On Monday, 21 October 2002 at 11:12:30 +0900, Phil Tomson wrote:
> A while back in the middle of a long thread about Ruby documentation 
> someone (forget who) mentioned the idea about creating a collaborative 
> Ruby book.  The idea, if I recall correctly, was that those who chose to 
> participate would be given CVS access to a repository that contains the 
> documents in docbook format.  As each participant has time/information the 
> participant writes a section of the book.  Others may come along and 
> correct the section.  And still others might feel inclined to add to a 
> particular section.
> 
> This would be different from the wiki approach in that at the end of this 
> collaborative process we would actually have a book that is publishable.
> 
> This seems like an excellent idea.  Sometimes I think I'd like to write a 
> book, but then I become convinced that the task is just too daunting 
> especially compared to the monetary rewards.  This idea would let people 
> contribute small parts of a book.
> 
> It seems like the place to start would be with a proposed list of chapters 
> and then work down to smaller subsections of chapters.

Yes, I agree. Especially since some of us don't have the 1500 hrs
that it takes to write a good book.

I have a some proposals I would like to see published:

 1) Building Websites with Ruby
      Could include mod_ruby, ruby-session, fastcgi, webrick
      narf, pagetemplate, mail filtering, etc, etc, ...
 2) Ruby FAQ
      Much like the C++ FAQ. Also include the things from
      the 'beginner should know' list that has been going around.
 3) Ruby by Example
      Basically a collection of all the cool things we read
      about on ruby-talk. (aka, a verbose version of ts utterances.) :)

-- 
Jim Freeze