7stud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'm curious, have you tried _Python for Dummies_? > > No, I haven't. Unfortunately, I don't ever consider Dummies books. > That type of marketing appeals to certain people and not others. I'm > one of the others. I'll definitely take a look at it the next time > I'm in the bookstore.
Aahz's book is really good, in my opinion. So are many others in the "for Dummies" series that I've had occasion to try (including the one with the delightfully unintended pun in its title, "Bridge for Dummies": despite the title it applies to declarers and defenders just as well:-). Judging a book by its cover (and, by extension, by how its publisher markets a series) is the proverbial epitome of superficiality. > >We didn't wait for Wiley to offer, we simply insisted on providing a > >list of index terms. > > It's nice to hear about an author who cares enough about the end > product that bears their name to insist on quality. I'm so tired of > hearing authors whine that the publisher screwed up the book. Oh, I'm SO awfully sorry to add to your tiredness! But the "whining" that so saps your energy is a simple statement of fact, at least in my case -- my publisher just didn't allow me sensible options for providing the index myself. Oh, I could have "provided a list of index terms", separate and floating in a vacuum (but "genexps" is in the index anyway, as is "generator expressions":-), but there was no way I could do it _right_, simply tying each index term to all the pages/page-ranges it should point to by including suitable tags in my manuscript. I won't tire you further with a tirade about my unpleasant tools experiences with both the Cookbook and the Nutshell, but they're a good part of what's holding me back from writing another book with the same publisher (including a third edition of either). I believe (and it seems the generally good reviews of the book support me in this) that the Python community is better off with a Nutshell with an imperfect index than it would be with no Nutshell at all, which would likely be the case if I had "insisted on quality" as you apparently would have preferred. Alex -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
