly books with only minimal > acknowledgements of the original authors. The O'Reilly X11R1 book is laced > with typos, some really obvious, like references to tables that appear on the > MIT tape, but not in the O'Reilly book. Your comments regarding errors in our books are not based on the latest edition, which is what was under discussion. The "X11R1 book" hasn't been available from us for 6 months, and was clearly marked as "preliminary." Likewise, the initial cut at R2 was also marked "preliminary." What's more, we offered people an "at cost" upgrade since we knew the books were preliminary! The books have changed considerably since the edition you have apparently used. I have no doubt that there are still errors, omissions and oversights in the books--but there are also many things that are correct in there that were incorrect or misleading in the MIT documentation! As for your comments about unacknowledged material--you are sadly out of date. It is true that the very first edition of the book didn't acknowledge all of the material properly....but it was an evaluation copy provided to people who knew its provenance--a rewrite of the MIT manuals for companies that were developing X products. Once we realized that there was a market for the manual as a book sold to individuals, we corrected that situation. We've responded to your comments on this topic when you flamed on it after reading the first preliminary edition, and what we said then is true now: Volume 2 *is* based closely on the MIT material; its value is in the presentation of that material. We've supplemented the sparse MIT man pages with material from Gettys, Schiefler and Newman, (so that all the information on a given routine can be found in one place) and added a lot of other useful reference material. Volume 1 contains some MIT material, but is chiefly original. All material from standard MIT sources is clearly acknowledged in both books, using standard publishing practices for acknowledgement. -- Tim O'Reilly (617) 527-4210 O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., Publishers of Nutshell Handbooks 981 Chestnut Street, Newton, MA 02164 UUCP: uunet!ora!tim ARPA: tim@ora.uu.net
bdb@becker.UUCP (Bruce Becker) (09/16/88)
In article <1163@ora.UUCP> tim@ora.UUCP (Tim O'Reilly) writes: >> >> [ user complaint about perfect-bound X books. ] >> > We've always done comb-bound >books in the past, for precisely the reason that they lay >flat. However, we had feedback from a number of readers (as >well as from bookstores) that they considered them less >professional ("not quite a real book"), and generally less desirable. > >We're more than willing to publish our books in comb-bound >format if the general consensus is that this is preferable. >-- >Tim O'Reilly (617) 527-4210 >O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., Publishers of Nutshell Handbooks >981 Chestnut Street, Newton, MA 02164 >UUCP: uunet!ora!tim ARPA: tim@ora.uu.net This is a followup to have a small discussion of the merits (or otherwise) of the following variation of comb-binding that is sometimes used nowadays. A couple of things might add to the 'professional' look of comb-bindings - 1). Use wire which looks better & is more durable; 2). Fold the cover-stock over the open end & round the back - this allows a 'spine' to print title info, and the book is shelved 'backwards'. Note that the smaller bulk of wire makes this more feasible than plastic. Cheers, -- Bruce Becker Toronto, Ont. Internet: bdb@becker.UUCP, becker@humvax.UUCP, becker@ziebmef.UUCP BitNet: BECKER@HUMBER.BITNET "Once we got the sun going, the planets were a cinch" -pwzygphphp
paul@torch.UUCP (Paul Andrews) (09/16/88)
Oh come on JW. The O'Reilly manuals are the best I've seen yet, and whilst you may say that it would be difficult to learn X with them I would say it would be impossible to learn X with the generic documentation (if you didn't have access to the sources of X) because of the inaccuracies and confusions. - Paul. All opinions are may own? Really?
