Tim,

Yeah, I'm the pest you chose to start this whole "Ask Tim" thing with. I'm still kinda honored by that. In that exchange with Tim, I stated:

"I took a second look at your Web page today, and I'll take a look at your books the next time I'm in my local Barnes & Noble. But I'm still dismayed at the encroachment of titles concerning the Redmond giant at the expense of titles about other OS's. The Unix section is one third the size it was a year ago, and OS/2 commands a single 3 foot shelf. I'm dismayed that my choices seem to be diminshing."

(Gee, cut 'n' paste in Linux, how neat!)

I was in the local Barnes & Noble today looking for your Learning Python tome (they don't have it yet). But I was pleased to see that the Unix/Linux shelf space has grown by a shelf - again. It's the second month in a row that Unix/Linux/OSS books have encroached upon space formerly occupied by NT books.

You've answered my questions about QT with the anouncement of your book on it. It looks like somebody else beat you to the punch with GTK, though. But I think you could do GTK better. I'd like to see a book that _thoroughly_ covers the different ways that GTK can be used. GTK has support for perl, python, and tk. A book covering these languages would be invaluable! (Or three books...)

Regards

Dave Walker
Systems Administrator/Programmer

Dave,

> I was in the local Barnes & Noble today looking
> for your Learning Python tome (they don't
> have it yet). But I was pleased to see that the Unix/Linux
> shelf space has grown by a shelf -- again. It's the second
> month in a row that Unix/Linux/OSS books have encroached upon
> space formerly occupied by NT books.

Yes, that is great to see! All the PR the Open Source community has been doing has gotten the attention of publishers.

Of course, from drought we'll now go to a flood, just as we did with the Internet and with Java, and to a lesser extent with Perl.

Once something becomes hot, as Linux is now hot, publishers jump in with hundreds of quick, low-quality books. They skim the cream, and eventually go away. (At the peak, there were almost a thousand Java books in print, but most of them have gone to the graveyard of over-published topics, so only the few good ones are still around.)

> You've answered my questions about QT with the
> anouncement of your your book on it.
> It looks like somebody else beat you to the punch
> with GTK, though. But I think you could do GTK better.
> I'd like to see a book that _thoroughly_ covers the different
> ways that GTK can be used. GTK has support for perl, python, and
> tk. A book covering these languages would be invaluable!
> (Or three books...)

We have some in the works. But we're usually not quick to market, especially when things get really hot. It takes time to develop a quality book. So you'll tend to see low-quality quick books for a while.

--Tim

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