PS I may write in the future but its highly doubtful. I don’t have the time to write a book of my own, and like said above multi-author books are just too disconnected…and of course finally…books just don’t pay off (for me)

From the other side of the fence, there have been a ton of books, wish I could give you titles, who talk about how to make a button in Flash. Honest to God, how many ways can you spin the wording to say how to make a button without really saying how to make a button? They all tell you, but so does the Flash manual.

…but therein lies the issue, I guess. All of this spawns from my personal style of book. Nowadays, I don’t like how too books. If I buy a book, I usually only read a chapter, and instead refer to specific pages of the book to figure out how to do something. This wasn’t always the case, but I’ve gotten good, in my opinion, on teaching myself and consolidating through a lot of un-needed information. Case in point, PHP for the WWW books. I refer to specific page numbers, and one specific chapter to do things. I learned how to code in PHP in one night after my gf couldn’t get a Perl script working. It was Flash with $ in front of variable names. When I hit a snag, I borrowed my gf’s books which she bought the next day. I stole it immediately, but only read 20% of each chapter, and then only about 4 chapters of the 12 chapter book consisting of about 500 pages. Just give me how to call a record set from mySQL, I’ll figure out the rest thanks.

This is not the most effective way of learning, I’m sure. But, recently discovering that I had some developer in me, I like re-inventing the wheel or struggling through some parts to help myself better understand the whys of how things work.

Maybe that personality trait is coming out in my writing, but I feel I only want to write about things that are pertainent to a fellow developer, or even someone who is a designer and has a different mindset. To me, if I can focus on that, I’ve succeeded in telling the reader what they needed to succeed. I’ve never liked docs, but couldn’t live without them. I feel I’m just helping MM out with my spin and experiences put on their docs to better help people be successful. This one chapter, though, is making that 2nd part helpful. Maybe I just don’t hang out with enough admins to know what they’re like.

Anyway, I’m screwed on the concise front. Both of my college professors said I had problems with shutting up. One said if you ask me what time it is, I’ll tell you how a watch works. The other said I should answer the person’s question, period. If the person wants more information, they’ll ask.

…I disagreed with both, of course. Bleh. I at least feel better about you saying that I can point to the docs. That makes me feel… a whole lot better. Still, not sure about the linearty or theme. The only book I saw successfully done (and I haven’t read many tech books, mind you, from front to back) is this D&D book about the Fiends of the Outer planes. Each chapter was done by not only a different author, but a different “type” of author. One was an evil demon, another a gigantic frog from a land of chaos… some with villanous grammar, others with character perks berating their perceived intelligence only until you noticed you’ve read 5 pages of their spiel about things they know. Really well done, but then, that’s TS…er, Wizards of the Coast’s full time job. This to me is just doing my part to help out the Flash Community.

Cool, at least I feel like I’m on the right path again. Thanks, yo.

Anyway, there’s nothing wrong in referencing or pointing readers to the docs. No sense in reinventing the wheel. Even if your book did have the same examples from the docs, one would hope you’re providing more practical application. If nothing else, people expect cohesion in a book… almost a linear story. Well, reference books might be an exception.

Personally, I have a hard time actually READING technical books (my own being the hardest on my patience). However, the thing that I see the most distracting in books is when a multi-author book is obviously not coordinated. There are some good ones, but a few have no theme. I believe a book should be able to be summed up in one or two sentences.

The hardest thing for me–by the way–isn’t avoiding plagiarism, but rather remaining concise. I just want to get a point across and I’ll sometimes take a few extra pages. I feel like saying “if you understand what I’m saying jump ahead here”.

Concise writing is the hardest in my opinion.

Thanks,
Phillip

P.S. Who says you can’t say what book you’re doing?