[ADV] Want to Write a Book?

ruby-talk
1

Gentle Ruby folk:

I'm hoping to launch a new series of books from The Pragmatic Bookshelf. "Facets of Ruby" will a a set of small, focussed, and technical books about different aspects of Ruby. And I'm looking for folks to write them!

I have no fixed ideas on the titles, but to give you an idea of the kinds of things I'm looking for, you might well see books come out named something like:

   * Writing Ruby Extensions
   * Using Ruby in the Semantic Web
   * Creating E-Commerce Sites using Rails
   * Rapid Application Development with Iowa
   * Migrating from Java to Ruby

The intent is to create a series of books with a deeply practical focus. We won't just document APIs. Instead, we want to show how to get _value_ from those APIs---how to solve real-world problems. The books will probably be 100-250 pages long, and full of code.

To do this, I'm hoping to attract the best and the brightest--the folks who know. Which is why I'm posting the message to this list.

If you've always fancied writing a book on some aspect of Ruby, now's your chance. When you work with us, you'll get to use a tool chain that's the envy of the publishing industry in an extremely agile production environment. We'll sell the books (in paper and PDF form) off our web site, and the world-class O'Reilly team will distribute the physical books to books stores and online retailers world-wide. Our royalty scheme is simple, transparent, and generous.

You won't get rich--that's pretty much impossible in the technical book market. But we'll have fun, and hopefully build a world-class resource for the growing Ruby community.

If you're interested, send me an e-mail at 'mailto:facets-of-ruby@pragprog.com' containing a single paragraph summary of the book you want to write. If we want to take a particular project further, we'll then ask for an outline and a short extract from the book. If everything works out, we'll then go on to write a book.

Just to get the ball rolling, I'm just starting to write the second book in the series (if you count PickAxe II as the first)---I'm working on an introduction to Rails.

Cheers

Dave

2

hi Dave

although I lack the time to write
I will definitely buy the books !!

I am currently reading Pickaxe 2 and it
is the best book about a Programming language
I have ever read (and I have read a lot !)

a book on Rails would be great. I think
Rails will be Ruby's killer application. so a book
would be needed.

another Idea for a book would be
"Effective Ruby" in the style of the
"Effective C++/ Perl / Java, / J2EE " books
form Addison-Wesley.

thanks for your effort.

regards

Markus

Dave Thomas wrote:

···

Gentle Ruby folk:

I'm hoping to launch a new series of books from The Pragmatic
Bookshelf. "Facets of Ruby" will a a set of small, focussed, and
technical books about different aspects of Ruby. And I'm looking for
folks to write them!

I have no fixed ideas on the titles, but to give you an idea of the
kinds of things I'm looking for, you might well see books come out
named something like:

   * Writing Ruby Extensions
   * Using Ruby in the Semantic Web
   * Creating E-Commerce Sites using Rails
   * Rapid Application Development with Iowa
   * Migrating from Java to Ruby

The intent is to create a series of books with a deeply practical
focus. We won't just document APIs. Instead, we want to show how to get
_value_ from those APIs---how to solve real-world problems. The books
will probably be 100-250 pages long, and full of code.

To do this, I'm hoping to attract the best and the brightest--the folks
who know. Which is why I'm posting the message to this list.

If you've always fancied writing a book on some aspect of Ruby, now's
your chance. When you work with us, you'll get to use a tool chain
that's the envy of the publishing industry in an extremely agile
production environment. We'll sell the books (in paper and PDF form)
off our web site, and the world-class O'Reilly team will distribute the
physical books to books stores and online retailers world-wide. Our
royalty scheme is simple, transparent, and generous.

You won't get rich--that's pretty much impossible in the technical book
market. But we'll have fun, and hopefully build a world-class resource
for the growing Ruby community.

If you're interested, send me an e-mail at
'mailto:facets-of-ruby@pragprog.com' containing a single paragraph
summary of the book you want to write. If we want to take a particular
project further, we'll then ask for an outline and a short extract from
the book. If everything works out, we'll then go on to write a book.

