Qusestion about the book?

[Mike Axelrod]

I noticed there is a book about web2py available ob Amazon (Web2Py
Manual). The description on Amazon claims it is 256 pages long. But
the one review up there says it is only 68 pages long. What gives?

I'm also thinking members of this community who own the book might
want to post reviews on Amazon so others can make a more educated
decision on whether to buy it. Personally I feel like I need a good
book to learn web2py. But the $50.00 price tag and the current
feelings concerning the current state of web2py documentation has me
nervous about plunking down the bucks for this.

So is the book worth $50? and is it more than 68 pages?

Mike

[Joe Barnhart]

It is the essential reference for web2py at this point. If you are
going to use web2py, it's worth waaaay more than $50. Yes, it has
more than 68 pages (dunno where that came from).

If money is tight, there is also a PDF version available on lulu.com.
(see http://www.lulu.com/content/4968879)

This book is a must-read for web2py users. It will bypass endless
searching of forums and other sources of information and will give you
insight into the philosophy behind web2py. It is a very tightly-
packed, dense but readable treatise on web2py, written by the
undisputed expert (the guy who created it).

-- Joe B.

[Yarko Tymciurak]

On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 4:24 PM, Mike Axelrod <mike...@gmail.com> wrote:

I noticed there is a book about web2py available ob Amazon (Web2Py
Manual).   The description on Amazon claims it is 256 pages long.  But
the one review up there says it is only 68 pages long.  What gives?

Looking at my copy, P.246 is the last page of the index;  that doesn't include the 14 pp of front-matter, contents, preface.  The text goes through p.237

A pdf will let you search where some topic might not have been keyed for the index, so if you can afford you might want to consider both.  My paper copy is fairly well marked up at this piont ;-)

[Jeffield]

I bought the book off of lulu and was reading it 5 min's later.
Just buy it! ($12) Massimo does a really nice job of presenting the
framework in a cohesive fashion.
Oh, and yes its like ~250 pages long.

Thanks,
Jeff

On Mar 13, 4:39 pm, Yarko Tymciurak <yark...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Mike Axelrod]

Thanks everyone, I just bought the book from lulu. And yes it is a
full 246 pages + additional front matter. Just scanning it now, it
does look like it will be very helpful.

Someone ought to correct that guy's strange page number reference on
the Amazon review. It does the author a disservice, and is hardly
fair. Perhaps it was an honest typo on his part?

Anyway if the pdf version becomes a habbit I'll go buy the paper
version when I refresh my book budget.

[mdipierro]

Thanks Mike,
I would appreciate if you could correct that wrong page count.
There are some new features not mentioned in the book (cron, auth,
crud, services, routes_on_error, etc.) but I am shooting for a second
edition by summer.

Massimo

[Jeffield]

I just posted a amazon review with the correct page count.

> but I am shooting for a second edition by summer.

who-hoo

Please consider publishing your book to Safari. (www.oreilly.com).
Joining Safari is the smartest thing I have ever done.

you could even post "rough-cuts" of the book... there... I would read
them.

Thanks
Jeff

[Joseph Jude]

If I buy the book now, will there be any discounts for the 2nd
edition; or it is better to wait for the 2nd edition.

Thx,
Joseph

[mdipierro]

I have no control over pricing. sorry.

[carlo]

Massimo did you ever contact Packt Publishing? They seem to publish
many interesting titles and they usually sell a pdf version either.

carlo

[mdipierro]

I did in Winter 08. At the time they were not interested.

Massimo

[Anand Vaidya]

On Mar 14, 9:52 am, Jeffield <jeff.sheffi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I bought the book off of lulu and was reading it 5 min's later.
> Just buy it! ($12) Massimo does a really nice job of presenting the
> framework in a cohesive fashion.

Hi,

I bought the book on lulu.com yesterday and I agree with you. The
book is excellent and well worth the money. Thanks Massimo!

Regards
Anand Vaidya

[mdipierro]

Thanks Anand

[rock...@googlemail.com]

The book is very well done, except of some typos.

Is there any plan to make open book, like the djagobook?
It is not because I am stingy, but because web2py is moving so fast.

Thanks for web2py the most productive web-framework out there. (I only
speak for myself)

Rockin' Regards,
Marco

[mdipierro]

This questions comes up once in a while. The reason for the published
book is not that I make any money from it. the reason is that I need
to justify to my employer the time I spend on web2py. In academia only
publications count. A book on sale counts. A free book does not.
Normally software does not count either.

