On 1 November 2010 08:06, Peter Jeremy <peterjer...@acm.org> wrote: > On 2010-Oct-30 20:07:53 +1100, Minh Nguyen <nguyenmi...@gmail.com> wrote: >>Let me explain why I agreed to be a technical reviewer of the proposed >>book on Sage. Unless the Sage project has a dedicated documentation >>team, or people in the Sage community decide to increase their >>documentation output, we won't see any significant improvement in the >>near future on the current state of documentation on Sage. Software >>developers need to move beyond the mantra, "The documentation is in >>the source code" and learn to be professional communicators, not just >>professional programmers. A person may be a brilliant programmer, but >>without sound communication skills (including writing skills) it can >>prove very difficult for other people to understand and maintain their >>code. > > I completely agree with Minh here. Maybe some of the academics here > could try and drum up some interest within their English, Journalism > or similar faculties - somewhere there must be some students who are > budding documentation writers looking for a project. > > And I also agree that a professionally produced book is much easier > to read than a PDF or website. > > -- > Peter Jeremy
The fact the book is available free in French, might make it less attractive to a publisher to publish it. Of course there are books that are both free and can be purchased, but it must put some publishers off. But personally I have no problems with paying for a decent book. I guess if you are a student on little income, free is more attractive. But for me, the ability to read in bed, read on a train, beats using a computer or printing out a pdf. Books published by decent publishers give more credibility than Lulu or other vanity press publishers. I'm a bit puzzled the author of this book is unknown in the Sage community. But I'm sure Minh will do an excellent job of proof reading this. Dave Dave -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