Just to get the ball rolling, I'm just starting to write the second
book in the series (if you count PickAxe II as the first)---I'm working
on an introduction to Rails.

Cheers

Dave

3

  * Using Ruby in the Semantic Web

I want this!

martinus

4

I KNEW IT ! :))

···

Dave Thomas <dave@pragprog.com> wrote:

I'm working on an introduction to Rails.

--
Luc Heinrich - lucsky@mac.com

5

While I lack the chops to write it (which is why I want it so badly),
I'd love to see a book on Inversion of Control/Dependency Injection
with Needle.

-pate

···

On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 10:52:18 +0900, Dave Thomas <dave@pragprog.com> wrote:

Gentle Ruby folk:

I'm hoping to launch a new series of books from The Pragmatic
Bookshelf. "Facets of Ruby" will a a set of small, focussed, and
technical books about different aspects of Ruby. And I'm looking for
folks to write them!

I have no fixed ideas on the titles, but to give you an idea of the
kinds of things I'm looking for, you might well see books come out
named something like:

   * Writing Ruby Extensions
   * Using Ruby in the Semantic Web
   * Creating E-Commerce Sites using Rails
   * Rapid Application Development with Iowa
   * Migrating from Java to Ruby

The intent is to create a series of books with a deeply practical
focus. We won't just document APIs. Instead, we want to show how to get
_value_ from those APIs---how to solve real-world problems. The books
will probably be 100-250 pages long, and full of code.

To do this, I'm hoping to attract the best and the brightest--the folks
who know. Which is why I'm posting the message to this list.

If you've always fancied writing a book on some aspect of Ruby, now's
your chance. When you work with us, you'll get to use a tool chain
that's the envy of the publishing industry in an extremely agile
production environment. We'll sell the books (in paper and PDF form)
off our web site, and the world-class O'Reilly team will distribute the
physical books to books stores and online retailers world-wide. Our
royalty scheme is simple, transparent, and generous.

You won't get rich--that's pretty much impossible in the technical book
market. But we'll have fun, and hopefully build a world-class resource
for the growing Ruby community.

If you're interested, send me an e-mail at
'mailto:facets-of-ruby@pragprog.com' containing a single paragraph
summary of the book you want to write. If we want to take a particular
project further, we'll then ask for an outline and a short extract from
the book. If everything works out, we'll then go on to write a book.

Just to get the ball rolling, I'm just starting to write the second
book in the series (if you count PickAxe II as the first)---I'm working
on an introduction to Rails.

Cheers

Dave

6

[snip]

   * Writing Ruby Extensions

I think im interested in contributing to the Regexp book. I have some
insight into regexps.

···

On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 10:52:18 +0900, Dave Thomas <dave@pragprog.com> wrote:

--
Simon Strandgaard

7

On Fri, Dec 10, 2004 at 10:52:18AM +0900, Dave Thomas scribed:

I have no fixed ideas on the titles, but to give you an idea of the
kinds of things I'm looking for, you might well see books come out
named something like:

  * Writing Ruby Extensions
  * Using Ruby in the Semantic Web
  * Creating E-Commerce Sites using Rails
  * Rapid Application Development with Iowa
  * Migrating from Java to Ruby

A book I wish I had the time to write, but I'm swamped:

  Using Ruby in Scientific Applications
   - Numerical applications
   - Analysis
   - Data Acquisition
   - Control
   - Visualization
   - Data archiving and retrieval

I haven't had a chance to play with the acquisition and control
aspects yet, so I don't actually know what would go into this book
-- but I really wish I already had it on my bookshelf. Perhaps it
would turn into a giant users manual for NArray, but I think there's
a lot more. I promise to buy copies and hand them to my colleagues
and students if someone writes it. :wink:

  -Dave

···

--
work: dga@lcs.mit.edu me: dga@pobox.com
      MIT Laboratory for Computer Science http://www.angio.net/

8

I believe I heard Matz stating that C extension API is not part of the
language itself, and as such it is expected to change in possibly
incompatible ways. Would not be than a safer bet sticking with SWIG for
interfacing, as a more _softer_ layer? I know, that would not be a Ruby
book :frowning:

···

--
Dee Zsombor

9

Then write it!

