Electronic edition of 'The Standard Python Library'

[John D. Gorman]

Tom,
    I also had a registration problem with the Fatbrain ematter version of /F's
book. This occured when I went to move the document from a Win95 (brick of a)
laptop to a Win98 (ultrathin) laptop last May.  Yes I did end up having to
re-register with Fatbrain and this did involve talking to a (very gracious)
customer service person.  Still, in this case I paid my $ and the book has
followed me from one machine to another.  I have not tried installing it on a
WinNT machine.

    I just tried my copy today (2 Jan) and it works fine .  The Fatbrain
registration process does deposit a key in the registry at
HKEY_CURRENT_USER->Software->Fatbrain->ematter->EB00002582. In there is a 161
byte key labeled "PDF 1.1" that contains binary data.

    I actually like the Acroreader format.  Similar to HTML-based ebooks, there
are text search, text copy and hyperlinking capabilities.  In addition, acroread
offers typeset formatting and look-and-feel capabilities that aren't typically
available with HTML-based versions. /F's book ebook doesn't appear to use
hyperlinks (say between index or toc and the referenced page), but it's a
compact enough reference that you almost don't need it.   /F has also turned off
text copying (i.e., cut and paste to the clipboard, perhaps for obvious reasons)
so that you end up having to type in the code examples yourself. Again, I don't
view this as a real inconvenience.  One true inconvenience is its current
limitation to Win platforms.  I get around this by running an remote xterms and
ssh from my Win laptop ;^).

    And, yes CDs are good for volumnous collections (such as the O'Reilly Perl
CD) where you'll need access to several hundred MB of reference info.  However,
then I'd need to have a CD player hanging from this micro-mini,
weighs-less-than-the-case-I-carry-it-in laptop in order to read the book and
that'd be a real pain.  After all, The Standard Python Library e-book consumes
all of 1.07MB!  I'm waiting for O'Reilly, New Riders and Manning and some of the
other publishers to get together and publish an electronic Python CD (similar to
O'Reilly's Perl CD) that cross references all the books by keyword and topic
;^).

Cheers,
John


Tom wrote:

> Fatbrain edition.
>
> Attempting to get a response from some c/s dept. is the sort of thing that I
> don't want to have to get into.
>
> Yes, I could have printed it - but I thought I was paying for an electronic
> edition (ie. searchable, convenient, etc.).
>
> If anyone wants to know what a good electronic edition looks like, see the
> 'Effective C++ CD' by Scott Meyers - it's excellent.
>
> Tom.
>
> "Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at effbot.org> wrote in message
> news:4f746.2529$AH6.401534 at newsc.telia.net...
> > "Tom" <NoSpam at NoSpam.com> wrote:
> > > I tried to use my electronic copy of 'The Standard Python Library' today
> > > (Jan 1), but was unable to.
> >
> > the fatbrain edition?  the mightywords edition?  the glassbook
> > edition?  have you contacted customer support?
> >
> > > It is possible that I did something wrong - I have no idea - but I would
> > > caution anyone else who might be considering buying this.  The book is
> fine,
> > > but the format is a complete hassle.  You pay your money, but you don't
> > > really get the book.
> >
> > well, nothing stops you from printing it...
> >
> > </F>
> >
> >