I do not oppose creating an alternative completely open documentation
and actually I encourage it.
(first attempt) http://mdp.cti.depaul.edu/AlterEgo
(second attempt) https://mdp.cti.depaul.edu/web2py_wiki
(third attempt) https://mdp.cti.depaul.edu/wiki

Massimo






On Mar 15, 4:58 pm, "ma...@rockiger.com" <rocki...@googlemail.com>
wrote:

[rock...@googlemail.com]

On Mar 16, 12:47 am, mdipierro <mdipie...@cs.depaul.edu> wrote:
> This questions comes up once in a while. The reason for the published
> book is not that I make any money from it. the reason is that I need
> to justify to my employer the time I spend on web2py. In academia only
> publications count. A book on sale counts. A free book does not.
> Normally software does not count either.

I understand that.
The money is not the problem, the 10 bucks are some kind of self
selection.
But the danger is that web2py developes faster than the documentation.
Buy the way that is one of the big problems of all the other python
web frameworks.
You have to gather documentation from a lot of different sources.

I am building a learning project at the moment. I will write a
tutorial about it, when I am done.

[mdipierro]

keep up posted.

On Mar 15, 8:02 pm, "ma...@rockiger.com" <rocki...@googlemail.com>
wrote:

[Jonathan B]

Hi Marco,


On Mar 16, 12:58 am, "ma...@rockiger.com" <rocki...@googlemail.com>
wrote:

> Is there any plan to make open book, like the djagobook?
> It is not because I am stingy, but because web2py is moving so fast.

Yes, it's in the works right now. We're developing an up-to-date wiki
here: https://mdp.cti.depaul.edu/wiki. Once the contents of the wiki
start jelling, we will start transferring information to a more stable
free book. It will take some time, but it should get done eventually.


--Jonathan

[Baron]

Are we allowed to copy sections from the published book into the wiki?
Or would that break copyright?

On Mar 16, 10:47 am, mdipierro <mdipie...@cs.depaul.edu> wrote:
> This questions comes up once in a while. The reason for the published
> book is not that I make any money from it. the reason is that I need
> to justify to my employer the time I spend on web2py. In academia only
> publications count. A book on sale counts. A free book does not.
> Normally software does not count either.
>
> I do not oppose creating an alternative completely open documentation
> and actually I encourage it.
> (first attempt)http://mdp.cti.depaul.edu/AlterEgo
> (second attempt)https://mdp.cti.depaul.edu/web2py_wiki

> (third attempt)https://mdp.cti.depaul.edu/wiki

[Yarko Tymciurak]

that you even asked says all you need to know:  if in doubt, do nothing without written permission.

[mdipierro]

You can copy the code and any itemized list in the book. If you want
to copy other text please email me first.

Massimo

[Jeffield]

> In academia only publications count. A book on sale counts.
> A free book does not.
> Normally software does not count either.

This is really said. ( I am currently enrolled in a distance education
program,
and my Sister is currently a prof.) Just makes me said that our
"higher" education
factions are "so far" behind what is really going on out here.
Particuarly CSC programs.
Keep fighting the good fight Massimo. As a consumer of higher
education in the CSC relm,
eeing able to download your prof's source and review it speaks
volume's to there credibility.

Thanks,
Jeff

On Mar 15, 6:47 pm, mdipierro <mdipie...@cs.depaul.edu> wrote:
> This questions comes up once in a while. The reason for the published
> book is not that I make any money from it. the reason is that I need
> to justify to my employer the time I spend on web2py. In academia only
> publications count. A book on sale counts. A free book does not.
> Normally software does not count either.
>
> I do not oppose creating an alternative completely open documentation
> and actually I encourage it.

> (first attempt)http://mdp.cti.depaul.edu/AlterEgo
> (second attempt)https://mdp.cti.depaul.edu/web2py_wiki

> (third attempt)https://mdp.cti.depaul.edu/wiki

[Yarko Tymciurak]

There is nothing really sad about reviewed writing, and the publication processes.  The same is true for scholarly journals.  This has been this way for a very, very long time.  It takes effort and time, so that it costs money is not sad either when it provides value.

Publication provides a forum for scrutiny and review within your profession.

Really, this is beneficial, good.

[Ralf Schoenian]

Hi ML,

I cannot access the wiki page. Firefox complains about the certificate:

Secure Connection Failed  

mdp.cti.depaul.edu uses an invalid security certificate.

The certificate is not trusted because it is self signed.
The certificate is only valid for Massimo Di Pierro
The certificate expired on 01.03.2009 07:56.

(Error code: sec_error_expired_issuer_certificate)     

    * This could be a problem with the server's configuration, or it could be someone trying to impersonate the server.