It has several advantages:
- You are the first to read it.
- You can get the author to make changes.
- You get a lot of work with almost no pay.
- You get a tremendous amount of relief once the thing is out of your
  hands.

Anybody up for collaboration on the RAD-IOWA book?

s.

···

On 10 Dec 2004 00:36:47 -0800, martinus <martin.ankerl@gmail.com> wrote:

  * Using Ruby in the Semantic Web

I want this!

10

  Using Ruby in Scientific Applications
   - Numerical applications
   - Analysis
   - Data Acquisition
   - Control
   - Visualization
   - Data archiving and retrieval

yes, yes. it'd be lovely.

Cameron

11

David G. Andersen wrote:

A book I wish I had the time to write, but I'm swamped:

  Using Ruby in Scientific Applications
   - Numerical applications
   - Analysis
   - Data Acquisition - Control
   - Visualization - Data archiving and retrieval
I haven't had a chance to play with the acquisition and control
aspects yet, so I don't actually know what would go into this book
-- but I really wish I already had it on my bookshelf.

I have a proposal in to IBM for an article for developerWorks on "Data Acqusition with Linux, Comedi, SWIG, and Ruby. They said to check back if I hadn't heard from the Linux editor in four weeks. (Why they need more than ten minutes to accept a free article is another question. On the other hand, the same topic was rejected for OSCON last year, so maybe you and I are the only ones interested....)

Perhaps it
would turn into a giant users manual for NArray, but I think there's
a lot more. I promise to buy copies and hand them to my colleagues
and students if someone writes it. :wink:

Have you seen ruby-gsl? Powerful stuff.

Steve

12

David G. Andersen wrote:

On Fri, Dec 10, 2004 at 10:52:18AM +0900, Dave Thomas scribed:

I have no fixed ideas on the titles, but to give you an idea of the kinds of things I'm looking for, you might well see books come out named something like:

* Writing Ruby Extensions
* Using Ruby in the Semantic Web
* Creating E-Commerce Sites using Rails
* Rapid Application Development with Iowa
* Migrating from Java to Ruby

A book I wish I had the time to write, but I'm swamped:

  Using Ruby in Scientific Applications
   - Numerical applications
   - Analysis
   - Data Acquisition - Control
   - Visualization - Data archiving and retrieval
I haven't had a chance to play with the acquisition and control
aspects yet, so I don't actually know what would go into this book
-- but I really wish I already had it on my bookshelf. Perhaps it
would turn into a giant users manual for NArray, but I think there's
a lot more. I promise to buy copies and hand them to my colleagues
and students if someone writes it. :wink:

  -Dave

I'd be interested in reading that book, and maybe helping out with it. Some more chapters of this hypothetical book that would be nice to have:

   - Simulation, modeling, random number generation
   - Interfacing with other tools: gnuplot, Matlab, Excel, R, etc.
   - Using ruby efficiently: extensions, mmap, narray
   - Crafting domain-specific sublanguages for scientific apps
   - Ruby and distributed/parallel processing
   - Managing legacy C and Fortran code
   - Ruby in a real-time environment?

Some folks on this list (Ara Howard and Bil Kleb come to mind) are eminently qualified to write on those topics.

13

I wouldn't mind seeing that either :slight_smile:

martin

···

David G. Andersen <dga@lcs.mit.edu> wrote:

-- but I really wish I already had it on my bookshelf. Perhaps it
would turn into a giant users manual for NArray, but I think there's

14

Although it may change, a good book on ruby (the implementation)
internals has yet to be written in or translated to English. I would
love to see a version of the black book (Ruby Hacker's Guide) that I
could use more easily.

Brian M.

