All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

mod_perl Cookbook

Matts on 2002-02-17T21:11:10

I spent some of this weekend [1] reading Geoff, Paul and Randy's [2] mod_perl Cookbook, which I was sent a copy of to do a review. I'm having a hard time faulting the book. The recipes are excellent, and the commentary on them well thought out and thorough. The book even covers some experimental features of mod_perl, and makes sure the reader knows that. The one thing I can possibly comment on the negative side so far is the typesetting. I guess I just get used to O'Reilly's typesetting, which is always very clear. SAMS appear to try slightly more modern typefaces (such as Lucida Mono for source code), unlike O'Reilly's stock Courier. And there's also some typographical errors in the print towards the end of the book (a couple of examples contain double-line gaps in the source code). But apart from that I can heartily recommend it, at least so far. I'll be sure to write a more complete review when I feel I've read enough of the book.

[1] I went up to York to see my mum who is just out of the hospital from having a cancerous lump removed from her breast, but it was small, and she seems to be doing just fine.

[2] Sounds like a 60's pop band.

Reviews

chromatic on 2002-02-17T22:32:57

I saw that one in the bookstore last week (when looking for my own book). It looked quite good, but I wanted to see if someone would send me a review copy.

It's always a gamble...

Geoff, Paul, and Randy

autarch on 2002-02-17T23:52:58

sounds more like a group of porn stars to me, but I have a strange mind.

Courier

gnat on 2002-02-18T00:33:52

I don't have anything to say about "O'Reilly's standard Courier" except that for the longest time it wasn't Courier, it was "Constant Willison" named after our (late) top dog Frank Willison.

I still get whines from Framemaker when I try to open book files that I'm missing Constant Willison. You bet I am, Adobe.

--Nat

book layout and errata

geoff on 2002-02-18T19:30:02

I agree - there's something about the feel of an ORA book that no other publisher has (maybe they spray their pages with pheromones or something). Overall, though, I'm happy with the Sams layout - it's a bit different than what we're all used to with ORA, but so is Manning and other publishing houses that produce decent books.

As for the typos (or larger errors), if you happen to run across any we would be very interested in hearing about them at our errata page. Sams is very interested (as are we, of course) in correcting any technical errors in a second printing, which may happen relatively soon - we have a March 15th deadline to turn in corrections for the second printing, which makes me quite happy.

Re:book layout and errata

KLB on 2004-10-11T05:07:12

Spray their pages with pheromones is funny. I just bought some pheromones from http://pherx.com/ to see if the stuff is for real or not.