D Programming Language Specification ebook

[Daniel Gibson]

Am 04.07.2011 05:03, schrieb Walter Bright:
> On 7/3/2011 7:36 PM, Daniel Gibson wrote:
>> Giving away an eBook for free is not the same as thrusting a
>> book/magazine in peoples hand on a trade show or after a speech or
>> something (whether they want it or not) - as long as it's not advertised
>> with popup-ads or something - they (can) actively choose to download it.
> 
> Surprisingly, I have seen this done many times, and have not detected
> any backlash or bad feeling about it. The git manual comes to mind.
> 
> http://progit.org/book/

I see. Kind of surprising on the Internet, which is full of people just
waiting for a reason to complain and flame.

Maybe it also depends on the "history" and quality of the book - is it a
book that was later made available for free? Is it a "real book" or just
a bunch of related documents thrown together?

However: If this is common practice maybe we don't have to expect a
shit-storm.

And I like the idea that the proceeds may be used to organize a D
conference (preferably in Europe ;-)) or for (prizes for) contests.

> 
>> And please provide that ebook as PDF or whatever on the D homepage so
>> people with other ebook readers (or iPads) can use it as well. :-)
> 
> Andrei's already set up the dpl source to auto-build pdf's.
> 
> In any case, pdf's suck as an ebook format. The trouble is, they don't
> reflow the text. The ebook formats are much, much more suitable. Pdf's
> are for printing.

Ok, I don't really know what kinds of other formats are available and
how well they work, because I don't have an eBook-reader myself.
I thought PDF was common because at least everybody can display it and
formatting isn't screwed up by.

But being able to reflow the text is certainly an important feature if
you want to use it on displays of different size or if you want to
change the fontsize.

Cheers,
- Daniel