    * If you have connected to this server successfully in the past, the error may be temporary, and you can try again later.
mdipierro wrote:

What can I do about it?

Thanks,
Ralf Schoenian

[ ... ]

Th
(third attempt) https://mdp.cti.depaul.edu/wiki

[...]

[Yarko Tymciurak]

you can safely ignore this...

[Baron]

that is very unfortunate.
The Django project is able to sell their book and put it online so why
can't web2py?

On Mar 17, 12:52 pm, Yarko Tymciurak <yark...@gmail.com> wrote:
> that you even asked says all you need to know:  if in doubt, do nothing
> without written permission.
>

[Michal Jursa]

well, web2py book is online. You can buy it on lulu.com and download
whole PDF as i did. $10 not so much and it is really good job from
Massimo. Thanks for the framework and the book too.

Mike

[mdipierro]

I agree with Yarko. The current peer review in academia works
relatively well in discriminating good science from bad science.

Yet there are a few things that could be improved:
- the peer review mechanism in some fields is too slow.
- there are basically no peer reviewed publications that review and
publish code.
- some people teach CS without having ever written a decent size
computer program.

These are just general considerations and nothing to do with web2py.

Massimo

On Mar 16, 11:46 pm, Yarko Tymciurak <yark...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There is nothing really sad about reviewed writing, and the publication
> processes.  The same is true for scholarly journals.  This has been this way
> for a very, very long time.  It takes effort and time, so that it costs
> money is not sad either when it provides value.
> Publication provides a forum for scrutiny and review within your profession.
>
> Really, this is beneficial, good.
>

[Ralf Schoenian]

Yarko Tymciurak wrote:
> you can safely ignore this...

No, Firefox doesn't allow me to view the site but Epiphany does. So it
is not really an issue.

Ralf Schoenian

>
> On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 12:37 AM, Ralf Schoenian
> <ra...@schoenian-online.de <mailto:ra...@schoenian-online.de>> wrote:
>
> Hi ML,
>
> I cannot access the wiki page. Firefox complains about the
> certificate:
>
> Secure Connection Failed
>
>

> mdp.cti.depaul.edu <http://mdp.cti.depaul.edu> uses an invalid

[Yarko Tymciurak]

For Firefox, when you see "Secure Connection Failed" and get a pop-up that says "...invalid certificate...",

click "OK" on the pop-up;

on the "Secure Connection Failed" page, click "Or you can add an exception"

You will then see this expand to say "You should not add an exception if you are not using a connection you trust completely" with two buttons - "Get me out of here!"  and "Add Exception"

Select "Add Exception", then "Get Certificate", you will see the exception ("Wrong Site"), then select "Confirm Security Exception"

If you left "store the exception" you will only need to do this once.

That should hold you until Massimo gets a certificate for web2py.com (now that he has DNS setup so its possible).

Hope this helps,

Yarko

[Baron]

> well, web2py book is online. You can buy it on lulu.com and download

There's a big difference between being able to view/use it online and
merely buy it online.

I bought the book early on but some sections are getting out of date
now. The Django Project sell their book but also make it freely
available online and use feedback from the community to update it:
http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0/

If Massimo needs to publish because of academia then fair enough, but
that doesn't prevent also making it available online.

Baron

[Jonathan B]

On Mar 18, 2:28 pm, Baron <richar...@gmail.com> wrote:

> If Massimo needs to publish because of academia then fair enough, but
> that doesn't prevent also making it available online.

Most likely Massimo had to sell his copyright to the publisher, so now
it's likely that Massimo *cannot* legally give away the book for free.

That being said, we are creating a free & open source book right now
to help address the lack of documentation. It's going to take some
time to do, but it's on the way!

--Jonathan

[Jonathan B]

On Mar 17, 3:17 pm, Baron <richar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> that is very unfortunate.
> The Django project is able to sell their book and put it online so why
> can't web2py?

I'm not familiar with the details of Django's project, but most likely
their publisher allowed them to keep their own copyright, so that they
could distribute their book however they wished.

You *can* copy the web2py manual, *but* you will need to re-write the
text into your own words. I seem to remember that Massimo wrote that
the code examples can be freely copied verbatim (confirmation?), so
it's possible that he kept the copyright for those as part of his
agreement with the publisher.

--Jonathan

[Yarko Tymciurak]

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 7:00 AM, Jonathan B <jonath...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mar 18, 2:28 pm, Baron <richar...@gmail.com> wrote:

> If Massimo needs to publish because of academia then fair enough, but
> that doesn't prevent also making it available online.