dwm@ihlpf.ATT.COM (Meeks) (09/16/88)
In article <1165@ora.UUCP>, tim@ora.UUCP (Tim O'Reilly) writes: > In article <1625@daisy.UUCP>, klee@daisy.UUCP (Ken Lee) writes: > > I've found that 99% of the material in the O'Reilly books is the same, > Your comments regarding errors in our books are not based on ----------------------------- I think we've pretty much beat this horse to death. Could we end this discussion and stop cluttering our desktops's with folklore. --dwm
bzs@encore.UUCP (Barry Shein) (09/16/88)
Just a general comment, some of this flamage bugs me... I've met Tim O'Reilly, and he seems like a very reasonable, capable person. O'Reilly has been, as far as I'm concerned, one of the best publishers of Unix hand books for years now. Their Nutshell Unix handbooks, broken nicely into small, inexpensive topics, are exactly what most new users are asking for, whether their sysadmins realize it (care) or not. If you're not familiar with them but recommend introductory Unix books to people you should probably be shot. If there's anyone in the publishing industry who might turn out, perhaps after a few re-edits, an actually useful handbook that hasn't been pumped up to some outrageous price for unnecessary gloss, it's O'Reilly who would be my candidate, their track record is self-evident. Just look at how many major revisions, as the protocol evolves, he's had to do already, needless to say that's not the road to high profits in the publishing business. Look at some other publisher's works and see how many revisions they're willing to put out to keep up with technical changes in the community (how many of your favorite "C" texts out there have been updated to start to conform to ANSI/C [I can think of one], for example?) Publishing X documents at this early stage is doubtless a risky business as so much of what needs to be said either hasn't been written yet, well thought out by the technical community or is still in flux even at a definition level. I am quite sure, based on all this, that if people simply made their desires known, and there was consensus (and, of course, good sense) I can't imagine it wouldn't get incorporated into future editions (how many of your other publishers read e-mail?) Why people paint their complaints about not liking a particular binding choice (which Tim immediately asked the group for suggestions about) or some such thing as frothing, wild-eyed flames is utterly beyond me. It must be sooo easy for some to just sit in the bleachers and throw peanut shells at the players, I suppose it makes them feel superior or something (hint: being a nit-picky consumer is not equivalent to being a high-quality producer, bitching is easy.) -Barry Shein, ||Encore|| P.S. Needless to say I have no commercial connection with O'Reilly, just a customer who is glad someone is out there trying to get the stuff users need into a convenient form for them.
rich@RICE.EDU (Richard Murphey) (09/17/88)
Well said Barry! O'Reilly seems to treat his readers much more gently than he is being treated here. rich Richard Murphey (713) 527-8101 X3649 ECE Dept Rice U Box1892 Hou,TX 77251 rich@rice.edu crm%rice (disclaimer)
jw@pan.UUCP (Jamie Watson) (09/19/88)
I think I started this discussion of the O'Reilly X books. I'm not sure that I would call my posting "wild-eyed frothing", but I did say that I was not thrilled with the books. On further reflection, and after seeing some of what has subsequently been posted, I would like to make a few more comments. First, I hope that it was clear from my first posting that I don't find these books to be terrible. I have some problems with the author's depth of understanding of the subject matter. But in general I agree with Barry Shein's comment; considering the state of the X Window System right now, O'Reilly has done a commendable job of getting something that is fairly useful out already. Another thought occured to me when I was thinking about these being the very first X books available. I think the first commercial Unix book was Yates & Thomas', and compared to that the O'Reilly X books are real masterpieces. We should all be thankful that Jean Yates didn't decide to write an X book or two... Finally, I would imagine that O'Reilly has made an admirable gesture in upgrading the first edition for only $15; they could have stuck people for a lot more than that it they had wanted to. My overall opinion is that the first volume is marginally useful for an X novice, but I doubt that it would be of tremendous use to anyone who has been working with X for very long. The second volume would be worth the price of the pair all by itself, if they would just change the blasted binding... jw
oj@apollo.COM (Ellis Oliver Jones) (09/21/88)
Like several others, I've seen Adrian Nye's books evolve from early drafts to their present finished form. I think the finished product is very well done. It certainly meets the need of making Xlib accessible to a larger audience, and I hope it'll contribute substantially to the success of X. Adrian Nye and Tim O'Reilly took a risk by releasing the early versions: problems in beta can generate bad reviews and cut into the success of the product. However, they took the risk because they wanted (like many others) to do their part to see X succeed. Now it's time for people to READ these and other :-) books, and WRITE some really creative and useful application software (and I don't mean YAWM -- Yet Another Window Manager!) /Ollie Jones (speaking for myself, not necessarily for Apollo Computer, Inc.) (I don't have any financial stake in O'Reilly's success; some even say I'm their competitor.)