Ryan Leavengood wrote:
> James Britt wrote:
> 
>>Hence the five or so Rails books due this summer.
> 
> 
> Most people prefer paper to a computer monitor, and since Rails has become
> so buzzworthy it makes it tempting for an author to write about it to make
> some money.

Oh, I'm sure there's some money to be made,  but the books are not 
simply going to reprint the current on-line documentation, because they 
would be insufficient.

My experience with the current available Rails documentation is often 
frustrating.  Now, having written a fair amount of documentation on 
assorted topics, I know there is no way to please everybody, so in sense 
the goal of complete docs is a pipe dream because somebody somewhere 
either has a yet another question you never imagined, or someone just 
can't follow your style of explanation.

But in the Rails case, I think the code has outpaced the docs, and the 
examples at times do not match what I'm trying to do.

It's a hard task. Ruby is, what, 12 years old, and it still doesn't have 
complete docs.  I'm impressed with what docs there are for Rails, but I 
take issue with the suggestion that these docs are complete.

> 
> By your argument everything that has several books about it should be hard
> to use and/or not well documented. Yet we have books on iPods, Mac OS X,
> Tivos and many others things that are considered pinnacles of user
> interface design.

Yet people still need books to do certain things.  Methinks something is 
missing someplace.

Yes, #{many} books == major shortcoming is simplistic.  But not 
completely off the mark.



James