Since we're all throwing book titles around, you might be interested
in _my_ book that just entered MEAP. :)  It's basically what you
describe.

Ruby in Practice
http://www.manning.com/mcanally

--Jeremy

On 10/7/07, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb / cesmail.net> wrote:
> Chad Perrin wrote:
> > 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.
> >
> I can do "gem list --remote" and get a listing of the gems and brief
> descriptions -- good enough to tell me whether I want to learn about
> them or not. And as far as "common tasks" are concerned, I think that's
> covered adequately by "The Ruby Way" and "Ruby Cookbook".
>
> What *I* want is a book on Cerberus, a book on RSpec, a book on
> Selenium, Watir/Firewatir, etc. I know *what* these things can do, and I
> want to know how to get started doing them without having to decode RDoc
> and ri files!
>
>


-- 
http://www.jeremymcanally.com/

My books:
Ruby in Practice
http://www.manning.com/mcanally/

My free Ruby e-book
http://www.humblelittlerubybook.com/

My blogs:
http://www.mrneighborly.com/
http://www.rubyinpractice.com/