John,

>Those are not ingredients for a good TE. As somebody who has written several books and has been a TE, I ought to know...

As someone who grew up in the publishing business, and also as a successful beta tester of a product that I knew very little about (in the top 10 in number of confirmed bug reports on VFP6), I know some things also. :-)

>Cmon David, lets employ some common sense here. If what you say is correct, If I wrote a book about a langauge that you knew nothing about or did not have any experience with, are you saying that you could be an effective TE? I don't think so.

Yes, I believe that I would be an excellent technical editor for your upcoming books. I certainly would hold you to extremely high standards of writing as well as technical accuracy, and I would test and cross-check code, examples, and assertions that you make -- as thoroughly as anyone. What I didn't already know to be true in your writings, I would test and confirm.

>Surely, you would be at the bottom of the list of candidates that would be qualified to do the job. i.e., you would be my last choice...

To your publisher, however, I might be one of the best choices. It depends a lot on your perspective.

BTW, to further illustrate the point, I have given many technically correct answers here on the UT to questions that I did NOT know the answer to before digging in, researching and testing. Same principle.