Jack,
I'd prefer tons of information instead of a meager 300 page book that leaves a
lot of questions. I'm looking forward to a paperback or hardcover book and
price doesn't really matter, it is going to be worth it anyway.
Thanks,
Markus
-----Original message-----
> From:Jack Krupansky <j...@basetechnology.com>
> Sent: Wed 29-May-2013 15:10
> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> Subject: Re: Note on The Book
>
> Erick, your point is well taken. Although my primary interest/skill is to
> produce a solid foundation reference (including tons of examples), the real
> goal is to then build on top of that foundation.
>
> While I focus on the hard-core material - which really does include some
> narrative and lots of examples in addition to tons of "mere" reference, my
> co-author, Ryan Tabora, will focus almost exclusively on... narrative and
> diagrams.
>
> And when I say reference, I also mean lots of examples. Even as the
> hard-core reference stabilizes, the examples will continue to grow ("like
> weeds!").
>
> Once we get the current, existing, under-review, chapters packaged into the
> new book and available for purchase and download (maybe Lulu, not decided) -
> available, in a couple of weeks, it will be updated approximately every
> other week, both with additional reference material, and additional
> narrative and diagrams.
>
> One of our priorities (after we get through Stage 0 of the next few weeks)
> is to in fact start giving each of the long Deep Dive Chapters enough
> narrative lead to basically say exactly that - why you should care.
>
> A longer-term priority is to improve the balance of narrative and hard-core
> reference. Yeah, that will be a lot of pages. It already is. We were at 907
> pages and I was about to drop in another 166 pages on update handlers when
> O'Reilly threw up their hands and pulled the plug. I was estimating 1200
> pages at that stage. And I'll probably have another 60-80 pages on update
> request processors within a week or so. With more to come. That did include
> a lot of hard-core material and example code for Lucene, which won't be in
> the new Solr-only book. By focusing on an e-book the raw page count alone
> becomes moot. We haven't given up on print - the intent is eventually to
> have multiple volumes (4-8 or so, maybe more), both as cheaper e-books ($3
> to $5 each) and slimmer print volumes for people who don't need everything
> in print.
>
> In fact, we will likely offer the revamped initial chapters of the book as a
> standalone introduction to Solr - narrative introduction ("why should you
> care about Solr"), basic concepts of Lucene and Solr (and why you should
> care!), brief tutorial walkthough of the major feature areas of Solr, and a
> case study. The intent would be both e-book and a slim print volume (75
> pages?).
>
> Another priority (beyond Stage 0) is to develop a detailed roadmap diagram
> of Solr and how applications can use Solr, and then use that to show how
> each of the Deep Dive sections (heavy reference, but gradually adding more
> narrative over time.)
>
> We will probably be very open to requests - what people really wish a book
> would actually do for them. The only request we won't be open to is to do it
> all in only 300 pages.
>
> -- Jack Krupansky
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Erick Erickson
> Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2013 7:19 AM
> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> Subject: Re: Note on The Book
>
> FWIW, picking up on Alexandre's point. One of my continual
> frustrations with virtually _all_
> technical books is they become endless pages of details without ever
> mentioning why
> the hell I should care. Unfortunately, explaining use-cases for
> everything would only make
> the book about 10,000 pages long. Siiigggggh.
>
> I guess you can take this as a vote for narrative....
>
> Erick
>
> On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 4:53 PM, Jack Krupansky <j...@basetechnology.com>
> wrote:
> > We'll have a blog for the book. We hope to have a first
> > raw/rough/partial/draft published as an e-book in maybe 10 days to 2
> > weeks.
> > As soon as we get that process under control, we'll start the blog. I'll
> > keep your email on file and keep you posted.
> >
> > -- Jack Krupansky
> >
> > -----Original Message----- From: Swati Swoboda
> > Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 1:36 PM
> > To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> > Subject: RE: Note on The Book
> >
> >
> > I'd definitely prefer the spiral bound as well. E-books are great and your
> > draft version seems very reasonably priced (aka I would definitely get
> > it).
> >
> > Really looking forward to this. Is there a separate mailing list / etc.
> > for
> > the book for those who would like to receive updates on the status of the
> > book?
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Swati Swoboda
> > Software Developer - Igloo Software
> > +1.519.489.4120 sswob...@igloosoftware.com
> >
> > Bring back Cake Fridays – watch a video you’ll actually like
> > http://vimeo.com/64886237
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Jack Krupansky [mailto:j...@basetechnology.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2013 7:15 PM
> > To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> > Subject: Note on The Book
> >
> > To those of you who may have heard about the Lucene/Solr book that I and
> > two
> > others are writing on Lucene and Solr, some bad and good news. The bad
> > news:
> > The book contract with O’Reilly has been canceled. The good news: I’m
> > going
> > to proceed with self-publishing (possibly on Lulu or even Amazon) a
> > somewhat
> > reduced scope Solr-only Reference Guide (with hints of Lucene). The scope
> > of
> > the previous effort was too great, even for O’Reilly – a book larger than
> > 800 pages (or even 600) that was heavy on reference and lighter on “guide”
> > just wasn’t fitting in with their traditional “guide” model. In truth,
> > Solr
> > is just too complex for a simple guide that covers it all, let alone
> > Lucene
> > as well.
> >
> > I’ll announce more details in the coming weeks, but I expect to publish an
> > e-book-only version of the book, focused on Solr reference (and plenty of
> > guide as well), possibly on Lulu, plus eventually publish 4-8 individual
> > print volumes for people who really want the paper. One model I may pursue
> > is to offer the current, incomplete, raw, rough, draft as a $7.99 e-book,
> > with the promise of updates every two weeks or a month as new and revised
> > content and new releases of Solr become available. Maybe the individual
> > e-book volumes would be $2 or $3. These are just preliminary ideas. Feel
> > free to let me know what seems reasonable or excessive.
> >
> > For paper: Do people really want perfect bound, or would you prefer spiral
> > bound that lies flat and folds back easily? I suppose we could offer
> > both –
> > which should be considered “premium”?
> >
> > I’ll announce more details next week. The immediate goal will be to get
> > the
> > “raw rough draft” available to everyone ASAP.
> >
> > For those of you who have been early reviewers – your effort will not have
> > been in vain. I have all your comments and will address them over the next
> > month or two or three.
> >
> > Just for some clarity, the existing Solr Wiki and even the recent
> > contribution of the LucidWorks Solr Reference to Apache really are still
> > great contributions to general knowledge about Solr, but the book is
> > intended to go much deeper into detail, especially with loads of examples
> > and a lot more narrative guide. For example, the book has a complete list
> > of
> > the analyzer filters, each with a clean one-liner description. Ditto for
> > every parameter (although I would note that the LucidWorks Solr Reference
> > does a decent job of that as well.) Maybe, eventually, everything in the
> > book COULD (and will) be integrated into the standard Solr doc, but until
> > then, a single, integrated reference really is sorely needed. And, the
> > book
> > has a lot of narrative guide and walking through examples as well. Over
> > time, I’m sure both will evolve. And just to be clear, the book is not a
> > simple repurposing of the Solr wiki content – EVERY description of
> > everything has been written fresh, from scratch. So, for example, analyzer
> > filters get both short one-liner summary descriptions as well as more
> > detailed descriptions, plus formal attribute specifications and numerous
> > examples, including sample input and outputs (the LucidWorks Solr
> > Reference
> > does a better job with examples as well.)
> >
> > The book has been written in parallel with branch_4x and that will
> > continue.
> >
> > -- Jack Krupansky
>
>
