October 10, 2006
Delphi Books on Lulu: Vote for Mine
Lulu is a very popular print-on-demand system. There are currently 3 Delphi books published on it:
-
The Tomes of Delphi: Algorithms and Data Structures by Julian Bucknall at $25.00 (a very nice book, a classic of which I own an authographed copy)
-
ReportBuilder Developer's Guide, 3rd Edition by Digital Metaphors Corporation at $30.00 (a product user guide)
- The ECO-III Book by Alois Schmid at $42.65 (a brand new book, written specifically for lulu)
I've been thinking of publishing on Lulu for some time, but having seen the current status of my published books, I'm now resolved to make a couple of experiments, before deciding what to do with my next mayor book. In this post of Nick Hodges on Julian's book on Lulu, I was referenced indirectly twice: once by Nick ("What I really hope is that one of those authors with a really fat book will choose to use lulu instead of the traditional publishing houses for their next edition."); once by Kent Morwath ("I'd like to see books like "The Delphi Developer's Handbook" made availabe this way.").
Rather than reprinting an old book (DDH was written in Delphi 2 days...), I though about taking some of the material and revising it for a newer version of Delphi. There are two different books that might come out of this effort, one on writing VCL components, the other on advanced Win32 API programming topics. However, I currently have other material I can run into a book, including OOP techniques, patterns, Web 2.0 and AJAX, as well as publish some of my introductory books for Delphi newcomers.
Before deciding, I thought it would be a good idea to run a poll, asking you which topics you'd like best. So I've spent a couple of hours to finish some polling support for this site (I had an earlier version for another site, never published, so this is more or less a "second beta version"), and made a poll available. Beside providing comments to this post as usual, I ask you to
VOTE A BOOK TOPIC
or suggest one. You can check the current votes here.
15 Comments
Delphi Books on Lulu: Vote for Mine
Not fair!!! I see at least three titles [four if you get to the results page and see Delphi Handbook: Unit Testing] in the list I'd like to see published. I voted for the one I want to see you publish "first" ;-)Comment by Dave on October 10, 04:25
Delphi Books on Lulu: Vote for Mine
Marco, I thank God for you every day. You are a blessing to the community. Please keep up the good work! There is no doubt in my mind that "Writing Web 2.0 RAD Applications with Delphi and Free Pascal" is a major new topic of the times. I would like you to concider focusing on cross-platform techniques that use simple, portable native Pascal back-ends and AJAX technologies on the client. What we need are the missing Pascal chapters from "AJAX in Action". I'm sure the Delphi/Lazarus way will be at least as good as Ruby on Rails and TurboGear (Python), as the depth of the Delphi community is surprisingly deep and there are many existing pieces to help build very robust back ends. The question I have is: "WHY NOT PASCAL?" It is like the Rodney Dangerfield of languages these days (no respect). This book should change that.Comment by on October 10, 07:21
Delphi Books on Lulu: Vote for Mine
Marco, I voted, but in addition, just a couple of thoughts: 1) Those who know you are not likely to ask for Essential Delphi. That doesn't mean there is no need for such a book (I think there is a need for such a book), just that the polling sample is biased in that respect. 2) Looks to me that placing Web 2.0 and Ajax on the same level as OOP techniques and patterns introduces another bias: The former is the buzz of the day, the later is a long term topic that's mostly independant of Delphi versions and could become a reference book usable for years. The bottom line is, it looks to me like there is currently a lack of good reference books. I interpret the Julian's success with "Algorithms and Data Structures" book (http://www.boyet.com/Articles/Number12.html) as yet another clue in that direction. Just my ten cents... :)Comment by Filofel on October 10, 10:23
Delphi Books on Lulu: Vote for Mine
I voted for Delphi Handbook: Writing VCL Components also I would like to see Delphi Handbook: Advanced Win32 Techniques and Delphi Handbook: OOP Techniques and Patterns, but I can only vote one time ;-)Comment by Mohammed Nasman [http://www.mnasman.com] on October 10, 11:17