···

On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 05:17:12 +0900, Dee.Zsombor@freemail.hu <Dee.Zsombor@freemail.hu> wrote:

I believe I heard Matz stating that C extension API is not part of the
language itself, and as such it is expected to change in possibly
incompatible ways. Would not be than a safer bet sticking with SWIG for
interfacing, as a more _softer_ layer? I know, that would not be a Ruby
book :frowning:

--
Dee Zsombor

15

David G. Andersen wrote:

A book I wish I had the time to write, but I'm swamped:

  Using Ruby in Scientific Applications
   - Numerical applications
   - Analysis
   - Data Acquisition - Control
   - Visualization - Data archiving and retrieval

Maybe we should start a wiki and see where it goes. I'll contribute something about the data acquisition work I've done with Comedi and Ruby.

Steve

16

With my current knowledge about semantic web, i could not even write a
leaflet.

martinus

17

Stefan Schmiedl wrote:

* Using Ruby in the Semantic Web

I want this!

Then write it!

It has several advantages:
- You are the first to read it.
- You can get the author to make changes.
- You get a lot of work with almost no pay.
- You get a tremendous amount of relief once the thing is out of your
  hands.

Anybody up for collaboration on the RAD-IOWA book?

Stefan, did you have taken a look at Wee? Or are you using IOWA due to it's templating engine? Wee is much more like the current Seaside by Avi Bryant, but not a plain port thereof. It's still in development, currently I'm mostly on documenting it:

http://www.ntecs.de/viewcvs/viewcvs/*checkout*/Wee/branches/dev/doc/rdoc/index.html?rev=363

And someone mentioned that he's porting Mewa (http://www.adrian-lienhard.ch/files/mewa.pdf\) over to Ruby/Wee.

I'm currently further on extracting and cleaning up the core of Wee, which is independent of HTTP and HTML, and includes only the component logic (the session logic is pretty minimal). Templating is 100% choosable, but it comes with a programmatical HTML generation API.
Lot's of parts of the source is now very clean, and all together it's 1600 LoC (600 for the core where near to 50% is documention)... And all memory holes have been fixed.

Regards,

   Michael

···

On 10 Dec 2004 00:36:47 -0800, > martinus <martin.ankerl@gmail.com> wrote:

18

>
> Using Ruby in Scientific Applications
> - Numerical applications
> - Analysis
> - Data Acquisition
> - Control
> - Visualization
> - Data archiving and retrieval

  - Simulation, modeling, random number generation
  - Interfacing with other tools: gnuplot, Matlab, Excel, R, etc.
  - Using ruby efficiently: extensions, mmap, narray
  - Crafting domain-specific sublanguages for scientific apps
  - Ruby and distributed/parallel processing
  - Managing legacy C and Fortran code
  - Ruby in a real-time environment?

Steven Jenkins wrote:

"Data Acqusition with Linux, Comedi, SWIG, and Ruby."
[...] ruby-gsl

Steven's point about SWIG is well integrated into such a book,
and goes hand in hand with Joel's "Interfacing" and "Managing"
points.

I just looked at ruby-gsl; hadn't seen it before, but I _like_ it -
thanks, Steven!
Very nice, intuitive, and seems to behave in the way I'd expect
it to for simple things like vector and matrix manipulation.
It has one nice answer to the random number generation point
above, though I suspect there are others.
(Note that FreeBSD's "ruby-gsl" port is actually Ruby/GSL,
not the similarly named "ruby-gsl" project)

There's also the Lapack interface, which I haven't peeked at
lately.

So putting those all together and shaking a bit to get a book
that we'd all really like to have, hopefully. :wink:

   - Numerical applications
     - Variable precision math in Ruby
        * BigDecimal, GMP, ??
     - Simulation, modeling, random number generation
   - Analysis
      - Statistics
        : NArray, GSL, ??
   - Data Acquisition and Control
     - Comedi
     - Dealing with GPIB
   - Visualization and plotting
      - Gnuplot / ploticus / etc.
      - NImage
      - gd
      - Something that differentiates between generating
        images for publication vs. immediate UI images vs.
        dynamic images for the web
   - Data archiving and retrieval
      - Local data
      - Compressed data
      - Databases
   - Interfacing with other tools
      - "Why SWIG is your friend". :wink:
      - Matlab, Excel, R, etc.
      - Managing legacy C and Fortran
   - Optimization and Speed
      - C extensions
      - MMap and other cool tricks
   - Distributed computing and parallel processing
   - Crafting domain-specific sublanguages for scientific apps
   - Ruby in a real-time environment?

