Enrique
I agree with you that the book, in its current state is pretty much on par
with other free resources on the web. And I also know that there is no need
for another commercial introductory LabVIEW text. I have not looked at the
current selection of books in quite some time because I don't want to get
things stuck in my head that I will be enticed to copy. But I do remember
that they were all pretty much adequate and I never bought them because I
thought they were too expensive. So I wanted to offer an option. Something
cheaper, but adequate. Something that covered all the basics but didn't cost
$40. It is true that everything in what I have offered is freely available
elsewhere on the internet, but then again, if you look closely you will find
online coverage of all the advanced topics also. It is always nice to have a
printed book to work from, rather than try to work completely from the
computer screen.
But how does something like this get distributed? If I try to sell pdf's for
Adobe Acrobat people can just print up as many copies of that as they want.
Encrypted pdf files are easily printed with ghostscript so that doesn't
help. But then nobody will want a technical book that they have no idea of
the content. That was where I stood when I posted my previous message.
Either stay completely closed and solicit help from a few for a commercial
endeavor. Or open up completely and make it a community project. I was
leaning towards the latter and the only interest I received was for the
former. So what I have done is break down the book in its current state and
make a fairly easily navigated website out of it. The idea behind this is,
people can see exactly the entire contents of the book before buying but by
putting it in html format, it is somewhat of a hassle to convert into a
nicely printed document. If nobody ever buys it, I do get some publicity for
my website for my LabVIEW consulting/contract development company.
So this is where things stand after a lot of thought. But unless I change
things, I feel there is difficulty in allowing others to contribute now. My
guess is that some contributors would not feel too bad about using their
work to promote my site as I would be doing the coordination and
maintenance. But if you get into selling the work, that wouldn't work for a
lot of reasons.
I am still enjoying working on the project so I think for now I will
continue on the track I am on.
Thanks for your input.
Mark
"Enrique"
wrote in message
news:506500000005000000534B0000-1004225886000@exchange.ni.com...
> Hi Mark;
>
> I briefly checked your LabVIEW Training Manual. It looks like you put
> a lot of time an effort on this.
>
> I also remember you were asking in a
>
href="http://exchange.ni.com/servlet/ProcessRequest?RHIVEID=101&RPAGEID=135&
HOID=506500000008000000...
if somebody want to join in this effort. Although one person
> showed interest (CraigGraham), he also raise the question if there is
> a need for another book about LabVIEW basics. A quick tour through the
> LabVIEW
> Webring will show lots of resources for begineers.
>
> I will welcome and I am willing to help in a book about advanced
> topics in LabVIEW. I am sure lot of people will join this effort,
> specially those who had developed new tools or methods for doing
> things in LabVIEW. Let me know if this is of your interest.
>
> Kind regards;
> Enrique
