Building Oracle XML Applications By Steve Muench
October 2000
Pages: 812

Cover | Table of Contents | Colophon

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Colophon

Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. The animal on the cover of Building Oracle XML Applications is a peacock butterfly (Inachis io,) whose name derives from the prominent blue and black eyespots found on each upper wing. Like the similar markings on peacock feathers, these eyespots contain iridescent areas, which enhance the peacock butterfly's already brilliant coloration. When startled, the peacock butterfly rubs its wings together and spreads them wide, threatening intruders with their vivid patterns, which strongly resemble an owl's visage when seen upside-down.

The peacock butterfly is widespread throughout England, Ireland, and Eurasia, but only vagrant specimens appear in North America. After mating in early spring, female butterflies lay batches of eggs on the underside of leaves of the stinging nettle plant, which provides food for the developing larvae. The new generation of adults takes flight in July, then hibernates over the winter to emerge again in spring, surviving a total of up to eleven months.

Adult butterflies have distinctive red-brown upper wings with bright yellow, blue, black, and white patterning, which span a width of about two inches. When a peacock butterfly folds its wings, the underside is revealed to be dark charcoal in color, allowing the butterfly to blend into the surrounding shrubs during hibernation. Peacock butterflies belong to the large family of Nymphalidae, or brush-footed butterflies, so called because their foremost pair of legs is too small for grasping or locomotion and is useful only for cleaning.

Although the peacock butterfly possesses a rare, tropical beauty, the caterpillars draw sustenance from the common stinging nettle, which flourishes both in rural fields and in urban lots, while adult butterflies feast on nectar from the butterfly bush, lilac, and other plants. Peacock butterflies may abound wherever these hardy plants take root, from English nature preserves, to abandoned Welsh mines, to far-flung Siberian settlements. Ellie Volckhausen designed the cover of this book, based on a series design by Edie Freedman. The cover image is a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. Emma Colby produced the cover layout with QuarkXPress 4.1 using Adobe's ITC Garamond font.

Madeleine Newell was the production editor and copyeditor for Building Oracle XML Applications. Mary Sheehan and Nancy Kotary provided quality control. Kimo Carter, Nancy Williams, and Molly Shangraw provided production assistance. Brenda Miller wrote the index.

David Futato designed the interior layout based on a series design by Nancy Priest. Mike Sierra implemented the design in FrameMaker 5.5.6. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano using Macromedia FreeHand 8 and Adobe Photoshop 5. This colophon was written by Madeleine Newell.

This book was authored in XML using the DocBook DTD and the SoftQuad XMetal 1.0 XML editor. Drafts of the entire book were transformed directly from the XML source to HTML format using the DocBook XSLT stylesheets and the Oracle XSLT processor.

Whenever possible, our books use a durable and flexible lay-flat binding. If the page count exceeds this binding's limit, perfect binding is used.

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