Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: "waldschrotts guide to nifty references" - manual page draft, version 0.9b From: eschmid+sic <email protected>
Date: 08/20/00

On Mon, Aug 21, 2000 at 12:16:55AM +0300, Zeev Suraski wrote:
> At 23:46 20/08/2000, eschmid+sic <email protected> wrote:

> Uhm, the manual isn't nobody's personal toy, and the editor role in that
> sense is technical, not 'strategic'.

Up to now its very technical, but IMHO it could be in the near
future strategic.

> I really see no point in the manual competing with the books. If you try
> to be everything, you end up doing a poor job. I'd concentrate at having a
> good reference manual (and by design and layout, it is a reference manual,
> rather than a book that tries to teach you what PHP is), without making
> strict rules as to what should go in and what shouldn't. The loose
> guideline should be that things that are beyond descriptions of what a
> certain feature or function does should not be in the manual. People can
> add examples in the annotations, but I don't see in-depth discussions or
> tutorials as things that belong in that manual.

I haven't said that the manual is for newbies. There is another good book
by Julie Meloni. Have just received one copy from Julie yesterday. If the
nature of the manual should be only a reference manual, thats a bad idea.
Every author can compile a book with more function references in it. If he
or she has time, can also provide a example to every function and that
book looks IMHO ugly.

What the current manual needs is a complete function reference and a good
language reference for PHP 4.

What I have in mind is to sell the manual as a book on demand. We have
here many printing companies who feeds a machine with a PostScript file
and at the end there comes out a book which will send to the buyer.

Details will follow ... there is something wrong with the German manual.
TeX treads such constructs as "a as an ä (&auml;). 

-- 
http://www.linuxtag.de/
http://php.net/books.php 
http://www.concert-band.de/

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