Hi Peter,

While I (and I think many others) have always had a preference for paper books over "e-books", I can say that I have become much more used to the format of 'electronic documentation' by now and could well get along with that format if it is done differently than today's prevalent MS documentation practises.

I look at the Hacker's Guide electronic format and that is 90%+ of what I would like to see. By far the most appealing thing for me is that it has been 'designed' to NOT depend on links-to-links-to-links ad-infinitum. This is the way that I believe electronic documentation should be constructed.
I say 90%+ because there is still something that I believe could easily/aptly be addressed if it was known that it was to be distributed ONLY in electronic format - get rid of the multiple commands/functions/PEMs per page in favour if each documented on its own page. This small step (I understand how it saved paper when thee was also a paper document of the thing) would make the reading far far clearer and less complicated and keywords could still be linked to optionally allow the reader to flip to there and 'BACK' back when needed.

One other thing... *IF* the PDF format is used, then the full capabilities of the PDF offering would need to be deployed in the book(s). This included linking directly from the TOC and other linking options available with the format.

I believe that a publisher might have a different take on the cost/benefits if it was generally made clear that electronic-ONLY formats - with some care in the construction - would be widely accepted.

But if the MS standard 'documentation' practises were simply copied for such documentation then I believe it would be a failure.

just one person's opinion.

cheers


>Whil Hentzen has stopped as publisher of new vfp books. Why? Kevin Goff wrote:
>
>>Quite simply, there just isn't the promise of enough 'new' stuff to write about. I think that will likely be the case for VFP9. When one really looks at the overall picture and the recent trends, this announcement shouldn't come as a big surprise.
>
>My response:
>
>Ok, so let's not make the mistake to think that Visual FoxPro is going down simply because we witness a lowered selling of Visual FoxPro books!
>
>I think that at least an e-book of the Hacker's Guide for each next version is a must. And updated e-books of several other publications are very welcome also. Advantages of e-books:
>- They are cheaper to 'produce'.
>- They can be sold/sent to all over the world.
>
>Philips has recently anounced e-paper and they'll really take it in production this or next year:
>http://www.research.philips.com/InformationCenter/Global/FNewPressRelease.asp?lArticleId=2880&lNodeId=13
>It will probably be anywhere in a couple of years and maybe we will be among the first users. Thus it may come to the rescue. Until then, we'll have to read on our monitors and occasionally print pages or chapters (on the employer's printers of course :).