4 ms·

Why the dead-tree? Can we not try monetization of your book straight on the web instead, right here on your website? As developers we should lead the change aw

Why the dead-tree? Can we not try monetization of your book straight on the web instead, right here on your website? As developers we should lead the change away from pulp to electronic screens… Edit: I mean, I'd be happy to pay the author (note, not donate*) for this corpus online.

misnome 5y ago
Should we? I spend my life staring at electronic screens, it’s nice to not do so for reading round, or sit outside and do so. Maybe it’s an age thing, I used to have a lot more tolerance for this before my 30’s. Kindles are fine, but for leisure/fiction reading, or anything technical - it’s nice to be able to flip back/forth.
- panzagl 5y ago
  Every time someone posts a book on here someone shows up to bitch about the format and modernization- you should see the crap the 'Game Programming Patterns' guy gets.
- marvindanig 5y ago
  I agree with you on Kindles; they're certainly worse than having books on the open web, even if it were to be paid content. I also agree with you that page turning experience is _the_ native control of a book and that it adds to the saccadic perception of moving forward with time. B.t.w, I made this demo for exactly the reasons you mentioned, and I'm an older developer too!: https://bubblin.io/book/a-florida-sketch-book-by-bradford-torrey/1 https://bubblin.io/book/a-florida-sketch-book-by-bradford-to... > Should we? I spend my life staring We probably should reduce felling trees for content that's read just once and then it goes outdated. I know a lot pulp-cultivation ambassadors say that it is a renewable resource, but in practicality pulp farming is not entirely renewable. Cultivation takes place where an old forest once stood and was razed to the ground; and that loss of natural habitat is incalculable in costs–and to what end? A lifeless object on our bookshelf (which too is another dead tree) to show off with more outdated technical content?
  - Jtsummers 5y ago
    That demo isn't novel, I've seen that exact same skeuomorphic design in ereaders over the past couple decades. It's pretty, but it's not terribly useful to flip one page at a time in anything but a novel you intend to read linearly, and where you often only need to flip back one or two pages when confusion sets in (wait, which city are they in now? who's speaking in this part of the dialog?). It's hardly a useful interface for reference or technical material, only a pretty one. Edit: To be more constructive: Physical reference books are often accessed in a non-linear fashion, and often not alone. But let's forget that second part and focus on non-linear. How do people take a physical reference book and provide themselves with good non-linear access? Bookmarks, tabs, dog eared pages, margin notes producing cross-references if absent from the text proper. And they may even sometimes pull out all the bookmarks and tabs and start over to create an entirely different (for their use-case) reference text (by "hiding" irrelevant information). That's what needs to be recreated in an e-reader, not page flipping, to be useful for reference texts. As a point of frustration I recently experienced, I was running a TTRPG game and had a PDF with bookmarks to various classes (the ones players were using) and spells (ones I was using) and combat mechanics (what I was running). I later used the same PDF as a player, and found that I had too many bookmarks that made it hard for me to find exactly what I wanted. If I just added more bookmarks relevant to me as a player (playing a class not in the game I was running) it would add extra info to the DM version of the reference, and all the DM bookmarks were largely useless to me as a player. What I needed was a way to get two views of the same