The Boost C++ Libraries I, II

tkh · December 9th, 2010, 11:54 am

Hi Cuchulain;Just got my copy few days ago.Great experience so far, thanks for writing the book

Cuchulainn · December 9th, 2010, 12:14 pm

tkh,And thank you.Of course, the registration form on page 299 - when sent to us - ensures that you get all the runnable code.

pierpierlu · December 26th, 2010, 9:26 am

Hi Cuchulainn,Hansi pictures look great.Do you have a time scale for a Kindle version ?I travel a lot and tend to go paperless...Thanks.

Cuchulainn · December 26th, 2010, 12:59 pm

QuoteOriginally posted by: pierpierluHi Cuchulainn,Hansi pictures look great.Do you have a time scale for a Kindle version ?I travel a lot and tend to go paperless...Thanks.Hi pierpierlu,We actually did a small feasibility analysis last week of trying to get a representative chapter into Kindle format.. well, it was an 'experience'. First, some of the things we noticed:1. One type of font, only supported2. Formulae, tables --> bitmap --> HTML (this is a manual process ) A rough guess is (40, 70) hours work.3. Loss of formatting style when converting4. Kindle does not speak Greek (e.g. 3.1415) it seems5. Page numbers not recognisedThe conclusion is: MUCH work to get the book int Kindle format. Maybe someone else has resolved these issues.. We say it's in 'de kinderschoenen' at this stage.What do you think of ePUB format? It supports tables, works with text and seems to be flexible.

Traden4Alpha · December 26th, 2010, 1:13 pm

QuoteOriginally posted by: CuchulainnWhat do you think of ePUB format? It supports tables, works with text and seems to be flexible.The Wikipedia entry on ePUB and Kindle suggest the two aren't compatible.

Cuchulainn · December 26th, 2010, 3:14 pm

QuoteOriginally posted by: Traden4AlphaQuoteOriginally posted by: CuchulainnWhat do you think of ePUB format? It supports tables, works with text and seems to be flexible.The Wikipedia entry on ePUB and Kindle suggest the two aren't compatible. This reminds me of the 70's when mainframes/minis of vendor X only worked with printers of vendor X

Polter · December 26th, 2010, 3:24 pm

QuoteOriginally posted by: CuchulainnQuoteOriginally posted by: Traden4AlphaQuoteOriginally posted by: CuchulainnWhat do you think of ePUB format? It supports tables, works with text and seems to be flexible.The Wikipedia entry on ePUB and Kindle suggest the two aren't compatible. This reminds me of the 70's when mainframes/minis of vendor X only worked with printers of vendor X What's wrong with PDF--thought it was a standard file format for eBooks?According to this, "Version 2.3 firmware upgrade for Kindle 2 (U.S. and International) added native Portable Document Format (PDF) support."

Traden4Alpha · December 26th, 2010, 3:32 pm

QuoteOriginally posted by: CuchulainnQuoteOriginally posted by: Traden4AlphaQuoteOriginally posted by: CuchulainnWhat do you think of ePUB format? It supports tables, works with text and seems to be flexible.The Wikipedia entry on ePUB and Kindle suggest the two aren't compatible. This reminds me of the 70's when mainframes/minis of vendor X only worked with printers of vendor X Indeed! Half a dozen e-book formats multiplied by a dozen e-book devices = misery for both publishers and readers. ****One other issue to verify with Amazon is that, with Kindle, the publisher pays a bandwidth fee (out of the book revenues) to cover the cost of downloading the book via Sprint's 3G cellular data network. I think this charge depends on the file size and is on the order of a few cents/MB (but perhaps as high as $0.15/MB). For graphics-intensive books or an inefficient conversion process requiring lots of bitmaps, the download costs could be significant.

pierpierlu · December 26th, 2010, 3:59 pm

Thanks Cuchulainn. Well, I agree, it must be an 'experience'... based on the 'pilot run' are you still planning the kindle format ?I also knew epub is not supported by kindle and this is not good at all. pdf is supported and reads quite well if the original file has no fancy formatting.I have no problem with pdf articles/reports but when you buy a book you want something that is optimized for your platform.

Cuchulainn · December 27th, 2010, 8:27 am

pierpierlu,Even based on this shocking news we will go this route. At least we know what the challenges are now, so we can also adapt the makeup process for Volume II as well. Quote"Version 2.3 firmware upgrade for Kindle 2 (U.S. and International) added native Portable Document Format (PDF) support." Good news.

Hansi · December 27th, 2010, 11:48 am

QuoteOriginally posted by: CuchulainnQuote"Version 2.3 firmware upgrade for Kindle 2 (U.S. and International) added native Portable Document Format (PDF) support." Good news.Only issue with that is going to be the fact that it can't be sold through the amazon store as PDF which defeats the whole point of a version for the Kindle anyway. DRMing the PDF to prevent piracy and selling it outside the amazon store would also present issues of incompatibility with the Kindle and maybe other devices.Going the PDF route would also mean reformatting for A5 page size.There must be some kind of company set up that offers formatting for Kindle for you at a % of revenue scheme.

Cuchulainn · December 28th, 2010, 3:27 pm

Volume II short TOC. edit: extended TOC (TOC1.zip)

Cuchulainn · February 8th, 2011, 8:21 pm

QuoteOriginally posted by: pierpierluHi Cuchulainn,Hansi pictures look great.Do you have a time scale for a Kindle version ?I travel a lot and tend to go paperless...Thanks.Hi pplu,We have decided to go the e-Pub route in the short term. The Kindle s/w cannot handle what we want to do. For text it's OK but code and equations get clobbered.

pierpierlu · February 12th, 2011, 8:35 pm

Hi Cuchulainn,thanks for the update. Hope you will find a solution also for kindle in the longer term.

Cuchulainn · February 13th, 2011, 10:58 am

QuoteOriginally posted by: pierpierluHi Cuchulainn,thanks for the update. Hope you will find a solution also for kindle in the longer term.I hope so too My publishing people are talking about the effort needed etc. There are (too?) many standards at this moment which means duplicated effort for us.