Delphi Books on Lulu: Vote for Mine
I dislike big books. But have read your Delphi Handbook. Appeal to the collector in all of us a (re)write a series of Delphi related books. Another idea would be to provide an alternate delphi help system that cross references to your books.Comment by David Champion on October 10, 11:52
shipping costs
Hi, I ordered the tomes of delphi book from lulu and was unpleasantly surprised by their shipping costs to Europe. It was almost as much as the book's price tag. Given that they could "just" print the books in Europe instead of shipping them from the US, I think there must be an alternative. twmComment by Thomas Mueller [http://www.dummzeuch.de] on October 10, 12:06
Delphi Books on Lulu: Vote for Mine
Thomas, I paid 20 euro for the book and 8 for shipping.Comment by Kent Morwath on October 11, 13:45
.NET 3.0
Hi Marco, yesterday we were at a MSDN Techtalk here in Germany about the Worflow Foundation which is integrated in .NET 3.0. It was to say at least *VEEEEEERY* interesting! The speaker said that .NET 3.0 uses the same infrastructure as .NET 2.0 so AFAIKS it should be possible to program it with an technical preview of highlander (when it is released). And perhaps even possible to use these stuff with the current Delphi 2005! So a book about .NET 3.0 in Delphi would be my dream! best regards Ralf GrenzingComment by Ralf Grenzing [] on October 12, 14:00
Delphi Books on Lulu: Vote for Mine
Ralph: ".NET 3.0" is .NET 2.0 plus some stuff to support Vista. AFAIK it is *not* a new release of the framework. There were some discussion about MS marketing dictating nonsensical release numbers. Anyway, being 2.0 you can't use it with D2005 or 2006. You'd need a Delphi release supporting .NET 2.0, at least.Comment by Kent Morwath on October 12, 17:18
Delphi Books on Lulu: Vote for Mine
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1974865,00.asp I did not know that .NET "has become the most successful developer platform in the world". MS reps live in their own world, perhaps...Comment by Kent Morwath on October 12, 19:12
Delphi Books on Lulu: Vote for Mine
It would be interesting if "print on demand" could create a market for "smaller books" on more narrow features. Sometimes 900 pages books about all aspects of Delphi could not be the right choice. Someone could be more interested in database development but not web development or viceversa. Someone else could be a good Delphi developer but never wrote a multithreaded app really, and so on. Maybe a group of smaller books could fit user needs better than a huge one.Comment by Luigi D. Sandon on October 12, 22:48
Delphi Books on Lulu: Vote for Mine
I second the small books idea. Mastering Delphi series are my favorites, but I think Marco is going to agree, Its getting overwhelming and I don't think a 1500 pages Mastering Delphi 2007 or Highlander is going to be great to write, read, charge or ship. It wouldn´t cover the entire Delphi platform either as it is so diverse. It wold be great if we had a entire Delphi collection, like some official Alias-wavefront Maya books I had seen sometime ago. Maybe a framework book covering topics from IDE to VCL.NET, and then others covering DB programming, Web programming (AJAX included please), and the specialized and hoped topics like Multithread, Desing patterns, etc. Thats the real advantage of a print-on-demand system. Whatever the project will be, I'm in, As a user al least. Good Luck.Comment by Salvador Gomez Retamoza [] on October 13, 01:16
Delphi Books on Lulu: Vote for Mine
to Kent: it is not completly true that you can not use .NET 2.0 (and 3.0) in Delphi 2006. See the link! Because workflow foundation and its designer is plugable (and the other stuff I guess) I thinh it is possible to do something with it in Delphi!Comment by Ralf Grenzing [http://delphi-notes.blogspot.com/2006/03/eager-to-use-delphinet-for-net-20.html] on October 13, 13:21
Delphi Books on Lulu: Vote for Mine
Ralf: "you can" is different from "you do". No professional developer would take the hassle to use a non supported .NET version. For example, you can't use the new language features (the compiler does not support them) and the debugger won't work. And I would never deploy to a customer such an application.Comment by Kent Morwath on October 13, 17:42
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Delphi Books on Lulu: Vote for Mine
Comment by Pepe T on October 10, 04:03