What to do with using_samba?

[David Collier-Brown]

On 05/28/2013 02:34 PM, Richard Sharpe wrote:
> On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 11:26 AM, Scott Lovenberg
> <scott.lovenberg at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On May 27, 2013, at 8:09 PM, David Collier-Brown <davec-b at rogers.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 05/27/2013 06:50 PM, Andrew Bartlett wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 2013-05-27 at 21:51 +0200, Elia Pinto wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> But having a good book  as samba 3 by example for samba 4 could be a pleasure.
>>>> BTW, The issue is the lack of an author, not the lack of a publisher.  I
>>>> was approach by one only a couple of months ago, but I certainly don't
>>>> have the time to author a book.
>>>>
>>>> Andrew Bartlett
>>> I probably do, depending on how many *!%@%! things I'm doing at once (:-))
>>>
>> I'd be interested in lending a hand where my free time and knowledge intersect.  There are entire subsystems
>> of Samba-4 that I'm not at all familiar with.
>>
>> I don't know if John Terpstra would be interested or not, but he'd be another person to ask.  I know
>> Gerry Carter has been known to write a book or two in his free time, also.
> I don't speak for Gerry, but he has not been involved with Samba for
> some time, so he might be reluctant to be involved, whether or not he
> has free time.
>
IMHO, writing a new edition of a book is a bit like refactoring a
program (;-)) and requires two */groups/* of authors.

One looks at the structure of the book, asks themselves if it's still a
good way to explain how Samba works, and if the new functionality
requires a new structure. Call those "editors", for lack of a better term.

The others look at the new functionality and describe that, and
additionally look at the description of old functionality and the old
description, and change the old description to match. Call those "techies".

The two groups of authors refactor what they got, write new bits,
critique each others' bits and in general drive the book toward a target
quality for an approximate date.

In my experience with the first edition, you'll burn out at least one
lead author/editor. We wore out two, and I had to switch from
techie-author to editor-author to avoid the project taking infinite
time. The real editor (Andy Oram of O'Reilly) was very valuable to us,
by keeping us writing something that people would go to O'Reilly for, so
I recommend the process be hooked to a professional publishing company,
who will know all sorts sorts of things we won't, and keep us away from
common errors. At some point or other I tried to make all known common
errors, so Andy was invaluable.

I personally like a "how to use it" O'Reilly style, rather than a
reference-book style, and note that John Terpstra has successfully
written both...

--dave

-- 
David Collier-Brown,         | Always do right. This will gratify
System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest
davecb at spamcop.net           |                      -- Mark Twain
(416) 223-8968