Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!ll-xn!adelie!ora!tim From: tim@ora.UUCP (Tim O'Reilly) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Re: O'Reilly X Books Message-ID: <1165@ora.UUCP> Date: 15 Sep 88 16:11:15 GMT References: <469@pan.UUCP> <137@tityus.UUCP> <1625@daisy.UUCP> Organization: O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., Newton, MA Lines: 49 In article <1625@daisy.UUCP>, klee@daisy.UUCP (Ken Lee) writes: > I've found that 99% of the material in the O'Reilly books is the same, almost > word for word, as the material on the MIT tape. It kind of bugs me that the > material is regurgitated in the O'Reilly books with only minimal > acknowledgements of the original authors. The O'Reilly X11R1 book is laced > with typos, some really obvious, like references to tables that appear on the > MIT tape, but not in the O'Reilly book. Your comments regarding errors in our books are not based on the latest edition, which is what was under discussion. The "X11R1 book" hasn't been available from us for 6 months, and was clearly marked as "preliminary." Likewise, the initial cut at R2 was also marked "preliminary." What's more, we offered people an "at cost" upgrade since we knew the books were preliminary! The books have changed considerably since the edition you have apparently used. I have no doubt that there are still errors, omissions and oversights in the books--but there are also many things that are correct in there that were incorrect or misleading in the MIT documentation! As for your comments about unacknowledged material--you are sadly out of date. It is true that the very first edition of the book didn't acknowledge all of the material properly....but it was an evaluation copy provided to people who knew its provenance--a rewrite of the MIT manuals for companies that were developing X products. Once we realized that there was a market for the manual as a book sold to individuals, we corrected that situation. We've responded to your comments on this topic when you flamed on it after reading the first preliminary edition, and what we said then is true now: Volume 2 *is* based closely on the MIT material; its value is in the presentation of that material. We've supplemented the sparse MIT man pages with material from Gettys, Schiefler and Newman, (so that all the information on a given routine can be found in one place) and added a lot of other useful reference material. Volume 1 contains some MIT material, but is chiefly original. All material from standard MIT sources is clearly acknowledged in both books, using standard publishing practices for acknowledgement. -- Tim O'Reilly (617) 527-4210 O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., Publishers of Nutshell Handbooks 981 Chestnut Street, Newton, MA 02164 UUCP: uunet!ora!tim ARPA: tim@ora.uu.net