underlying text, with different sections emphasized or elided for my differing situations. Provide that in an ereader without having to make a copy of the PDF and manually mangle it (which I've done too) but rather just an overlay on the existing text and it'll provide a much better experience and start competing, realistically competing, with dead tree reference and technical books. Of course, the inability to (without a large display or large number of displays) view multiple texts side-by-side is another problem. I don't want 10 e-readers (a guess at the largest number of texts I needed to view in parallel). I have my iPad, laptop, and a Kindle that I already sometimes use simultaneously rather than printing material off or buying physical books. It's painful to use things that way and a much harder to solve problem without insisting that people buy more and more hardware. Which becomes obsolete quickly, probably faster than most reference and technical books become obsolete.
cinntaile 5y ago
What's wrong with books? They last a very long time and they don't require any electricity to be able to read them? Do you have studies that have compared the environmental impact of both?
- marvindanig 5y ago
  1. They last a long time has zero significance because the content is outdated in a year or less. 2. You don't need studies to know the difference between a natural habitat and cultivated land. And that the former is non-renewable. It looks like this comment is coming from one of those pulp-farming ambassadors spreading misinformation/whataboutism. This happens every time when a case for online publishing with direct payments to authors is put forward. Ha!
  - detaro 5y ago
    a first-edition copy of this book would still be a worthwhile read.
    - marvindanig 5y ago
      Yeah, a Github repository can do that easily. As if high karma, twisted logic would help you cut it. To the moderators: Dang, please un-flag my previous comments because it is absolutely spot-on and these dead-tree fanatics are suppressing my voice for no reason other than control/hate.
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    1. This isn't a fast moving web framework, the underlying mathematics are forever. But maybe the code implementation gets outdated after a couple of years. 2. You need something to base your opinion on though, preferably peer-reviewed scientific studies. You read way too much into my comment.
    - marvindanig 5y ago
      You need a peer-reviewed research to know the difference between natural habitat and cultivated land?
dahart 5y ago
Did you see that the link here is to a fully online version already?
- marvindanig 5y ago
  It seems like you're confused. And angry? Did you understand the context of my comments, OTOH?
yellowfish 5y ago
'as developers' don't speak for me, if you want to sell a book in a different way do it yourself ffs As a developer I'm buying the physical copy, like I did the previous revision ( which is great btw )
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
mattpharr 5y ago
> I'd be happy to pay the author (note, not donate*) for this corpus online. Lucky for you, we have a Patreon. Looking forward to your support!
- chrsig 5y ago
  Please share! And truly, thank you so much for writing the book. I have a physical copy, though I mostly read it online. I've never been an academic, and have struggled in school, so higher mathematics has always been a bit out of my reach. This book has been the driving force behind learning trigonometry, calculus, linear algebra, sampling theory, and I'm sure much more. In turn, those learnings have made AI/ML material more accessible to me as well. I'm very much looking forward to the 4th edition!
ghosty141 5y ago
I strongly prefer physical book over digital ones. With an ebook-reader it's fine for novels but technical text books can't be replaced (yet).