Most likely Massimo had to sell his copyright to the publisher, so now
it's likely that Massimo *cannot* legally give away the book for free.

Please be aware you are engaging in conjecture here...  and it is not accurate.

 

That being said, we are creating a free & open source book right now
to help address the lack of documentation. It's going to take some
time to do, but it's on the way!

There are 3 parts here:

- generating content

- tools to generate content & collect feedback

- content area owners - guiding consistency, completeness, etc.

Lots of people are asking for the end result, but there are several places to do work.

Let me start with this:

Who is willing and capable of taking lead for documentation wiki software? 

This will mean reviewing and testing, merging, making sure things work, making sure needed features (when they are big enough to warrant) are planned, and include enough people to ensure good design.   Community comment and review of content is an important area to start thinking about.

I think there are many who are willing to help with content.   Please start writing.  Text is the most basic content type.  RST basics are not hard.  I have seen some RST error recovery issues - we'll learn about RST, and see if we can help it.  bug reporting is open on launchpad for the wiki, so please log problems that we can't identify and address quickly on-list (here).

I have offered to organize general content, and identifying topic leads.  We have decided to go with sphinx for some time to collect community input.   This will begin after pycon, but really will depend on good content from the wiki (if you have a topic, please get writing!)

There are other things behind the scene.  I think we have heard the desire for open documentation that can stay up-to-date, and electronically accessible.  It's just one more thing to learn about, and figure out how to best do from the publishing end.

Regards,

Yarko

--Jonathan

[Yarko Tymciurak]

I would stay away from this kind of posting.  At worst, you are presuming a legal position on how to take copyrighted material without consequences.  

The only ethical position is to ask permission - regardless.  I do remember that Massimo said that reproducing code examples is fair (I will leave it to him to correct).  

Regardless, it's best to put energy on forward motion.

Massimo has copyright.  Massimo also has a business relationship with the publisher.  We do not need to be privy to that.

All we need to know is that it is not an open book, and anything on the existing book requires permission.

--Jonathan

[Ralf Schoenian]

Thanks Yarko,

you need some courage to accept an exceptions. Thanks again.

Regards,
Ralf

Yarko Tymciurak wrote:
> For Firefox, when you see "Secure Connection Failed" and get a pop-up
> that says "...invalid certificate...",
>
> click "OK" on the pop-up;
>
> on the "Secure Connection Failed" page, click "Or you can add an
> exception"
>
> You will then see this expand to say "You should not add an exception
> if you are not using a connection you trust completely" with two
> buttons - "Get me out of here!" and "Add Exception"
>
> Select "Add Exception", then "Get Certificate", you will see the
> exception ("Wrong Site"), then select "Confirm Security Exception"
>
> If you left "store the exception" you will only need to do this once.
>
> That should hold you until Massimo gets a certificate for web2py.com

> <http://web2py.com> (now that he has DNS setup so its possible).

>
> Hope this helps,
> Yarko
>
> On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 12:31 AM, Ralf Schoenian
> <ra...@schoenian-online.de <mailto:ra...@schoenian-online.de>> wrote:
>
>
> Yarko Tymciurak wrote:
> > you can safely ignore this...
> No, Firefox doesn't allow me to view the site but Epiphany does. So it
> is not really an issue.
>
> Ralf Schoenian
>
> >
> > On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 12:37 AM, Ralf Schoenian
> > <ra...@schoenian-online.de <mailto:ra...@schoenian-online.de>

> <mailto:ra...@schoenian-online.de

[Jonathan B]

Hi Yarko,

On Mar 18, 6:53 pm, Yarko Tymciurak <yark...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Please be aware you are engaging in conjecture here... and it is not
> accurate.

Even though I was trying to be helpful, you are right that it was rude
of me to conjecture on the nature of someone else's business dealings.
I apologize.

> The only ethical position is to ask permission - regardless. I do remember
> that Massimo said that reproducing code examples is fair (I will leave it to
> him to correct).

Yes, copyright is a sticky issue and it's always best to ask for
permission.


Sincerely,

--Jonathan

[Mike Axelrod]

Hi all just commenting back to this thread that I have finished
reading the book. And it is a very good book indeed. I bought the
PDF version from lulu. I have a nice wide screen 24 inch iMac so I
could have the book open in one window and work through the examples
in a browser right next to the open book. This is great way to
learn. I found carefully working through all the examples in
chapter 3 to be a good way to learn use the framework. After building
the example in chapter 3 and reading (at a faster pace) the rest of
the book I feel very confident I can start building apps with this
tools set. Thanks Massimo!

[Baron]

> I would stay away from this kind of posting. At worst, you are presuming a
> legal position on how to take copyrighted material without consequences.

