On August 10, 1999 at 09:17, David Buckle wrote:
For what its worth,
Maybe it's time for someone (EWH?) to write/publish an O'Reilly butterfly boo
k.
At least they would not have figure out what animal to put on it.
It sure seems like there are a lot of us around who use/abuse the MHonArc cod
e.
I'm not very knowledgable on how O'Reilly decides which books are
worth writing. I'm sure they get suggestions all the time. I have
had correspondance with O'Reilly folks on other topics (like Perl),
but such topics definitely had potentially good sized audience.
Personally, I am unsure if MHonArc has that user mass to devote a
an entire book for it. However, it could be applicable in a book
with a related topic. For example, the "Mailing Lists" book may
be appropriate to have a section. I have not looked into the
"Mailing Lists" book in detail, but I figure it would be a good
book to contain several free software packages related to mailing
lists: Majordomo, Procmail, MHonArc.
(Note, I am aware of a Procmail book in the works, but I am unsure
on its status.)
It would be nice
to have a sort of how-to reference for a beginning user.
I agree.
I would be in the market for several copies for our lab and one for
myself. I wonder how many think its a waste of time.
Suggest something to O'Reilly. I am doing talk on MHonArc at the
O'Reilly Open Source Conference later this month, but I had no plans to
discuss any book deals. I am guessing that O'Reilly would have to
believe that such a book could sell X number of copies to justify
commissioning the work for it.
--ewh
P.S. Historical Note: MHonArc docs used to contain a PostScript
version for easy printing. However, when I loss access to FrameMaker,
the source for the docs became HTML. Therefore, I did not have to rely
on any special tools to maintain the documentation. I believe the last
time PostScript was included, was in v1.2.3.
