Yes, there will be a book about the Smart Mobile Studio. I don’t know yet how it will be published – as a printed manual that you’ll get together with the software, as an on-demand printed book, as an e-book or combination of those options – but there definitely will be a book about Smart.
For starters, you can download test chapter (not yet completely finished) about using regular expressions in Smart: PDF, Mobi, ePub (rename it to .epub after download). If you like what you see, you can express your interest in the book at the Leanpub site.
On a slightly unrelated topic – I’m thinking about moving all my writing about Smart to another, yet unnamed blog. However, I’m of two minds about this so I would appreciate a feedback. What do you think – should I create a new blog or should I write about Smart here (after all, it uses almost the same language as the Delphi)?
A few comments on the MOBI version - I used both Kindle for PC v1.9.3 and various simulated devices in the Kindle Previewer -
ReplyDelete1. It reads very well, though that's a given with the author I guess!
2. The content is in the wrong order though - text, TOC, title page rather than title page, TOC, text. Perhaps this is just a function of being an extract?
3. Some of the class listings could do with the occasional hard return to avoid ugly auto-wrapping. Relatedly, I'm not sure the line numbers really help.
4. There's a bit of excess space between the end of a code block and the body text (the spacing is fine between the body text to the start of a code block however). Looking at your CSS, this is because your code blocks have a margin of 0.5em both top and bottom whereas your normal paragraphs are explicitly given only a top margin of 0.5em.
5. There's a minor visual bug in the table of contents that has the '1.' oversized.
1. Thanks.
Delete2. I'll check that.
3. I don't yet know how to solve this. At the moment, listings are formatted for the printed book.
4. That's how LeanPub generates the book. No idea if that's solvable without heroic efforts.
5. No idea why - this is also autogenerated by the LeanPub.
I put absolutely no effort in formatting this chapter for mobi/epub outputs. My main concern was content and basic formatting. I'll definitely spend more time checking mobi/epub outputs before the final release.
'I put absolutely no effort in formatting this chapter for mobi/epub outputs.'
DeleteAh, OK. The CSS suggests itself to be half handwritten and half auto-generated, so I wasn't sure. (You can view the CSS by opening the MOBI file in 7zip; stylesheet.css will then be in the OEBPS folder.)
Having now looked at the PDF version, I see how the line numbering is supposed to look, i.e. with the numbers being placed in the margin. Looks fine like that I agree. The PDF version also doesn't suffer from the excess spacing either.
In general, it's par for the course that an ePub or MOBI version will look worse than the PDF one, so the issues I've raised probably aren't worth bothering about, especially as the three formats are sold as a package by Learnpub (or so it seems).
I'm responding to your last paragraph because you've asked for feedback. I can only speak for myself, but I'm interested in Delphi, and your libraries, so please keep blogging about those, and I'll keep reading them with pleasure.
ReplyDeleteI was OK with all the flooding of SMS-related blog items on DelphiFeeds while I still thought that it was a "community" project, but the recent license change and clearing of the SVN repository turned it into a commercial and very closed-source propriety piece of software. That immediately vanished my interests in it, and I don't see why they would deserve this much (free?) publicity.
Agree 100%
DeleteEven though I am interested in Smart, it does irk me a bit the way DelphiFeeds is being used almost as a free advertising portal.
@Wouter - The same could be asked about Delphi. It is not a communnity project and still receives all that free publicity on the blogs. Why? Because we like it. And the same goes for me and Smart.
Delete@Dave - Agreed, I was worried about the same. That's why I'm asking.
@Dave - I agree, though TBH it may be more of a problem of lack of activity on DelphiFeeds: there are relatively few sources that make up most of the traffic... It certainly lonely to see delphitools f.i. as 2 of the 3 "popular" slots of the week.
DeleteI personally would be happy to see more announces about components or libraries, but I can count the sources that regularly post about those on the fingers of one hand (commercial and open-source).
@Dave White: What about prism then? Or Castalia? Or TMS's news or (the list goes on).
DeleteIt is a bit sad to hear, having given years to the delphi community, posting tutorials (and dont forget all the fixes that are being piped back to DWS and synedit due to smart mobile) - that a project written in 100% delphi code, by active delphi users - dont deserve to show up on delphifeeds. I welcome all posts about delphi related news, be it prism or any other product. Being stigmata'ed out for securing what we ourselves made, despite all that we give back to the community on a monthly basis - well, that hurts dude..
I have no problem to sourt news in this blog or on DF. If news are rekated to Smart - its ok) If anybody not interested in SMS, do not read..
ReplyDeleteAnd threr is a lot of info about commertial Prism (Oxygene) and other commertial tools. So i did not see any difference for SMS - its ok to blog on DF or in this blog.
Oh.. A lot of typos! ) Please, excuse me, and comment only on subject!)
DeleteI like the idea of a book.....as i was initially turned off by the 1.0 release of SMS. It does have some ways to go before it has matured enough to warrant a book though. I think the updates will be very regularly and may end up pushing your books release date....unless of course you can devise a PDF version of your book which will be followed with free update releases as well.
ReplyDeleteYes, that's the plan - an ebook with lifetime free updates.
DeleteI'd be game for that!
DeleteI'd also keep the SMS stuff on the same blog (at least for now). As was mentioned already - SMS falls in a similar category to Oxygen Prism, so I see no problems.
ReplyDelete