What the Heck Is Up With Solveig's OpenOffice 2.0 Book?

Hi all,

I'm getting tense about the book delay so thought I'd just share what the poop is.

The problem is that this is yet ANOTHER delay. Circa 2003, I was going to do a 1.x book and that got posted on Amazon. Then we decided against it, but Amazon wouldn't take it off their page no matter how many times I wrote to them. So my apologies to those of you who ordered the book three years ago.

Now, what's up with the 2.0 book?  I am proud to say I am done with my part except for the index, which is not in any way critical path. It's my publisher who needs to get the book on the schedule to be proofed and put through the production process, and hasn't done so yet. Apparently there's the perception that OpenOffice.org books don't sell that well, and so my book is getting pushed down the schedule after other books from the same publisher. 

We of course know it's going to ROCKET off the shelves. ;>   (Fingers crossed, at least.)

I've also sent my editor many title possibilities, based on your suggestions, and the Open Road/Route 66 theme. He's working on that.

So--that's the deal. I'm badgering my editor frequently but that it's kind of out of my hands.

On the bright side, there is some progress on making PDFs of the book available for purchase--$5 here, $10 there, etc. I'll announce that as soon as it's available, but I don't want to give a date. It'll probably be before the paper book.

If you want to post a comment about how you and 384 of your closest friends and family members will be buying several copies each of the paper book, then of course feel free. ;> I'll see if that will make the 'powers that be" budge on the proofing/production schedule. But I'm not making this post to try to manufacture a public horde of checkbook-wielding supporters, though; really just wanted to explain.

Comments

[Linker]

My pre-order is in on Amazon, so that's at least one. :)

Looking forward to it -- I'm an OO newbie, so that'll be a good resource for me.

[Olof Andersson]

If the book is as good as your blog, then I will buy a copy for sure. Do you have any plans on translating the book into swedish ;-)

[Solveig Haugland]

Linker, Olof,

Thanks!

As for translations, the previous book was translated into Czech I think, Polish, Italian...I think that's all. I fear that Swedes suffer from the reputation of being better at English than Americans, so you might be lower on the list. ;>

(I wish I had learned Norwegian or Swedish in school intead of French--my brain doesn't do French and after years of studying and months of living there, everything still sounds pretty much like "eugh". On the other hand, I easily picked up bit of Norwegian whilst in Molde and Oslo doing training, just from watching subtitled episodes of The Simpsons.)

[Louis Roederer]

I've been holding the sweaty cash in my anxiety-clenched fist for months now! :-)

[Samuel deHuszar Allen]

I'm for certain buying the downloadable version and will recommend the paper version to my clients when it's ready.

Incidentally, how much is there in the book dedicated to Base, and more specifically creating forms for entering data and connection to MySQL.

I'm finding that while most folks spend time covering Writer, Calc, and Impress (and rightfully so as that's where the vast majority of the market is) there is little to no documentation for Base which is frustrating.

If that's part of the deal, I'd be happy to buy a digital copy tonight. Even if it's of pre-release quality.

[Solveig Haugland]

Hi Samuel,

There is some reasonable coverage in the book of creating databases from scratch and connecting to things like spreadsheets. However, it's an "80/20" book so I'm not getting into how to connect to mySQL or other items. (I'm also not much of a database expert, so that's another reason.)

I agree that some seriously technical OOo database information would be good--I've gotten other requests as well and have had to give those folks the same answer. Sam, Ben, anyone--do you have a couple months when you weren't doing anything else? ;>

[Jim Brittain]

In view of the fact that I'm one of the people that's nagged after it at least three times, you an count on a sale to me, as well as three others to whom I'm gonna give the book and a CD of the install file - to show 'em that you don't NEED MSOffice, especially if you don't use Access. (Base is still a "not ready for prime time player", IM(NV)HO. But I've implied that elsewhere.)

Egad, SH; I'm becoming a groupie. This is TOO WEIRD.

[Solveig]

Thanks Jim!

Maybe we can organize a holiday, like the Great American Smokeout. Let's say Wednesday August 2nd (no holidays in August yet) is the Great American Ditch Microsoft Office Day. Everyone, call your friends and go from house to house installing OOo and (depending on how well your friends will take this) disabling their MS Office icons/menu items. ;>

[Louis Roederer]

Just uninstall it! Only make sure you uninstall MS Office BEFORE installing OOo, cuz MS trashes all the file associations EVEN IF OOo IS YOUR DEFAULT. $#!+!

[Solveig]

Guerrila tactics, eh Louis? ;>

[Samuel deHuszar Allen]

If by "Sam, Ben, anyone--do you have a couple months when you weren't doing anything else?" you are asking us to get involved in writing such documentation, I might bite. It's not that I have nothing else to do, but it's important, and I think OpenOffice really can't afford achilles heels like this even if the app it's trying to clone is itself a toy. A stable front-end to a serious back-end (like MySQL, Postgres, DB2, SQL, etc. is no laughing matter). Base definately needs work, but I'm willing to bet that most of the frustrations people have with Base have less to do with bugs, but with the intended usage not being properly documented. There have been many applications where I was hopping up and down mad that something was broken only to find out that the app was expecting me to approach my efforts a different way. A lack of documentation or "good-practices guide" will always aggravate these problems.

Having said all that. Even if you don't get into all of the MySQL side, having guidelines for building useful forms from scratch would be a god-send (my offer to purchase immediately still stands). I can figure out the MySQL side on my own if need be.

[Solveig Haugland]

It never hurts to ask, is my guideline. ;> I will see how things go with the OpenOffice.org book sales, while I don't think my editor would go for an OOo db-focused book, I do now have incentive to take the mail merge/database workbook I'm finishing (the content is currently in the Writer workbook), and let people know about it. It's also possible that there's something at documentation.openoffice.org that could be helpful.

If you write anything, Samuel, do let me know and I'll publicize the heck out of it. I think there's a program to sell PDFs on Amazon, and of course there are other options.

Regarding forms and databases, here's what is available now and what's coming.
- A techtarget.com article on specifically how to create a non-database-related form, focussing on how to create individual controls like dropdown lists with values. It's also useful for tweaking readymade database-connected forms created from the wizard, which seems to be the easiest approach.
http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/tip/1,289483,sid39_gci1191662,00.html

- A techtarget.com article on how to create database-connected forms from the wizard.
http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/tip/1,289483,sid39_gci1151013,00.html

- In the book, I don't talk much about forms since I promised my editor a shorter book this time and I'm already 150% over. ;> (But also only 75% of the length of the old one.)

- In the book, and also in the Writer workbook (soon to be its own database/mail merge workbook), instructions for the basics of databases based on spreadsheets, text files, address books, and creating a Base database from scratch. TOC at
http://getopenoffice.org/tocs/compwriter20toc.pdf

- In the book I also cover basic queries.