Graham Ashton <mailto:[email protected]> 16/09/2013 09:33Yeah, I picked POODA up in Waterstones the other day and nearly broke with my electronic-format-only rule. Then I saw the paper (it's slightly shiny - nowhere near as nice as the stuff in an O'Reilly book), the font, and the gratuitous colour and decided against it. Funny what you get used to.
I notice your gravatar is strictly bw too =]
I'm glad GOOS isn't the same, or I wouldn't read it. Mind you, it's in nice crisp black and white and I still haven't read it...Ash Moran <mailto:[email protected]> 16/09/2013 09:26POODA[1] is printed in colour and has syntax-highlighted code examples. Apparently Nat Pryce wanted colour code snippets in GOOS[2] but Addison-Wesley wouldn't let him. (Shame really.)Ash[1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Practical-Object-Oriented-Design-Ruby/dp/0321721330/ [2] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Growing-Object-Oriented-Software-Guided-Signature/dp/0321503627/stephen horne <mailto:[email protected]> 15/09/2013 12:45Maybe I'm buying the wrong books, but I've yet to read one - PDF, Kindle or print - that has syntax highlighting. The one I just read on Kindle on my computer had colour images, but still full pages of black code. Seems like a low-hanging fruit to me so I find it quite annoying when it makes me go dizzy flicking between the screens.Paul Robinson <mailto:[email protected]> 15/09/2013 11:20Source code heavy stuff I want neither on my Kindle or on paper but on screen. Syntax-highlighted (because all the code I work with is so my brain is better wired to comprehend it), and possibly cut/paste-able so I can play with the examples a little and try different things.Buying the eBook from O'Reilly, pragprog.com or Amazon and then being able to get it on-screen is therefore quite useful. You're not tied to the device - I like the device for being able to carry a large number of volumes for reference though.However, most decent "tech" books I read these days are source-code light and discussion-strong: I stopped needing to read Sams "... in 24 hours" code-tutorial style books a while back, and I don't think anybody reads books like GOOS whilst trying to really concentrate on the source code are they? For that stuff, I don't feel I need the 1.5kgs of dead tree cluttering up the place either.I also think the design of most paper books in this space is very poor as well. If a book does have a lot of source code in it and is expecting you to sit it next to a keyboard, why is it perfect bound? Why isn't it ring-bound? Cost plays a part, but mostly because bookshops (remember those?), refuse to carry ring-bound books as the display space for them is too high.I don't like publishers making design decisions for the product based on sales need rather than the needs of a reader.There's a *lot* of room for innovation and improvement in this space in both paper and digital formats. I'm still surprised nobody has leveraged the iBook format for tech books properly or at length as well, as it happens.However I am absolutely astonished at the regression that O'Reilly, Sams and Wrox have pushed in the tech books: I had hoped the Head First formats might just break them out of the dearth they were in, but no, we still have the same format for the most part we had in the early 1990s for most topics. Just... awful.doug livesey <mailto:[email protected]> 15/09/2013 09:35I adore my kindle (might get a paperwhite for christmas), but I find it not nearly good enough for most code books. Don't get me wrong, I still buy them for it, as it's cheaper and more convenient to carry around, but I find code examples wrapped too much, and the lack of colour is a real disadvantage, too. Technical books that I really need to study & grok, I buy the paper copies, sometimes after confirming that the investment will be worth it on the kindle (although not often -- that would be silly).--You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NWRUG" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected].To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nwrug-members. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
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