What would you like to see in a book about Matplotlib?

[Sandro Tosi]

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 18:50, Dotan Cohen <dotancohen at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/1/11 Sandro Tosi <matrixhasu at gmail.com>:
>>> I would suggest at least a chapter on _acquiring_ the data that is to
>>> be plotted using Python to scrape different sources _not_designed_ to
>>> be scraped. Online webpages come to mind. An example on retrieving,
>>> for instance, the prices of varying currencies, parsing the HTML
>>> pages, extracting the data, and then plotting it would be a great
>>> example for a real worlds usage that show matplotlib as a tool in a
>>> toolchain, not a means to an end.
>>
>> Well, a whole chapter to this is a little too much, but such examples
>> will be presented in the book: we're not going to teach how to program
>> in Python, but how to use matplotlib, so the data retriving is a
>> little out-of-scope (or at least border-line), so the code will be in
>> the examples provided along with the book, but not deeply explained in
>> the book text.
>
> The problem with that approach is that you limit your audience to people who:
> 1) Are interested in matplotlab
> -AND-
> 2) Are already familiar with Python

That is exactly the target the editor wants to reach...

> For every AND clause you remove you broaden the book's audience. You
> do not need to rewrite the book on Python programming or programming
> in general, but getting a C or even PHP programmer up to speed on the
> basics of Python as related to matplotlib will make the book much more
> accessible. At a minimum, it will add another valuable chapter to the
> book that can be safely ignored by Python gurus. And you are making
> the book that much more accessible.

I will try to ask this, but they were really clear that knowing python
is a prerequisite of the book readers.

-- 
Sandro Tosi (aka morph, morpheus, matrixhasu)
My website: http://matrixhasu.altervista.org/
Me at Debian: http://wiki.debian.org/SandroTosi