[jdom-interest] Re: [jdom-commits] CVS update: jdom/src/java/org/jdom

[Elliotte Rusty Harold]

At 4:43 PM -0400 6/18/01, bob mcwhirter wrote:
>>  I dunno. I guess it's marginally more convenient, but after having just
>>  documented all the methods in my 2nd edition's appendix, I like brevity ;-)
>
>btw, completely off-topic to JDOM, but...
>
>I personally find APIs printed in books useless, and annoying, many
>times.  Seems mostly just to serve the goal of fattening the book, thus
>'justifying' the high cost, because, hey, it has 300 pages now, instead
>of 250.
>

I'm of mixed emotions about it. In the standard Java APIs it's so 
easy to go straight to the class library JavaDoc documentation, that 
I don't use printed books that much for just looking up signatures. I 
actually wrote such a thing for Java I/O, but cut it from the final 
draft for space reasons.

For XML and other non-Java APIs quick refs are a lot more useful. I 
find myself constantly referring to the XSLT and Unicocde references 
I wrote for XML in a Nutshell. The SAX and DOM reference chapters I 
wrote in the same book don't see nearly as much use.
-- 

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo at metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
|                  The XML Bible (IDG Books, 1999)                   |
|              http://metalab.unc.edu/xml/books/bible/               |
|   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0764532367/cafeaulaitA/   |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
|  Read Cafe au Lait for Java News:  http://metalab.unc.edu/javafaq/ |
|  Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://metalab.unc.edu/xml/     |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+