[Intended to be friendly comments -- I like the book] Interesting that (at least some) people are thinking that this book is mainly aimed at academia. As an academic and textbook author, I think it is aimed at the technical reference market -- O'Reilly's bread and butter.
The trouble with omitting all motivation and context is that readers vary from those that know everything but the details (people who already have enough context to go straight to the heart of the matter), to those that know a related area and are trying to see what this is about (they want to see what is the same/different from something they know about), to those that are learning about the topic (runtime systems) for the first time. For the Stutz, et al Rotor book, those that are not on this inner circle of thought will have to be brought up to speed with some kind of supplementary material before they can harvest the content with ease. Textbook authors do this with a quick description of the space, issues, and approach, then use references when they don't want to spend more time creating the context. In this sense, the draft materials that I have read do not provide much context, e.g., there are no references (not even to web pages). Of course this is perfect for those in the inner circle of the topic who just want to know more about how THIS code works; but it is an annoyance to people who know the area, but not much about the target technology; and a real problem for readers trying to learn the topic (like many academic readers). Even as an advanced textbook (very small market), this book would need more context to be widely acclaimed. Gary On Thu, 12 Sep 2002, Michael H.C. Cummings wrote: > I would always think that the that part is written for the person who is > browsing the bookstore, like at a Borders, and already has heard of .Net but > not necessarily about ROTOR. That section can then give them some idea of > why they might want to look into it further, especially by using your book > ;). > > Although your book's target audience is mainly academia, they won't be the > only ones to buy it. The question there is; is that sector of the market > large enough to warrant more elaboration. I would think so. > > Michael Cummings > Director > DawnTreaders, Inc. > > (610) 892-8945 Phone > (610) 892-8991 Fax > >