Perhaps Massimo could step in to clarify his position to prevent
speculation. So far I've read that he needs to publish for the
university, but it is possible to publish and give away
simultaneously, as the Django Book shows.

Clearly a lot of time was spent on the manual so it is understandable
for a person to want to maintain ownership. However Massimo also spent
a lot of time on web2py but still gave it away.

The wiki right now is still pretty empty and doesn't look like
approaching the coverage of the manual for a long time. So, would it
be possible to kick start the documentation effort by allowing the
copying of text sections from the manual?

Baron

[mdipierro]

I have the copyright on the book but I also have an understanding that
I would not give it away for free or it will go out of print. Creators
of other framework make their living by consulting. I make my living
in the academic. A published book is necessary to justify the time I
spent/spend on web2py. I do not make much money from it so that is not
an issue.

There has also been a lot of talk about the wiki, etc. I welcome this
and I welcome more community effort nevertheless, different people
want different things. If it takes more time for me to set-up and
maintain things, I could as well spend the time improving the book.

I think one thing is the book (and I care about that for my
profession) and one think is the wiki (necessary to describe new
features and community involvement). I do not think they should be
merged. This is not final and I will give the issue some more thought.

Massimo

[johann.sch...@easytouch-edv.com]

Hi Massimo,

I can fully understand your motivation and will keep a fan and
supporter of your baby. A different point of view could potentially be
to use community contribution to drive/update/test the web2py
documentation (the bleeding edge version) and use the community-tested
(stable version) in consolidated fashion for print publication. When I
remember right then Stefan Wintermeyer from Germany is using this
approach with his book
http://www.amazon.de/Asterisk-1-4-1-6-Installation-Programmierung/dp/3827326990/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237905177&sr=1-1
while the 'open unstable' community version can be found at
http://www.das-asterisk-buch.de

Sorry that example is with German content only. But hey, doesn't
RedHat support and use Fedora because of a similar reason.

Yes I've to admit I'd love to see web2py scaling massively in adoption
and I guess the community can and would love to help.

Just my 2 cents on that.

Cheers,
Hans

[AchipA]

I think a similar model is perhaps how Qt (the toolkit) does it. The
references and basic tutorials are free, and of top notch quality.
However, as the toolkit is quite complex, there are several volumes
that delve on Qt and how you use it as a whole, how components
interact and, in general, what good practices and the 'Qt way' are.

http://doc.trolltech.com/4.5/

and the myriad of Qt books:

http://www.amazon.com/s/qid=1237910608/ref=a9_sc_1?ie=UTF8&search-alias=aps&field-keywords=qt4

So free docs, free software and copyrighted books can coexist in the
same software ecosystem.

On Mar 24, 3:03 pm, mdipierro <mdipie...@cs.depaul.edu> wrote:

[Jonathan B]

Hi Massimo,

On Mar 24, 5:03 pm, mdipierro <mdipie...@cs.depaul.edu> wrote:
> I have the copyright on the book but I also have an understanding that
> I would not give it away for free or it will go out of print. Creators
> of other framework make their living by consulting. I make my living
> in the academic. A published book is necessary to justify the time I
> spent/spend on web2py. I do not make much money from it so that is not
> an issue.

Thanks for the clarification, Massimo. So my understanding is that it
is *not* okay to copy and paste portions of the manual into the Wiki,
with the exception of the source code examples (which can be freely
copied). We should make sure to write this down in the Wiki.

> I think one thing is the book (and I care about that for my
> profession) and one think is the wiki (necessary to describe new
> features and community involvement). I do not think they should be
> merged. This is not final and I will give the issue some more thought.

I'd be fine with this approach you suggest. It's not absolutely
necessary to have a community-written book, especially since you're
more than willing to write (and update) an official manual. And as
Achipa says, it's easy enough for free lower-quality learning material
to be available in tandem with higher-quality commercial learning
material.

My only concern with this scenario is with the Wiki's copyright. We
haven't really specified which copyright the material on the Wiki
should have, which implies that each piece is owned by the original
author. This means that copying Wiki content into the official manual
would require permission from all of the authors... That's rather
awkward. Hence, it may be a good idea to consider releasing the Wiki
under the Creative Commons Attribution license, that way the Wiki
contents can be reused commercially and can be sold in a non-share-
alike way. Of course, the current authors would have to agree to
release their work under the new license, but since there isn't much
work there yet this isn't a big issue... yet.

--Jonathan

[mdipierro]

Yes, this is a good idea. any objections?

[Joe Barnhart]

+1