Hi Everyone....
I'm reluctant to purchase a book as a reference as I
understand that somethings are not set in concrete yet.
With the cost of books these days I find it hard to justify
purchasing them only to find that it hasn't answered my questions.
Well, at least you admit it. I think there are a lot of other people who
ask questions on this list as their first point of call rather than as a
last resort, judging by the way they invent random syntax in the hope
that it might work.
Well, it was becoming random syntax in the end, and the truth is I'm
still not very clear on how it all works, I think I have got this far
only by pure luck than from real knowledge and understanding. :)
For my part, the cost of learning a language by trial and error is
orders of magnitude greater than the cost of buying a book. Especially
when you take in to account the cost to other people of answering your
questions (or deciding not to).
That's a very fair and valid point, and I agree. I'm not averse to
buying books, just ask my wife, but at some point I have to contrain
the constant drain on the wallet text books bring about.
At the risk of being booed and jeered out of the list, I feel I should
state my reasons for not buying a book on the subject just yet.
I'm doing XML currently as a postgrad, there has been no text listed
for the subject as the lecturer doesn't feel there is a book that
covers the subject matter of XML (in it's broadest sence ) well
enough. A friend
of mine has XML in a nutshell which has been helpful to a point, but
as it is a nutshell book, it obviously doesn't have indepth examples.
Even the Formatting Objects stuff left us a bit unsure.
Unlike OOP and databases where there are a magnitude of texts, as well
as the knowledge being more mature, XML on the other hand could lead
us to purchasing texts on XSL, xpath and xpointer, XML etc etc.
The difficulty I have is that I don't intend to persue XML much after
completing the subject, since I have other subjects to complete over
the next 12 months, I doubt it will be until then before I look again
toward persuing subject matter that interests me.
And while I had struggled with XML as just another fad technology the
snake oil salesmen were flogging to the business community becuase the
web is passe', so web services and XML, SOAP are the new way to do
business... I have become not so much an advocate of XML, but I can
see the light...
One other reason I do subscribe to mailing lists, is to see if authors
are also on them... Jeni Tenison is already one name I knew as an
author, and was surprised to see actively involved, hence a book with
her name on it would be high on my purchasing list.
I appreciate also that people have to give up their time to reply,
hence as a last resort I sent a message to the list. I still doubt
that having a book in my hands would have made any difference to me
solving this problem alone... just as searching google with a query
like "xsl capture text around node" wouldn't give me a reasonable
result set. Asking using a more human interface tends to work better
becuase simply, if I'm being too vague, humans at least have some
idea of what the problem set may be or at least ask pertenant
questions of the poster.
Anyway... I'll continue to lurk on the list. It has already proven to
be more of a resource than the last 3 months of lectures and labs have
and I have only been subscribed 24 hours.
Regards,
Pete.
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