misnome 5y ago

Should we? I spend my life staring at electronic screens, it’s nice to not do so for reading round, or sit outside and do so. Maybe it’s an age thing, I used to have a lot more tolerance for this before my 30’s. Kindles are fine, but for leisure/fiction reading, or anything technical - it’s nice to be able to flip back/forth.

panzagl 5y ago
Every time someone posts a book on here someone shows up to bitch about the format and modernization- you should see the crap the 'Game Programming Patterns' guy gets.
marvindanig 5y ago
I agree with you on Kindles; they're certainly worse than having books on the open web, even if it were to be paid content. I also agree with you that page turning experience is _the_ native control of a book and that it adds to the saccadic perception of moving forward with time. B.t.w, I made this demo for exactly the reasons you mentioned, and I'm an older developer too!: https://bubblin.io/book/a-florida-sketch-book-by-bradford-torrey/1 https://bubblin.io/book/a-florida-sketch-book-by-bradford-to... > Should we? I spend my life staring We probably should reduce felling trees for content that's read just once and then it goes outdated. I know a lot pulp-cultivation ambassadors say that it is a renewable resource, but in practicality pulp farming is not entirely renewable. Cultivation takes place where an old forest once stood and was razed to the ground; and that loss of natural habitat is incalculable in costs–and to what end? A lifeless object on our bookshelf (which too is another dead tree) to show off with more outdated technical content?
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  That demo isn't novel, I've seen that exact same skeuomorphic design in ereaders over the past couple decades. It's pretty, but it's not terribly useful to flip one page at a time in anything but a novel you intend to read linearly, and where you often only need to flip back one or two pages when confusion sets in (wait, which city are they in now? who's speaking in this part of the dialog?). It's hardly a useful interface for reference or technical material, only a pretty one. Edit: To be more constructive: Physical reference books are often accessed in a non-linear fashion, and often not alone. But let's forget that second part and focus on non-linear. How do people take a physical reference book and provide themselves with good non-linear access? Bookmarks, tabs, dog eared pages, margin notes producing cross-references if absent from the text proper. And they may even sometimes pull out all the bookmarks and tabs and start over to create an entirely different (for their use-case) reference text (by "hiding" irrelevant information). That's what needs to be recreated in an e-reader, not page flipping, to be useful for reference texts. As a point of frustration I recently experienced, I was running a TTRPG game and had a PDF with bookmarks to various classes (the ones players were using) and spells (ones I was using) and combat mechanics (what I was running). I later used the same PDF as a player, and found that I had too many bookmarks that made it hard for me to find exactly what I wanted. If I just added more bookmarks relevant to me as a player (playing a class not in the game I was running) it would add extra info to the DM version of the reference, and all the DM bookmarks were largely useless to me as a player. What I needed was a way to get two views of the same underlying text, with different sections emphasized or elided for my differing situations. Provide that in an ereader without having to make a copy of the PDF and manually mangle it (which I've done too) but rather just an overlay on the existing text and it'll provide a much better experience and start competing, realistically competing, with dead tree reference and technical books. Of course, the inability to (without a large display or large number of displays) view multiple texts side-by-side is another problem. I don't want 10 e-readers (a guess at the largest number of texts I needed to view in parallel). I have my iPad, laptop, and a Kindle that I already sometimes use simultaneously rather than printing material off or buying physical books. It's painful to use things that way and a much harder to solve problem without insisting that people buy more and more hardware. Which becomes obsolete quickly, probably faster than most reference and technical books become obsolete.

cinntaile 5y ago

What's wrong with books? They last a very long time and they don't require any electricity to be able to read them? Do you have studies that have compared the environmental impact of both?

marvindanig 5y ago
1. They last a long time has zero significance because the content is outdated in a year or less. 2. You don't need studies to know the difference between a natural habitat and cultivated land. And that the former is non-renewable. It looks like this comment is coming from one of those pulp-farming ambassadors spreading misinformation/whataboutism. This happens every time when a case for online publishing with direct payments to authors is put forward. Ha!
- detaro 5y ago
  a first-edition copy of this book would still be a worthwhile read.
  - marvindanig 5y ago
    Yeah, a Github repository can do that easily. As if high karma, twisted logic would help you cut it. To the moderators: Dang, please un-flag my previous comments because it is absolutely spot-on and these dead-tree fanatics are suppressing my voice for no reason other than control/hate.
- cinntaile 5y ago
  1. This isn't a fast moving web framework, the underlying mathematics are forever. But maybe the code implementation gets outdated after a couple of years. 2. You need something to base your opinion on though, preferably peer-reviewed scientific studies. You read way too much into my comment.
  - marvindanig 5y ago
    You need a peer-reviewed research to know the difference between natural habitat and cultivated land?

dahart 5y ago

Did you see that the link here is to a fully online version already?

marvindanig 5y ago
It seems like you're confused. And angry? Did you understand the context of my comments, OTOH?

yellowfish 5y ago

'as developers' don't speak for me, if you want to sell a book in a different way do it yourself ffs As a developer I'm buying the physical copy, like I did the previous revision ( which is great btw )

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

mattpharr 5y ago

> I'd be happy to pay the author (note, not donate*) for this corpus online. Lucky for you, we have a Patreon. Looking forward to your support!

chrsig 5y ago
Please share! And truly, thank you so much for writing the book. I have a physical copy, though I mostly read it online. I've never been an academic, and have struggled in school, so higher mathematics has always been a bit out of my reach. This book has been the driving force behind learning trigonometry, calculus, linear algebra, sampling theory, and I'm sure much more. In turn, those learnings have made AI/ML material more accessible to me as well. I'm very much looking forward to the 4th edition!

ghosty141 5y ago

I strongly prefer physical book over digital ones. With an ebook-reader it's fine for novels but technical text books can't be replaced (yet).