On Mon, Oct 08, 2007 at 08:31:54AM +0900, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> John Joyce wrote:
> >Far better suggestion is what topics to write books and chapters about!
> >
> >I suggest a GUI focused Ruby book that covers Qt, Tk, Wx, etc...
> >A game / graphics focused Ruby book... (could easily be integrated or 
> >connected with the GUI book)
> >A whole host of Ruby topics could be entire books based on one or two 
> >classes or modules or gems.
> >What we have enough of are books that are broad but not deep.
> >As an example: Pro ActiveRecord is a nice one, but an Expert 
> >ActiveRecord would be better...
> >
> >Lots of topics to suggest.
> 
> Agreed ... then again, there are some other good books that don't even 
> exist:
> 
> "Up and Running with Nitro and Og"
> "Up and Running with Iowa"
> "Pragmatic RSpec" (although I hear that's due in beta by the end of the 
> year)
> "ZenTest and Heckle Primer"
> "Selenium ..."
> "Watir ..."
> "Cerberus ..."
> 
> There are some things Ruby has -- like Rails, Nitro, Iowa, RSpec, 
> ZenTest, Heckle and many others -- that don't exist in the Perl world. 
> So you can't say, as you can with Ruby/Tk, "Go learn from the O'Reilly 
> Perl/Tk book and just translate the syntax from Perl to Ruby and you'll 
> be on the air".
> 
> I think the real problem is not that every book on Ruby tells you how to 
> install it. The real problem is that there doesn't seem to be an actual 
> paid market for much beyond books about Rails and core Ruby. The other 
> good stuff, like the things I've listed above, just isn't getting seen.
> 
> Then again, as a potential author, I'm not going to spend any time 
> writing about things I don't use. So don't look to me for a Nitro or 
> Iowa book, or a book about everything you wanted to know about Ruby on 
> Windows systems. :)

Actually, as a first step in that direction a "common useful libraries"
book -- perhaps called "prospecting for gems", or something cleverer --
would be excellent.  I don't mean a listing: I mean an honest-to-goodness
tutorial/primer on a bunch of great libraries/modules for common tasks.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
McCloctnick the Lucid: "The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your
time waving your hands and hopping when a rock or a club will do."