···

On Sun, Dec 12, 2004 at 03:03:44PM +0900, Joel VanderWerf scribed: > David G. Andersen wrote:

19

+1 From me

···

On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 15:03:44 +0900 Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@PATH.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:

David G. Andersen wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 10, 2004 at 10:52:18AM +0900, Dave Thomas scribed:
>
>>I have no fixed ideas on the titles, but to give you an idea of the
>>kinds of things I'm looking for, you might well see books come out
>>named something like:
>>
>> * Writing Ruby Extensions
>> * Using Ruby in the Semantic Web
>> * Creating E-Commerce Sites using Rails
>> * Rapid Application Development with Iowa
>> * Migrating from Java to Ruby
>
>
> A book I wish I had the time to write, but I'm swamped:
>
> Using Ruby in Scientific Applications
> - Numerical applications
> - Analysis
> - Data Acquisition
> - Control
> - Visualization
> - Data archiving and retrieval
>
> I haven't had a chance to play with the acquisition and control
> aspects yet, so I don't actually know what would go into this book
> -- but I really wish I already had it on my bookshelf. Perhaps it
> would turn into a giant users manual for NArray, but I think there's
> a lot more. I promise to buy copies and hand them to my colleagues
> and students if someone writes it. :wink:
>
> -Dave
>

I'd be interested in reading that book, and maybe helping out with it.
Some more chapters of this hypothetical book that would be nice to have:

   - Simulation, modeling, random number generation
   - Interfacing with other tools: gnuplot, Matlab, Excel, R, etc.
   - Using ruby efficiently: extensions, mmap, narray
   - Crafting domain-specific sublanguages for scientific apps
   - Ruby and distributed/parallel processing
   - Managing legacy C and Fortran code
   - Ruby in a real-time environment?

Some folks on this list (Ara Howard and Bil Kleb come to mind) are
eminently qualified to write on those topics.

--
Brian Schröder
http://www.brian-schroeder.de/

20

David G. Andersen wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 10, 2004 at 10:52:18AM +0900, Dave Thomas scribed:
>

...

> A book I wish I had the time to write, but I'm swamped:
>
> Using Ruby in Scientific Applications
> - Numerical applications
> - Analysis
> - Data Acquisition
> - Control
> - Visualization
> - Data archiving and retrieval
>
> I haven't had a chance to play with the acquisition and control
> aspects yet, so I don't actually know what would go into this book
> -- but I really wish I already had it on my bookshelf. Perhaps it
> would turn into a giant users manual for NArray, but I think there's
> a lot more. I promise to buy copies and hand them to my colleagues
> and students if someone writes it. :wink:
>
> -Dave
>

I'd be interested in reading that book, and maybe helping out with it.
Some more chapters of this hypothetical book that would be nice to have:

   - Simulation, modeling, random number generation
   - Interfacing with other tools: gnuplot, Matlab, Excel, R, etc.
   - Using ruby efficiently: extensions, mmap, narray
   - Crafting domain-specific sublanguages for scientific apps
   - Ruby and distributed/parallel processing
   - Managing legacy C and Fortran code
   - Ruby in a real-time environment?

Some folks on this list (Ara Howard and Bil Kleb come to mind) are
eminently qualified to write on those topics.

I'd really like to read this book - a year ago. Seriously, this would
be a great book that I would definitely buy. A lot of the momentum
around Ruby tends to be related to the web, it would be great for Ruby
to have momentum also for scientific / numerical tasks, similar to
Python for example.

Matt

···

On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 15:03:44 +0900, Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@path.berkeley.edu> wrote: