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Posted to solr-user@lucene.apache.org by Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com> on 2013/05/24 01:14:41 UTC
Note on The Book
To those of you who may have heard about the Lucene/Solr book that I and two others are writing on Lucene and Solr, some bad and good news. The bad news: The book contract with O’Reilly has been canceled. The good news: I’m going to proceed with self-publishing (possibly on Lulu or even Amazon) a somewhat reduced scope Solr-only Reference Guide (with hints of Lucene). The scope of the previous effort was too great, even for O’Reilly – a book larger than 800 pages (or even 600) that was heavy on reference and lighter on “guide” just wasn’t fitting in with their traditional “guide” model. In truth, Solr is just too complex for a simple guide that covers it all, let alone Lucene as well.
I’ll announce more details in the coming weeks, but I expect to publish an e-book-only version of the book, focused on Solr reference (and plenty of guide as well), possibly on Lulu, plus eventually publish 4-8 individual print volumes for people who really want the paper. One model I may pursue is to offer the current, incomplete, raw, rough, draft as a $7.99 e-book, with the promise of updates every two weeks or a month as new and revised content and new releases of Solr become available. Maybe the individual e-book volumes would be $2 or $3. These are just preliminary ideas. Feel free to let me know what seems reasonable or excessive.
For paper: Do people really want perfect bound, or would you prefer spiral bound that lies flat and folds back easily? I suppose we could offer both – which should be considered “premium”?
I’ll announce more details next week. The immediate goal will be to get the “raw rough draft” available to everyone ASAP.
For those of you who have been early reviewers – your effort will not have been in vain. I have all your comments and will address them over the next month or two or three.
Just for some clarity, the existing Solr Wiki and even the recent contribution of the LucidWorks Solr Reference to Apache really are still great contributions to general knowledge about Solr, but the book is intended to go much deeper into detail, especially with loads of examples and a lot more narrative guide. For example, the book has a complete list of the analyzer filters, each with a clean one-liner description. Ditto for every parameter (although I would note that the LucidWorks Solr Reference does a decent job of that as well.) Maybe, eventually, everything in the book COULD (and will) be integrated into the standard Solr doc, but until then, a single, integrated reference really is sorely needed. And, the book has a lot of narrative guide and walking through examples as well. Over time, I’m sure both will evolve. And just to be clear, the book is not a simple repurposing of the Solr wiki content – EVERY description of everything has been written fresh, from scratch. So, for example, analyzer filters get both short one-liner summary descriptions as well as more detailed descriptions, plus formal attribute specifications and numerous examples, including sample input and outputs (the LucidWorks Solr Reference does a better job with examples as well.)
The book has been written in parallel with branch_4x and that will continue.
-- Jack Krupansky
Re: Note on The Book
Posted by Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com>.
Point taken. Although initially the focus is on one big e-book - to make
searching easier, with zero chance of printing that as one paper book, the
intent is to go multi-volume for the print edition down the road a little
bit.
-- Jack Krupansky
-----Original Message-----
From: Otis Gospodnetic
Sent: Sunday, June 09, 2013 2:12 AM
To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
Subject: Re: Note on The Book
It's 2013 and people suffer from ADD. Break it up into a la carte
chapter books.
Otis
--
Solr & ElasticSearch Support
http://sematext.com/
On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 6:23 PM, Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com>
wrote:
> Markus,
>
> Okay, more pages it is!
>
> -- Jack Krupansky
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Markus Jelsma
> Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2013 5:35 PM
>
> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> Subject: RE: Note on The Book
>
> Jack,
>
> I'd prefer tons of information instead of a meager 300 page book that
> leaves
> a lot of questions. I'm looking forward to a paperback or hardcover book
> and
> price doesn't really matter, it is going to be worth it anyway.
>
> Thanks,
> Markus
>
>
>
> -----Original message-----
>>
>> From:Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com>
>> Sent: Wed 29-May-2013 15:10
>> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
>> Subject: Re: Note on The Book
>>
>> Erick, your point is well taken. Although my primary interest/skill is to
>> produce a solid foundation reference (including tons of examples), the
>> real
>> goal is to then build on top of that foundation.
>>
>> While I focus on the hard-core material - which really does include some
>> narrative and lots of examples in addition to tons of "mere" reference,
>> my
>> co-author, Ryan Tabora, will focus almost exclusively on... narrative and
>> diagrams.
>>
>> And when I say reference, I also mean lots of examples. Even as the
>> hard-core reference stabilizes, the examples will continue to grow ("like
>> weeds!").
>>
>> Once we get the current, existing, under-review, chapters packaged into
>> the
>> new book and available for purchase and download (maybe Lulu, not
>> decided)
>> -
>> available, in a couple of weeks, it will be updated approximately every
>> other week, both with additional reference material, and additional
>> narrative and diagrams.
>>
>> One of our priorities (after we get through Stage 0 of the next few
>> weeks)
>> is to in fact start giving each of the long Deep Dive Chapters enough
>> narrative lead to basically say exactly that - why you should care.
>>
>> A longer-term priority is to improve the balance of narrative and
>> hard-core
>> reference. Yeah, that will be a lot of pages. It already is. We were at
>> 907
>> pages and I was about to drop in another 166 pages on update handlers
>> when
>> O'Reilly threw up their hands and pulled the plug. I was estimating 1200
>> pages at that stage. And I'll probably have another 60-80 pages on update
>> request processors within a week or so. With more to come. That did
>> include
>> a lot of hard-core material and example code for Lucene, which won't be
>> in
>> the new Solr-only book. By focusing on an e-book the raw page count alone
>> becomes moot. We haven't given up on print - the intent is eventually to
>> have multiple volumes (4-8 or so, maybe more), both as cheaper e-books
>> ($3
>> to $5 each) and slimmer print volumes for people who don't need
>> everything
>> in print.
>>
>> In fact, we will likely offer the revamped initial chapters of the book
>> as
>> a
>> standalone introduction to Solr - narrative introduction ("why should you
>> care about Solr"), basic concepts of Lucene and Solr (and why you should
>> care!), brief tutorial walkthough of the major feature areas of Solr, and
>> a
>> case study. The intent would be both e-book and a slim print volume (75
>> pages?).
>>
>> Another priority (beyond Stage 0) is to develop a detailed roadmap
>> diagram
>> of Solr and how applications can use Solr, and then use that to show how
>> each of the Deep Dive sections (heavy reference, but gradually adding
>> more
>> narrative over time.)
>>
>> We will probably be very open to requests - what people really wish a
>> book
>> would actually do for them. The only request we won't be open to is to do
>> it
>> all in only 300 pages.
>>
>> -- Jack Krupansky
>>
>> -----Original Message----- From: Erick Erickson
>> Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2013 7:19 AM
>> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
>> Subject: Re: Note on The Book
>>
>> FWIW, picking up on Alexandre's point. One of my continual
>> frustrations with virtually _all_
>> technical books is they become endless pages of details without ever
>> mentioning why
>> the hell I should care. Unfortunately, explaining use-cases for
>> everything would only make
>> the book about 10,000 pages long. Siiigggggh.
>>
>> I guess you can take this as a vote for narrative....
>>
>> Erick
>>
>> On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 4:53 PM, Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com>
>> wrote:
>> > We'll have a blog for the book. We hope to have a first
>> > raw/rough/partial/draft published as an e-book in maybe 10 days to 2
>> > weeks.
>> > As soon as we get that process under control, we'll start the blog.
>> > I'll
>> > keep your email on file and keep you posted.
>> >
>> > -- Jack Krupansky
>> >
>> > -----Original Message----- From: Swati Swoboda
>> > Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 1:36 PM
>> > To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
>> > Subject: RE: Note on The Book
>> >
>> >
>> > I'd definitely prefer the spiral bound as well. E-books are great and >
>> > your
>> > draft version seems very reasonably priced (aka I would definitely get
>> > it).
>> >
>> > Really looking forward to this. Is there a separate mailing list / etc.
>> > for
>> > the book for those who would like to receive updates on the status of >
>> > the
>> > book?
>> >
>> > Thanks
>> >
>> > Swati Swoboda
>> > Software Developer - Igloo Software
>> > +1.519.489.4120 sswoboda@igloosoftware.com
>> >
>> > Bring back Cake Fridays – watch a video you’ll actually like
>> > http://vimeo.com/64886237
>> >
>> >
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: Jack Krupansky [mailto:jack@basetechnology.com]
>> > Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2013 7:15 PM
>> > To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
>> > Subject: Note on The Book
>> >
>> > To those of you who may have heard about the Lucene/Solr book that I
>> > and
>> > two
>> > others are writing on Lucene and Solr, some bad and good news. The bad
>> > news:
>> > The book contract with O’Reilly has been canceled. The good news: I’m
>> > going
>> > to proceed with self-publishing (possibly on Lulu or even Amazon) a
>> > somewhat
>> > reduced scope Solr-only Reference Guide (with hints of Lucene). The >
>> > scope
>> > of
>> > the previous effort was too great, even for O’Reilly – a book larger >
>> > than
>> > 800 pages (or even 600) that was heavy on reference and lighter on >
>> > “guide”
>> > just wasn’t fitting in with their traditional “guide” model. In truth,
>> > Solr
>> > is just too complex for a simple guide that covers it all, let alone
>> > Lucene
>> > as well.
>> >
>> > I’ll announce more details in the coming weeks, but I expect to publish
>> > > an
>> > e-book-only version of the book, focused on Solr reference (and plenty
>> > >
>> > of
>> > guide as well), possibly on Lulu, plus eventually publish 4-8
>> > individual
>> > print volumes for people who really want the paper. One model I may >
>> > pursue
>> > is to offer the current, incomplete, raw, rough, draft as a $7.99 >
>> > e-book,
>> > with the promise of updates every two weeks or a month as new and >
>> > revised
>> > content and new releases of Solr become available. Maybe the individual
>> > e-book volumes would be $2 or $3. These are just preliminary ideas.
>> > Feel
>> > free to let me know what seems reasonable or excessive.
>> >
>> > For paper: Do people really want perfect bound, or would you prefer >
>> > spiral
>> > bound that lies flat and folds back easily? I suppose we could offer
>> > both –
>> > which should be considered “premium”?
>> >
>> > I’ll announce more details next week. The immediate goal will be to get
>> > the
>> > “raw rough draft” available to everyone ASAP.
>> >
>> > For those of you who have been early reviewers – your effort will not >
>> > have
>> > been in vain. I have all your comments and will address them over the >
>> > next
>> > month or two or three.
>> >
>> > Just for some clarity, the existing Solr Wiki and even the recent
>> > contribution of the LucidWorks Solr Reference to Apache really are
>> > still
>> > great contributions to general knowledge about Solr, but the book is
>> > intended to go much deeper into detail, especially with loads of >
>> > examples
>> > and a lot more narrative guide. For example, the book has a complete >
>> > list
>> > of
>> > the analyzer filters, each with a clean one-liner description. Ditto
>> > for
>> > every parameter (although I would note that the LucidWorks Solr >
>> > Reference
>> > does a decent job of that as well.) Maybe, eventually, everything in
>> > the
>> > book COULD (and will) be integrated into the standard Solr doc, but >
>> > until
>> > then, a single, integrated reference really is sorely needed. And, the
>> > book
>> > has a lot of narrative guide and walking through examples as well. Over
>> > time, I’m sure both will evolve. And just to be clear, the book is not
>> > a
>> > simple repurposing of the Solr wiki content – EVERY description of
>> > everything has been written fresh, from scratch. So, for example, >
>> > analyzer
>> > filters get both short one-liner summary descriptions as well as more
>> > detailed descriptions, plus formal attribute specifications and
>> > numerous
>> > examples, including sample input and outputs (the LucidWorks Solr
>> > Reference
>> > does a better job with examples as well.)
>> >
>> > The book has been written in parallel with branch_4x and that will
>> > continue.
>> >
>> > -- Jack Krupansky
>>
>>
>
Re: Note on The Book
Posted by Otis Gospodnetic <ot...@gmail.com>.
It's 2013 and people suffer from ADD. Break it up into a la carte
chapter books.
Otis
--
Solr & ElasticSearch Support
http://sematext.com/
On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 6:23 PM, Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com> wrote:
> Markus,
>
> Okay, more pages it is!
>
> -- Jack Krupansky
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Markus Jelsma
> Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2013 5:35 PM
>
> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> Subject: RE: Note on The Book
>
> Jack,
>
> I'd prefer tons of information instead of a meager 300 page book that leaves
> a lot of questions. I'm looking forward to a paperback or hardcover book and
> price doesn't really matter, it is going to be worth it anyway.
>
> Thanks,
> Markus
>
>
>
> -----Original message-----
>>
>> From:Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com>
>> Sent: Wed 29-May-2013 15:10
>> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
>> Subject: Re: Note on The Book
>>
>> Erick, your point is well taken. Although my primary interest/skill is to
>> produce a solid foundation reference (including tons of examples), the
>> real
>> goal is to then build on top of that foundation.
>>
>> While I focus on the hard-core material - which really does include some
>> narrative and lots of examples in addition to tons of "mere" reference, my
>> co-author, Ryan Tabora, will focus almost exclusively on... narrative and
>> diagrams.
>>
>> And when I say reference, I also mean lots of examples. Even as the
>> hard-core reference stabilizes, the examples will continue to grow ("like
>> weeds!").
>>
>> Once we get the current, existing, under-review, chapters packaged into
>> the
>> new book and available for purchase and download (maybe Lulu, not decided)
>> -
>> available, in a couple of weeks, it will be updated approximately every
>> other week, both with additional reference material, and additional
>> narrative and diagrams.
>>
>> One of our priorities (after we get through Stage 0 of the next few weeks)
>> is to in fact start giving each of the long Deep Dive Chapters enough
>> narrative lead to basically say exactly that - why you should care.
>>
>> A longer-term priority is to improve the balance of narrative and
>> hard-core
>> reference. Yeah, that will be a lot of pages. It already is. We were at
>> 907
>> pages and I was about to drop in another 166 pages on update handlers when
>> O'Reilly threw up their hands and pulled the plug. I was estimating 1200
>> pages at that stage. And I'll probably have another 60-80 pages on update
>> request processors within a week or so. With more to come. That did
>> include
>> a lot of hard-core material and example code for Lucene, which won't be in
>> the new Solr-only book. By focusing on an e-book the raw page count alone
>> becomes moot. We haven't given up on print - the intent is eventually to
>> have multiple volumes (4-8 or so, maybe more), both as cheaper e-books ($3
>> to $5 each) and slimmer print volumes for people who don't need everything
>> in print.
>>
>> In fact, we will likely offer the revamped initial chapters of the book as
>> a
>> standalone introduction to Solr - narrative introduction ("why should you
>> care about Solr"), basic concepts of Lucene and Solr (and why you should
>> care!), brief tutorial walkthough of the major feature areas of Solr, and
>> a
>> case study. The intent would be both e-book and a slim print volume (75
>> pages?).
>>
>> Another priority (beyond Stage 0) is to develop a detailed roadmap diagram
>> of Solr and how applications can use Solr, and then use that to show how
>> each of the Deep Dive sections (heavy reference, but gradually adding more
>> narrative over time.)
>>
>> We will probably be very open to requests - what people really wish a book
>> would actually do for them. The only request we won't be open to is to do
>> it
>> all in only 300 pages.
>>
>> -- Jack Krupansky
>>
>> -----Original Message----- From: Erick Erickson
>> Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2013 7:19 AM
>> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
>> Subject: Re: Note on The Book
>>
>> FWIW, picking up on Alexandre's point. One of my continual
>> frustrations with virtually _all_
>> technical books is they become endless pages of details without ever
>> mentioning why
>> the hell I should care. Unfortunately, explaining use-cases for
>> everything would only make
>> the book about 10,000 pages long. Siiigggggh.
>>
>> I guess you can take this as a vote for narrative....
>>
>> Erick
>>
>> On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 4:53 PM, Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com>
>> wrote:
>> > We'll have a blog for the book. We hope to have a first
>> > raw/rough/partial/draft published as an e-book in maybe 10 days to 2
>> > weeks.
>> > As soon as we get that process under control, we'll start the blog. I'll
>> > keep your email on file and keep you posted.
>> >
>> > -- Jack Krupansky
>> >
>> > -----Original Message----- From: Swati Swoboda
>> > Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 1:36 PM
>> > To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
>> > Subject: RE: Note on The Book
>> >
>> >
>> > I'd definitely prefer the spiral bound as well. E-books are great and >
>> > your
>> > draft version seems very reasonably priced (aka I would definitely get
>> > it).
>> >
>> > Really looking forward to this. Is there a separate mailing list / etc.
>> > for
>> > the book for those who would like to receive updates on the status of >
>> > the
>> > book?
>> >
>> > Thanks
>> >
>> > Swati Swoboda
>> > Software Developer - Igloo Software
>> > +1.519.489.4120 sswoboda@igloosoftware.com
>> >
>> > Bring back Cake Fridays – watch a video you’ll actually like
>> > http://vimeo.com/64886237
>> >
>> >
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: Jack Krupansky [mailto:jack@basetechnology.com]
>> > Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2013 7:15 PM
>> > To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
>> > Subject: Note on The Book
>> >
>> > To those of you who may have heard about the Lucene/Solr book that I and
>> > two
>> > others are writing on Lucene and Solr, some bad and good news. The bad
>> > news:
>> > The book contract with O’Reilly has been canceled. The good news: I’m
>> > going
>> > to proceed with self-publishing (possibly on Lulu or even Amazon) a
>> > somewhat
>> > reduced scope Solr-only Reference Guide (with hints of Lucene). The >
>> > scope
>> > of
>> > the previous effort was too great, even for O’Reilly – a book larger >
>> > than
>> > 800 pages (or even 600) that was heavy on reference and lighter on >
>> > “guide”
>> > just wasn’t fitting in with their traditional “guide” model. In truth,
>> > Solr
>> > is just too complex for a simple guide that covers it all, let alone
>> > Lucene
>> > as well.
>> >
>> > I’ll announce more details in the coming weeks, but I expect to publish
>> > > an
>> > e-book-only version of the book, focused on Solr reference (and plenty >
>> > of
>> > guide as well), possibly on Lulu, plus eventually publish 4-8 individual
>> > print volumes for people who really want the paper. One model I may >
>> > pursue
>> > is to offer the current, incomplete, raw, rough, draft as a $7.99 >
>> > e-book,
>> > with the promise of updates every two weeks or a month as new and >
>> > revised
>> > content and new releases of Solr become available. Maybe the individual
>> > e-book volumes would be $2 or $3. These are just preliminary ideas. Feel
>> > free to let me know what seems reasonable or excessive.
>> >
>> > For paper: Do people really want perfect bound, or would you prefer >
>> > spiral
>> > bound that lies flat and folds back easily? I suppose we could offer
>> > both –
>> > which should be considered “premium”?
>> >
>> > I’ll announce more details next week. The immediate goal will be to get
>> > the
>> > “raw rough draft” available to everyone ASAP.
>> >
>> > For those of you who have been early reviewers – your effort will not >
>> > have
>> > been in vain. I have all your comments and will address them over the >
>> > next
>> > month or two or three.
>> >
>> > Just for some clarity, the existing Solr Wiki and even the recent
>> > contribution of the LucidWorks Solr Reference to Apache really are still
>> > great contributions to general knowledge about Solr, but the book is
>> > intended to go much deeper into detail, especially with loads of >
>> > examples
>> > and a lot more narrative guide. For example, the book has a complete >
>> > list
>> > of
>> > the analyzer filters, each with a clean one-liner description. Ditto for
>> > every parameter (although I would note that the LucidWorks Solr >
>> > Reference
>> > does a decent job of that as well.) Maybe, eventually, everything in the
>> > book COULD (and will) be integrated into the standard Solr doc, but >
>> > until
>> > then, a single, integrated reference really is sorely needed. And, the
>> > book
>> > has a lot of narrative guide and walking through examples as well. Over
>> > time, I’m sure both will evolve. And just to be clear, the book is not a
>> > simple repurposing of the Solr wiki content – EVERY description of
>> > everything has been written fresh, from scratch. So, for example, >
>> > analyzer
>> > filters get both short one-liner summary descriptions as well as more
>> > detailed descriptions, plus formal attribute specifications and numerous
>> > examples, including sample input and outputs (the LucidWorks Solr
>> > Reference
>> > does a better job with examples as well.)
>> >
>> > The book has been written in parallel with branch_4x and that will
>> > continue.
>> >
>> > -- Jack Krupansky
>>
>>
>
Re: Note on The Book
Posted by Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com>.
Markus,
Okay, more pages it is!
-- Jack Krupansky
-----Original Message-----
From: Markus Jelsma
Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2013 5:35 PM
To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
Subject: RE: Note on The Book
Jack,
I'd prefer tons of information instead of a meager 300 page book that leaves
a lot of questions. I'm looking forward to a paperback or hardcover book and
price doesn't really matter, it is going to be worth it anyway.
Thanks,
Markus
-----Original message-----
> From:Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com>
> Sent: Wed 29-May-2013 15:10
> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> Subject: Re: Note on The Book
>
> Erick, your point is well taken. Although my primary interest/skill is to
> produce a solid foundation reference (including tons of examples), the
> real
> goal is to then build on top of that foundation.
>
> While I focus on the hard-core material - which really does include some
> narrative and lots of examples in addition to tons of "mere" reference, my
> co-author, Ryan Tabora, will focus almost exclusively on... narrative and
> diagrams.
>
> And when I say reference, I also mean lots of examples. Even as the
> hard-core reference stabilizes, the examples will continue to grow ("like
> weeds!").
>
> Once we get the current, existing, under-review, chapters packaged into
> the
> new book and available for purchase and download (maybe Lulu, not
> decided) -
> available, in a couple of weeks, it will be updated approximately every
> other week, both with additional reference material, and additional
> narrative and diagrams.
>
> One of our priorities (after we get through Stage 0 of the next few weeks)
> is to in fact start giving each of the long Deep Dive Chapters enough
> narrative lead to basically say exactly that - why you should care.
>
> A longer-term priority is to improve the balance of narrative and
> hard-core
> reference. Yeah, that will be a lot of pages. It already is. We were at
> 907
> pages and I was about to drop in another 166 pages on update handlers when
> O'Reilly threw up their hands and pulled the plug. I was estimating 1200
> pages at that stage. And I'll probably have another 60-80 pages on update
> request processors within a week or so. With more to come. That did
> include
> a lot of hard-core material and example code for Lucene, which won't be in
> the new Solr-only book. By focusing on an e-book the raw page count alone
> becomes moot. We haven't given up on print - the intent is eventually to
> have multiple volumes (4-8 or so, maybe more), both as cheaper e-books ($3
> to $5 each) and slimmer print volumes for people who don't need everything
> in print.
>
> In fact, we will likely offer the revamped initial chapters of the book as
> a
> standalone introduction to Solr - narrative introduction ("why should you
> care about Solr"), basic concepts of Lucene and Solr (and why you should
> care!), brief tutorial walkthough of the major feature areas of Solr, and
> a
> case study. The intent would be both e-book and a slim print volume (75
> pages?).
>
> Another priority (beyond Stage 0) is to develop a detailed roadmap diagram
> of Solr and how applications can use Solr, and then use that to show how
> each of the Deep Dive sections (heavy reference, but gradually adding more
> narrative over time.)
>
> We will probably be very open to requests - what people really wish a book
> would actually do for them. The only request we won't be open to is to do
> it
> all in only 300 pages.
>
> -- Jack Krupansky
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Erick Erickson
> Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2013 7:19 AM
> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> Subject: Re: Note on The Book
>
> FWIW, picking up on Alexandre's point. One of my continual
> frustrations with virtually _all_
> technical books is they become endless pages of details without ever
> mentioning why
> the hell I should care. Unfortunately, explaining use-cases for
> everything would only make
> the book about 10,000 pages long. Siiigggggh.
>
> I guess you can take this as a vote for narrative....
>
> Erick
>
> On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 4:53 PM, Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com>
> wrote:
> > We'll have a blog for the book. We hope to have a first
> > raw/rough/partial/draft published as an e-book in maybe 10 days to 2
> > weeks.
> > As soon as we get that process under control, we'll start the blog. I'll
> > keep your email on file and keep you posted.
> >
> > -- Jack Krupansky
> >
> > -----Original Message----- From: Swati Swoboda
> > Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 1:36 PM
> > To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> > Subject: RE: Note on The Book
> >
> >
> > I'd definitely prefer the spiral bound as well. E-books are great and
> > your
> > draft version seems very reasonably priced (aka I would definitely get
> > it).
> >
> > Really looking forward to this. Is there a separate mailing list / etc.
> > for
> > the book for those who would like to receive updates on the status of
> > the
> > book?
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Swati Swoboda
> > Software Developer - Igloo Software
> > +1.519.489.4120 sswoboda@igloosoftware.com
> >
> > Bring back Cake Fridays – watch a video you’ll actually like
> > http://vimeo.com/64886237
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Jack Krupansky [mailto:jack@basetechnology.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2013 7:15 PM
> > To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> > Subject: Note on The Book
> >
> > To those of you who may have heard about the Lucene/Solr book that I and
> > two
> > others are writing on Lucene and Solr, some bad and good news. The bad
> > news:
> > The book contract with O’Reilly has been canceled. The good news: I’m
> > going
> > to proceed with self-publishing (possibly on Lulu or even Amazon) a
> > somewhat
> > reduced scope Solr-only Reference Guide (with hints of Lucene). The
> > scope
> > of
> > the previous effort was too great, even for O’Reilly – a book larger
> > than
> > 800 pages (or even 600) that was heavy on reference and lighter on
> > “guide”
> > just wasn’t fitting in with their traditional “guide” model. In truth,
> > Solr
> > is just too complex for a simple guide that covers it all, let alone
> > Lucene
> > as well.
> >
> > I’ll announce more details in the coming weeks, but I expect to publish
> > an
> > e-book-only version of the book, focused on Solr reference (and plenty
> > of
> > guide as well), possibly on Lulu, plus eventually publish 4-8 individual
> > print volumes for people who really want the paper. One model I may
> > pursue
> > is to offer the current, incomplete, raw, rough, draft as a $7.99
> > e-book,
> > with the promise of updates every two weeks or a month as new and
> > revised
> > content and new releases of Solr become available. Maybe the individual
> > e-book volumes would be $2 or $3. These are just preliminary ideas. Feel
> > free to let me know what seems reasonable or excessive.
> >
> > For paper: Do people really want perfect bound, or would you prefer
> > spiral
> > bound that lies flat and folds back easily? I suppose we could offer
> > both –
> > which should be considered “premium”?
> >
> > I’ll announce more details next week. The immediate goal will be to get
> > the
> > “raw rough draft” available to everyone ASAP.
> >
> > For those of you who have been early reviewers – your effort will not
> > have
> > been in vain. I have all your comments and will address them over the
> > next
> > month or two or three.
> >
> > Just for some clarity, the existing Solr Wiki and even the recent
> > contribution of the LucidWorks Solr Reference to Apache really are still
> > great contributions to general knowledge about Solr, but the book is
> > intended to go much deeper into detail, especially with loads of
> > examples
> > and a lot more narrative guide. For example, the book has a complete
> > list
> > of
> > the analyzer filters, each with a clean one-liner description. Ditto for
> > every parameter (although I would note that the LucidWorks Solr
> > Reference
> > does a decent job of that as well.) Maybe, eventually, everything in the
> > book COULD (and will) be integrated into the standard Solr doc, but
> > until
> > then, a single, integrated reference really is sorely needed. And, the
> > book
> > has a lot of narrative guide and walking through examples as well. Over
> > time, I’m sure both will evolve. And just to be clear, the book is not a
> > simple repurposing of the Solr wiki content – EVERY description of
> > everything has been written fresh, from scratch. So, for example,
> > analyzer
> > filters get both short one-liner summary descriptions as well as more
> > detailed descriptions, plus formal attribute specifications and numerous
> > examples, including sample input and outputs (the LucidWorks Solr
> > Reference
> > does a better job with examples as well.)
> >
> > The book has been written in parallel with branch_4x and that will
> > continue.
> >
> > -- Jack Krupansky
>
>
RE: Note on The Book
Posted by Markus Jelsma <ma...@openindex.io>.
Jack,
I'd prefer tons of information instead of a meager 300 page book that leaves a lot of questions. I'm looking forward to a paperback or hardcover book and price doesn't really matter, it is going to be worth it anyway.
Thanks,
Markus
-----Original message-----
> From:Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com>
> Sent: Wed 29-May-2013 15:10
> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> Subject: Re: Note on The Book
>
> Erick, your point is well taken. Although my primary interest/skill is to
> produce a solid foundation reference (including tons of examples), the real
> goal is to then build on top of that foundation.
>
> While I focus on the hard-core material - which really does include some
> narrative and lots of examples in addition to tons of "mere" reference, my
> co-author, Ryan Tabora, will focus almost exclusively on... narrative and
> diagrams.
>
> And when I say reference, I also mean lots of examples. Even as the
> hard-core reference stabilizes, the examples will continue to grow ("like
> weeds!").
>
> Once we get the current, existing, under-review, chapters packaged into the
> new book and available for purchase and download (maybe Lulu, not decided) -
> available, in a couple of weeks, it will be updated approximately every
> other week, both with additional reference material, and additional
> narrative and diagrams.
>
> One of our priorities (after we get through Stage 0 of the next few weeks)
> is to in fact start giving each of the long Deep Dive Chapters enough
> narrative lead to basically say exactly that - why you should care.
>
> A longer-term priority is to improve the balance of narrative and hard-core
> reference. Yeah, that will be a lot of pages. It already is. We were at 907
> pages and I was about to drop in another 166 pages on update handlers when
> O'Reilly threw up their hands and pulled the plug. I was estimating 1200
> pages at that stage. And I'll probably have another 60-80 pages on update
> request processors within a week or so. With more to come. That did include
> a lot of hard-core material and example code for Lucene, which won't be in
> the new Solr-only book. By focusing on an e-book the raw page count alone
> becomes moot. We haven't given up on print - the intent is eventually to
> have multiple volumes (4-8 or so, maybe more), both as cheaper e-books ($3
> to $5 each) and slimmer print volumes for people who don't need everything
> in print.
>
> In fact, we will likely offer the revamped initial chapters of the book as a
> standalone introduction to Solr - narrative introduction ("why should you
> care about Solr"), basic concepts of Lucene and Solr (and why you should
> care!), brief tutorial walkthough of the major feature areas of Solr, and a
> case study. The intent would be both e-book and a slim print volume (75
> pages?).
>
> Another priority (beyond Stage 0) is to develop a detailed roadmap diagram
> of Solr and how applications can use Solr, and then use that to show how
> each of the Deep Dive sections (heavy reference, but gradually adding more
> narrative over time.)
>
> We will probably be very open to requests - what people really wish a book
> would actually do for them. The only request we won't be open to is to do it
> all in only 300 pages.
>
> -- Jack Krupansky
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Erick Erickson
> Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2013 7:19 AM
> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> Subject: Re: Note on The Book
>
> FWIW, picking up on Alexandre's point. One of my continual
> frustrations with virtually _all_
> technical books is they become endless pages of details without ever
> mentioning why
> the hell I should care. Unfortunately, explaining use-cases for
> everything would only make
> the book about 10,000 pages long. Siiigggggh.
>
> I guess you can take this as a vote for narrative....
>
> Erick
>
> On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 4:53 PM, Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com>
> wrote:
> > We'll have a blog for the book. We hope to have a first
> > raw/rough/partial/draft published as an e-book in maybe 10 days to 2
> > weeks.
> > As soon as we get that process under control, we'll start the blog. I'll
> > keep your email on file and keep you posted.
> >
> > -- Jack Krupansky
> >
> > -----Original Message----- From: Swati Swoboda
> > Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 1:36 PM
> > To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> > Subject: RE: Note on The Book
> >
> >
> > I'd definitely prefer the spiral bound as well. E-books are great and your
> > draft version seems very reasonably priced (aka I would definitely get
> > it).
> >
> > Really looking forward to this. Is there a separate mailing list / etc.
> > for
> > the book for those who would like to receive updates on the status of the
> > book?
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Swati Swoboda
> > Software Developer - Igloo Software
> > +1.519.489.4120 sswoboda@igloosoftware.com
> >
> > Bring back Cake Fridays – watch a video you’ll actually like
> > http://vimeo.com/64886237
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Jack Krupansky [mailto:jack@basetechnology.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2013 7:15 PM
> > To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> > Subject: Note on The Book
> >
> > To those of you who may have heard about the Lucene/Solr book that I and
> > two
> > others are writing on Lucene and Solr, some bad and good news. The bad
> > news:
> > The book contract with O’Reilly has been canceled. The good news: I’m
> > going
> > to proceed with self-publishing (possibly on Lulu or even Amazon) a
> > somewhat
> > reduced scope Solr-only Reference Guide (with hints of Lucene). The scope
> > of
> > the previous effort was too great, even for O’Reilly – a book larger than
> > 800 pages (or even 600) that was heavy on reference and lighter on “guide”
> > just wasn’t fitting in with their traditional “guide” model. In truth,
> > Solr
> > is just too complex for a simple guide that covers it all, let alone
> > Lucene
> > as well.
> >
> > I’ll announce more details in the coming weeks, but I expect to publish an
> > e-book-only version of the book, focused on Solr reference (and plenty of
> > guide as well), possibly on Lulu, plus eventually publish 4-8 individual
> > print volumes for people who really want the paper. One model I may pursue
> > is to offer the current, incomplete, raw, rough, draft as a $7.99 e-book,
> > with the promise of updates every two weeks or a month as new and revised
> > content and new releases of Solr become available. Maybe the individual
> > e-book volumes would be $2 or $3. These are just preliminary ideas. Feel
> > free to let me know what seems reasonable or excessive.
> >
> > For paper: Do people really want perfect bound, or would you prefer spiral
> > bound that lies flat and folds back easily? I suppose we could offer
> > both –
> > which should be considered “premium”?
> >
> > I’ll announce more details next week. The immediate goal will be to get
> > the
> > “raw rough draft” available to everyone ASAP.
> >
> > For those of you who have been early reviewers – your effort will not have
> > been in vain. I have all your comments and will address them over the next
> > month or two or three.
> >
> > Just for some clarity, the existing Solr Wiki and even the recent
> > contribution of the LucidWorks Solr Reference to Apache really are still
> > great contributions to general knowledge about Solr, but the book is
> > intended to go much deeper into detail, especially with loads of examples
> > and a lot more narrative guide. For example, the book has a complete list
> > of
> > the analyzer filters, each with a clean one-liner description. Ditto for
> > every parameter (although I would note that the LucidWorks Solr Reference
> > does a decent job of that as well.) Maybe, eventually, everything in the
> > book COULD (and will) be integrated into the standard Solr doc, but until
> > then, a single, integrated reference really is sorely needed. And, the
> > book
> > has a lot of narrative guide and walking through examples as well. Over
> > time, I’m sure both will evolve. And just to be clear, the book is not a
> > simple repurposing of the Solr wiki content – EVERY description of
> > everything has been written fresh, from scratch. So, for example, analyzer
> > filters get both short one-liner summary descriptions as well as more
> > detailed descriptions, plus formal attribute specifications and numerous
> > examples, including sample input and outputs (the LucidWorks Solr
> > Reference
> > does a better job with examples as well.)
> >
> > The book has been written in parallel with branch_4x and that will
> > continue.
> >
> > -- Jack Krupansky
>
>
Re: Note on The Book
Posted by Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com>.
Erick, your point is well taken. Although my primary interest/skill is to
produce a solid foundation reference (including tons of examples), the real
goal is to then build on top of that foundation.
While I focus on the hard-core material - which really does include some
narrative and lots of examples in addition to tons of "mere" reference, my
co-author, Ryan Tabora, will focus almost exclusively on... narrative and
diagrams.
And when I say reference, I also mean lots of examples. Even as the
hard-core reference stabilizes, the examples will continue to grow ("like
weeds!").
Once we get the current, existing, under-review, chapters packaged into the
new book and available for purchase and download (maybe Lulu, not decided) -
available, in a couple of weeks, it will be updated approximately every
other week, both with additional reference material, and additional
narrative and diagrams.
One of our priorities (after we get through Stage 0 of the next few weeks)
is to in fact start giving each of the long Deep Dive Chapters enough
narrative lead to basically say exactly that - why you should care.
A longer-term priority is to improve the balance of narrative and hard-core
reference. Yeah, that will be a lot of pages. It already is. We were at 907
pages and I was about to drop in another 166 pages on update handlers when
O'Reilly threw up their hands and pulled the plug. I was estimating 1200
pages at that stage. And I'll probably have another 60-80 pages on update
request processors within a week or so. With more to come. That did include
a lot of hard-core material and example code for Lucene, which won't be in
the new Solr-only book. By focusing on an e-book the raw page count alone
becomes moot. We haven't given up on print - the intent is eventually to
have multiple volumes (4-8 or so, maybe more), both as cheaper e-books ($3
to $5 each) and slimmer print volumes for people who don't need everything
in print.
In fact, we will likely offer the revamped initial chapters of the book as a
standalone introduction to Solr - narrative introduction ("why should you
care about Solr"), basic concepts of Lucene and Solr (and why you should
care!), brief tutorial walkthough of the major feature areas of Solr, and a
case study. The intent would be both e-book and a slim print volume (75
pages?).
Another priority (beyond Stage 0) is to develop a detailed roadmap diagram
of Solr and how applications can use Solr, and then use that to show how
each of the Deep Dive sections (heavy reference, but gradually adding more
narrative over time.)
We will probably be very open to requests - what people really wish a book
would actually do for them. The only request we won't be open to is to do it
all in only 300 pages.
-- Jack Krupansky
-----Original Message-----
From: Erick Erickson
Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2013 7:19 AM
To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
Subject: Re: Note on The Book
FWIW, picking up on Alexandre's point. One of my continual
frustrations with virtually _all_
technical books is they become endless pages of details without ever
mentioning why
the hell I should care. Unfortunately, explaining use-cases for
everything would only make
the book about 10,000 pages long. Siiigggggh.
I guess you can take this as a vote for narrative....
Erick
On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 4:53 PM, Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com>
wrote:
> We'll have a blog for the book. We hope to have a first
> raw/rough/partial/draft published as an e-book in maybe 10 days to 2
> weeks.
> As soon as we get that process under control, we'll start the blog. I'll
> keep your email on file and keep you posted.
>
> -- Jack Krupansky
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Swati Swoboda
> Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 1:36 PM
> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> Subject: RE: Note on The Book
>
>
> I'd definitely prefer the spiral bound as well. E-books are great and your
> draft version seems very reasonably priced (aka I would definitely get
> it).
>
> Really looking forward to this. Is there a separate mailing list / etc.
> for
> the book for those who would like to receive updates on the status of the
> book?
>
> Thanks
>
> Swati Swoboda
> Software Developer - Igloo Software
> +1.519.489.4120 sswoboda@igloosoftware.com
>
> Bring back Cake Fridays – watch a video you’ll actually like
> http://vimeo.com/64886237
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jack Krupansky [mailto:jack@basetechnology.com]
> Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2013 7:15 PM
> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> Subject: Note on The Book
>
> To those of you who may have heard about the Lucene/Solr book that I and
> two
> others are writing on Lucene and Solr, some bad and good news. The bad
> news:
> The book contract with O’Reilly has been canceled. The good news: I’m
> going
> to proceed with self-publishing (possibly on Lulu or even Amazon) a
> somewhat
> reduced scope Solr-only Reference Guide (with hints of Lucene). The scope
> of
> the previous effort was too great, even for O’Reilly – a book larger than
> 800 pages (or even 600) that was heavy on reference and lighter on “guide”
> just wasn’t fitting in with their traditional “guide” model. In truth,
> Solr
> is just too complex for a simple guide that covers it all, let alone
> Lucene
> as well.
>
> I’ll announce more details in the coming weeks, but I expect to publish an
> e-book-only version of the book, focused on Solr reference (and plenty of
> guide as well), possibly on Lulu, plus eventually publish 4-8 individual
> print volumes for people who really want the paper. One model I may pursue
> is to offer the current, incomplete, raw, rough, draft as a $7.99 e-book,
> with the promise of updates every two weeks or a month as new and revised
> content and new releases of Solr become available. Maybe the individual
> e-book volumes would be $2 or $3. These are just preliminary ideas. Feel
> free to let me know what seems reasonable or excessive.
>
> For paper: Do people really want perfect bound, or would you prefer spiral
> bound that lies flat and folds back easily? I suppose we could offer
> both –
> which should be considered “premium”?
>
> I’ll announce more details next week. The immediate goal will be to get
> the
> “raw rough draft” available to everyone ASAP.
>
> For those of you who have been early reviewers – your effort will not have
> been in vain. I have all your comments and will address them over the next
> month or two or three.
>
> Just for some clarity, the existing Solr Wiki and even the recent
> contribution of the LucidWorks Solr Reference to Apache really are still
> great contributions to general knowledge about Solr, but the book is
> intended to go much deeper into detail, especially with loads of examples
> and a lot more narrative guide. For example, the book has a complete list
> of
> the analyzer filters, each with a clean one-liner description. Ditto for
> every parameter (although I would note that the LucidWorks Solr Reference
> does a decent job of that as well.) Maybe, eventually, everything in the
> book COULD (and will) be integrated into the standard Solr doc, but until
> then, a single, integrated reference really is sorely needed. And, the
> book
> has a lot of narrative guide and walking through examples as well. Over
> time, I’m sure both will evolve. And just to be clear, the book is not a
> simple repurposing of the Solr wiki content – EVERY description of
> everything has been written fresh, from scratch. So, for example, analyzer
> filters get both short one-liner summary descriptions as well as more
> detailed descriptions, plus formal attribute specifications and numerous
> examples, including sample input and outputs (the LucidWorks Solr
> Reference
> does a better job with examples as well.)
>
> The book has been written in parallel with branch_4x and that will
> continue.
>
> -- Jack Krupansky
Re: Note on The Book
Posted by Alexandre Rafalovitch <ar...@gmail.com>.
Perhaps, you will enjoy mine then:
http://www.packtpub.com/apache-solr-for-indexing-data/book .
I will send a formal announcement to the list a little later, but
basically this is a book for advanced beginners and early
intermediates and takes them from a basic index to multilingual
indexing with bells and whistles. Covers a small part of Solr (Solr is
big!), but shows how different parts work together. It's structured as
a cookbook but the narrative is a journey.
Regards,
Alex.
Personal blog: http://blog.outerthoughts.com/
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrerafalovitch
- Time is the quality of nature that keeps events from happening all
at once. Lately, it doesn't seem to be working. (Anonymous - via GTD
book)
On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 7:33 AM, Yago Riveiro <ya...@gmail.com> wrote:
> IMHO I prefer narrative, as Erick says, explain all use-cases it's impossible, cover the base cases is a good start. Either way I miss a book about solr different to a cookbook or a guide.
>
> Regards.
>
> --
> Yago Riveiro
> Sent with Sparrow (http://www.sparrowmailapp.com/?sig)
>
>
> On Wednesday, May 29, 2013 at 12:19 PM, Erick Erickson wrote:
>
>> FWIW, picking up on Alexandre's point. One of my continual
>> frustrations with virtually _all_
>> technical books is they become endless pages of details without ever
>> mentioning why
>> the hell I should care. Unfortunately, explaining use-cases for
>> everything would only make
>> the book about 10,000 pages long. Siiigggggh.
>>
>> I guess you can take this as a vote for narrative....
>>
>> Erick
>>
>> On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 4:53 PM, Jack Krupansky <jack@basetechnology.com (mailto:jack@basetechnology.com)> wrote:
>> > We'll have a blog for the book. We hope to have a first
>> > raw/rough/partial/draft published as an e-book in maybe 10 days to 2 weeks.
>> > As soon as we get that process under control, we'll start the blog. I'll
>> > keep your email on file and keep you posted.
>> >
>> > -- Jack Krupansky
>> >
>> > -----Original Message----- From: Swati Swoboda
>> > Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 1:36 PM
>> > To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org (mailto:solr-user@lucene.apache.org)
>> > Subject: RE: Note on The Book
>> >
>> >
>> > I'd definitely prefer the spiral bound as well. E-books are great and your
>> > draft version seems very reasonably priced (aka I would definitely get it).
>> >
>> > Really looking forward to this. Is there a separate mailing list / etc. for
>> > the book for those who would like to receive updates on the status of the
>> > book?
>> >
>> > Thanks
>> >
>> > Swati Swoboda
>> > Software Developer - Igloo Software
>> > +1.519.489.4120 sswoboda@igloosoftware.com (mailto:sswoboda@igloosoftware.com)
>> >
>> > Bring back Cake Fridays – watch a video you’ll actually like
>> > http://vimeo.com/64886237
>> >
>> >
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: Jack Krupansky [mailto:jack@basetechnology.com]
>> > Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2013 7:15 PM
>> > To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org (mailto:solr-user@lucene.apache.org)
>> > Subject: Note on The Book
>> >
>> > To those of you who may have heard about the Lucene/Solr book that I and two
>> > others are writing on Lucene and Solr, some bad and good news. The bad news:
>> > The book contract with O’Reilly has been canceled. The good news: I’m going
>> > to proceed with self-publishing (possibly on Lulu or even Amazon) a somewhat
>> > reduced scope Solr-only Reference Guide (with hints of Lucene). The scope of
>> > the previous effort was too great, even for O’Reilly – a book larger than
>> > 800 pages (or even 600) that was heavy on reference and lighter on “guide”
>> > just wasn’t fitting in with their traditional “guide” model. In truth, Solr
>> > is just too complex for a simple guide that covers it all, let alone Lucene
>> > as well.
>> >
>> > I’ll announce more details in the coming weeks, but I expect to publish an
>> > e-book-only version of the book, focused on Solr reference (and plenty of
>> > guide as well), possibly on Lulu, plus eventually publish 4-8 individual
>> > print volumes for people who really want the paper. One model I may pursue
>> > is to offer the current, incomplete, raw, rough, draft as a $7.99 e-book,
>> > with the promise of updates every two weeks or a month as new and revised
>> > content and new releases of Solr become available. Maybe the individual
>> > e-book volumes would be $2 or $3. These are just preliminary ideas. Feel
>> > free to let me know what seems reasonable or excessive.
>> >
>> > For paper: Do people really want perfect bound, or would you prefer spiral
>> > bound that lies flat and folds back easily? I suppose we could offer both –
>> > which should be considered “premium”?
>> >
>> > I’ll announce more details next week. The immediate goal will be to get the
>> > “raw rough draft” available to everyone ASAP.
>> >
>> > For those of you who have been early reviewers – your effort will not have
>> > been in vain. I have all your comments and will address them over the next
>> > month or two or three.
>> >
>> > Just for some clarity, the existing Solr Wiki and even the recent
>> > contribution of the LucidWorks Solr Reference to Apache really are still
>> > great contributions to general knowledge about Solr, but the book is
>> > intended to go much deeper into detail, especially with loads of examples
>> > and a lot more narrative guide. For example, the book has a complete list of
>> > the analyzer filters, each with a clean one-liner description. Ditto for
>> > every parameter (although I would note that the LucidWorks Solr Reference
>> > does a decent job of that as well.) Maybe, eventually, everything in the
>> > book COULD (and will) be integrated into the standard Solr doc, but until
>> > then, a single, integrated reference really is sorely needed. And, the book
>> > has a lot of narrative guide and walking through examples as well. Over
>> > time, I’m sure both will evolve. And just to be clear, the book is not a
>> > simple repurposing of the Solr wiki content – EVERY description of
>> > everything has been written fresh, from scratch. So, for example, analyzer
>> > filters get both short one-liner summary descriptions as well as more
>> > detailed descriptions, plus formal attribute specifications and numerous
>> > examples, including sample input and outputs (the LucidWorks Solr Reference
>> > does a better job with examples as well.)
>> >
>> > The book has been written in parallel with branch_4x and that will continue.
>> >
>> > -- Jack Krupansky
>
Re: Note on The Book
Posted by Yago Riveiro <ya...@gmail.com>.
IMHO I prefer narrative, as Erick says, explain all use-cases it's impossible, cover the base cases is a good start. Either way I miss a book about solr different to a cookbook or a guide.
Regards.
--
Yago Riveiro
Sent with Sparrow (http://www.sparrowmailapp.com/?sig)
On Wednesday, May 29, 2013 at 12:19 PM, Erick Erickson wrote:
> FWIW, picking up on Alexandre's point. One of my continual
> frustrations with virtually _all_
> technical books is they become endless pages of details without ever
> mentioning why
> the hell I should care. Unfortunately, explaining use-cases for
> everything would only make
> the book about 10,000 pages long. Siiigggggh.
>
> I guess you can take this as a vote for narrative....
>
> Erick
>
> On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 4:53 PM, Jack Krupansky <jack@basetechnology.com (mailto:jack@basetechnology.com)> wrote:
> > We'll have a blog for the book. We hope to have a first
> > raw/rough/partial/draft published as an e-book in maybe 10 days to 2 weeks.
> > As soon as we get that process under control, we'll start the blog. I'll
> > keep your email on file and keep you posted.
> >
> > -- Jack Krupansky
> >
> > -----Original Message----- From: Swati Swoboda
> > Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 1:36 PM
> > To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org (mailto:solr-user@lucene.apache.org)
> > Subject: RE: Note on The Book
> >
> >
> > I'd definitely prefer the spiral bound as well. E-books are great and your
> > draft version seems very reasonably priced (aka I would definitely get it).
> >
> > Really looking forward to this. Is there a separate mailing list / etc. for
> > the book for those who would like to receive updates on the status of the
> > book?
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Swati Swoboda
> > Software Developer - Igloo Software
> > +1.519.489.4120 sswoboda@igloosoftware.com (mailto:sswoboda@igloosoftware.com)
> >
> > Bring back Cake Fridays – watch a video you’ll actually like
> > http://vimeo.com/64886237
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Jack Krupansky [mailto:jack@basetechnology.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2013 7:15 PM
> > To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org (mailto:solr-user@lucene.apache.org)
> > Subject: Note on The Book
> >
> > To those of you who may have heard about the Lucene/Solr book that I and two
> > others are writing on Lucene and Solr, some bad and good news. The bad news:
> > The book contract with O’Reilly has been canceled. The good news: I’m going
> > to proceed with self-publishing (possibly on Lulu or even Amazon) a somewhat
> > reduced scope Solr-only Reference Guide (with hints of Lucene). The scope of
> > the previous effort was too great, even for O’Reilly – a book larger than
> > 800 pages (or even 600) that was heavy on reference and lighter on “guide”
> > just wasn’t fitting in with their traditional “guide” model. In truth, Solr
> > is just too complex for a simple guide that covers it all, let alone Lucene
> > as well.
> >
> > I’ll announce more details in the coming weeks, but I expect to publish an
> > e-book-only version of the book, focused on Solr reference (and plenty of
> > guide as well), possibly on Lulu, plus eventually publish 4-8 individual
> > print volumes for people who really want the paper. One model I may pursue
> > is to offer the current, incomplete, raw, rough, draft as a $7.99 e-book,
> > with the promise of updates every two weeks or a month as new and revised
> > content and new releases of Solr become available. Maybe the individual
> > e-book volumes would be $2 or $3. These are just preliminary ideas. Feel
> > free to let me know what seems reasonable or excessive.
> >
> > For paper: Do people really want perfect bound, or would you prefer spiral
> > bound that lies flat and folds back easily? I suppose we could offer both –
> > which should be considered “premium”?
> >
> > I’ll announce more details next week. The immediate goal will be to get the
> > “raw rough draft” available to everyone ASAP.
> >
> > For those of you who have been early reviewers – your effort will not have
> > been in vain. I have all your comments and will address them over the next
> > month or two or three.
> >
> > Just for some clarity, the existing Solr Wiki and even the recent
> > contribution of the LucidWorks Solr Reference to Apache really are still
> > great contributions to general knowledge about Solr, but the book is
> > intended to go much deeper into detail, especially with loads of examples
> > and a lot more narrative guide. For example, the book has a complete list of
> > the analyzer filters, each with a clean one-liner description. Ditto for
> > every parameter (although I would note that the LucidWorks Solr Reference
> > does a decent job of that as well.) Maybe, eventually, everything in the
> > book COULD (and will) be integrated into the standard Solr doc, but until
> > then, a single, integrated reference really is sorely needed. And, the book
> > has a lot of narrative guide and walking through examples as well. Over
> > time, I’m sure both will evolve. And just to be clear, the book is not a
> > simple repurposing of the Solr wiki content – EVERY description of
> > everything has been written fresh, from scratch. So, for example, analyzer
> > filters get both short one-liner summary descriptions as well as more
> > detailed descriptions, plus formal attribute specifications and numerous
> > examples, including sample input and outputs (the LucidWorks Solr Reference
> > does a better job with examples as well.)
> >
> > The book has been written in parallel with branch_4x and that will continue.
> >
> > -- Jack Krupansky
Re: Note on The Book
Posted by Erick Erickson <er...@gmail.com>.
FWIW, picking up on Alexandre's point. One of my continual
frustrations with virtually _all_
technical books is they become endless pages of details without ever
mentioning why
the hell I should care. Unfortunately, explaining use-cases for
everything would only make
the book about 10,000 pages long. Siiigggggh.
I guess you can take this as a vote for narrative....
Erick
On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 4:53 PM, Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com> wrote:
> We'll have a blog for the book. We hope to have a first
> raw/rough/partial/draft published as an e-book in maybe 10 days to 2 weeks.
> As soon as we get that process under control, we'll start the blog. I'll
> keep your email on file and keep you posted.
>
> -- Jack Krupansky
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Swati Swoboda
> Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 1:36 PM
> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> Subject: RE: Note on The Book
>
>
> I'd definitely prefer the spiral bound as well. E-books are great and your
> draft version seems very reasonably priced (aka I would definitely get it).
>
> Really looking forward to this. Is there a separate mailing list / etc. for
> the book for those who would like to receive updates on the status of the
> book?
>
> Thanks
>
> Swati Swoboda
> Software Developer - Igloo Software
> +1.519.489.4120 sswoboda@igloosoftware.com
>
> Bring back Cake Fridays – watch a video you’ll actually like
> http://vimeo.com/64886237
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jack Krupansky [mailto:jack@basetechnology.com]
> Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2013 7:15 PM
> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> Subject: Note on The Book
>
> To those of you who may have heard about the Lucene/Solr book that I and two
> others are writing on Lucene and Solr, some bad and good news. The bad news:
> The book contract with O’Reilly has been canceled. The good news: I’m going
> to proceed with self-publishing (possibly on Lulu or even Amazon) a somewhat
> reduced scope Solr-only Reference Guide (with hints of Lucene). The scope of
> the previous effort was too great, even for O’Reilly – a book larger than
> 800 pages (or even 600) that was heavy on reference and lighter on “guide”
> just wasn’t fitting in with their traditional “guide” model. In truth, Solr
> is just too complex for a simple guide that covers it all, let alone Lucene
> as well.
>
> I’ll announce more details in the coming weeks, but I expect to publish an
> e-book-only version of the book, focused on Solr reference (and plenty of
> guide as well), possibly on Lulu, plus eventually publish 4-8 individual
> print volumes for people who really want the paper. One model I may pursue
> is to offer the current, incomplete, raw, rough, draft as a $7.99 e-book,
> with the promise of updates every two weeks or a month as new and revised
> content and new releases of Solr become available. Maybe the individual
> e-book volumes would be $2 or $3. These are just preliminary ideas. Feel
> free to let me know what seems reasonable or excessive.
>
> For paper: Do people really want perfect bound, or would you prefer spiral
> bound that lies flat and folds back easily? I suppose we could offer both –
> which should be considered “premium”?
>
> I’ll announce more details next week. The immediate goal will be to get the
> “raw rough draft” available to everyone ASAP.
>
> For those of you who have been early reviewers – your effort will not have
> been in vain. I have all your comments and will address them over the next
> month or two or three.
>
> Just for some clarity, the existing Solr Wiki and even the recent
> contribution of the LucidWorks Solr Reference to Apache really are still
> great contributions to general knowledge about Solr, but the book is
> intended to go much deeper into detail, especially with loads of examples
> and a lot more narrative guide. For example, the book has a complete list of
> the analyzer filters, each with a clean one-liner description. Ditto for
> every parameter (although I would note that the LucidWorks Solr Reference
> does a decent job of that as well.) Maybe, eventually, everything in the
> book COULD (and will) be integrated into the standard Solr doc, but until
> then, a single, integrated reference really is sorely needed. And, the book
> has a lot of narrative guide and walking through examples as well. Over
> time, I’m sure both will evolve. And just to be clear, the book is not a
> simple repurposing of the Solr wiki content – EVERY description of
> everything has been written fresh, from scratch. So, for example, analyzer
> filters get both short one-liner summary descriptions as well as more
> detailed descriptions, plus formal attribute specifications and numerous
> examples, including sample input and outputs (the LucidWorks Solr Reference
> does a better job with examples as well.)
>
> The book has been written in parallel with branch_4x and that will continue.
>
> -- Jack Krupansky
Re: Note on The Book
Posted by Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com>.
We'll have a blog for the book. We hope to have a first
raw/rough/partial/draft published as an e-book in maybe 10 days to 2 weeks.
As soon as we get that process under control, we'll start the blog. I'll
keep your email on file and keep you posted.
-- Jack Krupansky
-----Original Message-----
From: Swati Swoboda
Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 1:36 PM
To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
Subject: RE: Note on The Book
I'd definitely prefer the spiral bound as well. E-books are great and your
draft version seems very reasonably priced (aka I would definitely get it).
Really looking forward to this. Is there a separate mailing list / etc. for
the book for those who would like to receive updates on the status of the
book?
Thanks
Swati Swoboda
Software Developer - Igloo Software
+1.519.489.4120 sswoboda@igloosoftware.com
Bring back Cake Fridays – watch a video you’ll actually like
http://vimeo.com/64886237
-----Original Message-----
From: Jack Krupansky [mailto:jack@basetechnology.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2013 7:15 PM
To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
Subject: Note on The Book
To those of you who may have heard about the Lucene/Solr book that I and two
others are writing on Lucene and Solr, some bad and good news. The bad news:
The book contract with O’Reilly has been canceled. The good news: I’m going
to proceed with self-publishing (possibly on Lulu or even Amazon) a somewhat
reduced scope Solr-only Reference Guide (with hints of Lucene). The scope of
the previous effort was too great, even for O’Reilly – a book larger than
800 pages (or even 600) that was heavy on reference and lighter on “guide”
just wasn’t fitting in with their traditional “guide” model. In truth, Solr
is just too complex for a simple guide that covers it all, let alone Lucene
as well.
I’ll announce more details in the coming weeks, but I expect to publish an
e-book-only version of the book, focused on Solr reference (and plenty of
guide as well), possibly on Lulu, plus eventually publish 4-8 individual
print volumes for people who really want the paper. One model I may pursue
is to offer the current, incomplete, raw, rough, draft as a $7.99 e-book,
with the promise of updates every two weeks or a month as new and revised
content and new releases of Solr become available. Maybe the individual
e-book volumes would be $2 or $3. These are just preliminary ideas. Feel
free to let me know what seems reasonable or excessive.
For paper: Do people really want perfect bound, or would you prefer spiral
bound that lies flat and folds back easily? I suppose we could offer both –
which should be considered “premium”?
I’ll announce more details next week. The immediate goal will be to get the
“raw rough draft” available to everyone ASAP.
For those of you who have been early reviewers – your effort will not have
been in vain. I have all your comments and will address them over the next
month or two or three.
Just for some clarity, the existing Solr Wiki and even the recent
contribution of the LucidWorks Solr Reference to Apache really are still
great contributions to general knowledge about Solr, but the book is
intended to go much deeper into detail, especially with loads of examples
and a lot more narrative guide. For example, the book has a complete list of
the analyzer filters, each with a clean one-liner description. Ditto for
every parameter (although I would note that the LucidWorks Solr Reference
does a decent job of that as well.) Maybe, eventually, everything in the
book COULD (and will) be integrated into the standard Solr doc, but until
then, a single, integrated reference really is sorely needed. And, the book
has a lot of narrative guide and walking through examples as well. Over
time, I’m sure both will evolve. And just to be clear, the book is not a
simple repurposing of the Solr wiki content – EVERY description of
everything has been written fresh, from scratch. So, for example, analyzer
filters get both short one-liner summary descriptions as well as more
detailed descriptions, plus formal attribute specifications and numerous
examples, including sample input and outputs (the LucidWorks Solr Reference
does a better job with examples as well.)
The book has been written in parallel with branch_4x and that will continue.
-- Jack Krupansky
RE: Note on The Book
Posted by Swati Swoboda <ss...@igloosoftware.com>.
I'd definitely prefer the spiral bound as well. E-books are great and your draft version seems very reasonably priced (aka I would definitely get it).
Really looking forward to this. Is there a separate mailing list / etc. for the book for those who would like to receive updates on the status of the book?
Thanks
Swati Swoboda
Software Developer - Igloo Software
+1.519.489.4120 sswoboda@igloosoftware.com
Bring back Cake Fridays – watch a video you’ll actually like
http://vimeo.com/64886237
-----Original Message-----
From: Jack Krupansky [mailto:jack@basetechnology.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2013 7:15 PM
To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
Subject: Note on The Book
To those of you who may have heard about the Lucene/Solr book that I and two others are writing on Lucene and Solr, some bad and good news. The bad news: The book contract with O’Reilly has been canceled. The good news: I’m going to proceed with self-publishing (possibly on Lulu or even Amazon) a somewhat reduced scope Solr-only Reference Guide (with hints of Lucene). The scope of the previous effort was too great, even for O’Reilly – a book larger than 800 pages (or even 600) that was heavy on reference and lighter on “guide” just wasn’t fitting in with their traditional “guide” model. In truth, Solr is just too complex for a simple guide that covers it all, let alone Lucene as well.
I’ll announce more details in the coming weeks, but I expect to publish an e-book-only version of the book, focused on Solr reference (and plenty of guide as well), possibly on Lulu, plus eventually publish 4-8 individual print volumes for people who really want the paper. One model I may pursue is to offer the current, incomplete, raw, rough, draft as a $7.99 e-book, with the promise of updates every two weeks or a month as new and revised content and new releases of Solr become available. Maybe the individual e-book volumes would be $2 or $3. These are just preliminary ideas. Feel free to let me know what seems reasonable or excessive.
For paper: Do people really want perfect bound, or would you prefer spiral bound that lies flat and folds back easily? I suppose we could offer both – which should be considered “premium”?
I’ll announce more details next week. The immediate goal will be to get the “raw rough draft” available to everyone ASAP.
For those of you who have been early reviewers – your effort will not have been in vain. I have all your comments and will address them over the next month or two or three.
Just for some clarity, the existing Solr Wiki and even the recent contribution of the LucidWorks Solr Reference to Apache really are still great contributions to general knowledge about Solr, but the book is intended to go much deeper into detail, especially with loads of examples and a lot more narrative guide. For example, the book has a complete list of the analyzer filters, each with a clean one-liner description. Ditto for every parameter (although I would note that the LucidWorks Solr Reference does a decent job of that as well.) Maybe, eventually, everything in the book COULD (and will) be integrated into the standard Solr doc, but until then, a single, integrated reference really is sorely needed. And, the book has a lot of narrative guide and walking through examples as well. Over time, I’m sure both will evolve. And just to be clear, the book is not a simple repurposing of the Solr wiki content – EVERY description of everything has been written fresh, from scratch. So, for example, analyzer filters get both short one-liner summary descriptions as well as more detailed descriptions, plus formal attribute specifications and numerous examples, including sample input and outputs (the LucidWorks Solr Reference does a better job with examples as well.)
The book has been written in parallel with branch_4x and that will continue.
-- Jack Krupansky
Re: Note on The Book
Posted by Koji Sekiguchi <ko...@r.email.ne.jp>.
Now my contribution can be read on soleami blog in English:
Automatically Acquiring Synonym Knowledge from Wikipedia
http://soleami.com/blog/automatically-acquiring-synonym-knowledge-from-wikipedia.html
koji
(13/05/27 21:16), Jack Krupansky wrote:
> If you would like to Solr-ize your contribution, that would be great. The focus of the book will be
> hard-core Solr.
>
> -- Jack Krupansky
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Koji Sekiguchi
> Sent: Monday, May 27, 2013 8:07 AM
> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> Subject: Re: Note on The Book
>
> Hi Jack,
>
> I'd like to ask as a person who contributed a case study article about
> "Automatically acquiring synonym knowledge from Wikipedia" to the book.
>
> (13/05/24 8:14), Jack Krupansky wrote:
>> To those of you who may have heard about the Lucene/Solr book that I and two others are writing on
>> Lucene and Solr, some bad and good news. The bad news: The book contract with O’Reilly has been
>> canceled. The good news: I’m going to proceed with self-publishing (possibly on Lulu or even
>> Amazon) a somewhat reduced scope Solr-only Reference Guide (with hints of Lucene). The scope of
>> the previous effort was too great, even for O’Reilly – a book larger than 800 pages (or even 600)
>> that was heavy on reference and lighter on “guide” just wasn’t fitting in with their traditional
>> “guide” model. In truth, Solr is just too complex for a simple guide that covers it all, let alone
>> Lucene as well.
>
> Will the "reduced Solr-only reference guide" include my article?
> If not (for now I think it is not because my article is for Lucene case study,
> not Solr), I'd like to put it out on my blog or somewhere.
>
> BTW, those who want to know how to acquire synonym knowledge from Wikipedia,
> the summary is available at slideshare:
>
> http://www.slideshare.net/KojiSekiguchi/wikipediasolr
>
> koji
--
http://soleami.com/blog/lucene-4-is-super-convenient-for-developing-nlp-tools.html
Re: Note on The Book
Posted by Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com>.
If you would like to Solr-ize your contribution, that would be great. The
focus of the book will be hard-core Solr.
-- Jack Krupansky
-----Original Message-----
From: Koji Sekiguchi
Sent: Monday, May 27, 2013 8:07 AM
To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
Subject: Re: Note on The Book
Hi Jack,
I'd like to ask as a person who contributed a case study article about
"Automatically acquiring synonym knowledge from Wikipedia" to the book.
(13/05/24 8:14), Jack Krupansky wrote:
> To those of you who may have heard about the Lucene/Solr book that I and
> two others are writing on Lucene and Solr, some bad and good news. The bad
> news: The book contract with O’Reilly has been canceled. The good news: I’m
> going to proceed with self-publishing (possibly on Lulu or even Amazon) a
> somewhat reduced scope Solr-only Reference Guide (with hints of Lucene).
> The scope of the previous effort was too great, even for O’Reilly – a book
> larger than 800 pages (or even 600) that was heavy on reference and
> lighter on “guide” just wasn’t fitting in with their traditional “guide”
> model. In truth, Solr is just too complex for a simple guide that covers
> it all, let alone Lucene as well.
Will the "reduced Solr-only reference guide" include my article?
If not (for now I think it is not because my article is for Lucene case
study,
not Solr), I'd like to put it out on my blog or somewhere.
BTW, those who want to know how to acquire synonym knowledge from Wikipedia,
the summary is available at slideshare:
http://www.slideshare.net/KojiSekiguchi/wikipediasolr
koji
--
http://soleami.com/blog/lucene-4-is-super-convenient-for-developing-nlp-tools.html
Re: Note on The Book
Posted by Koji Sekiguchi <ko...@r.email.ne.jp>.
Hi Jack,
I'd like to ask as a person who contributed a case study article about
"Automatically acquiring synonym knowledge from Wikipedia" to the book.
(13/05/24 8:14), Jack Krupansky wrote:
> To those of you who may have heard about the Lucene/Solr book that I and two others are writing on Lucene and Solr, some bad and good news. The bad news: The book contract with O’Reilly has been canceled. The good news: I’m going to proceed with self-publishing (possibly on Lulu or even Amazon) a somewhat reduced scope Solr-only Reference Guide (with hints of Lucene). The scope of the previous effort was too great, even for O’Reilly – a book larger than 800 pages (or even 600) that was heavy on reference and lighter on “guide” just wasn’t fitting in with their traditional “guide” model. In truth, Solr is just too complex for a simple guide that covers it all, let alone Lucene as well.
Will the "reduced Solr-only reference guide" include my article?
If not (for now I think it is not because my article is for Lucene case study,
not Solr), I'd like to put it out on my blog or somewhere.
BTW, those who want to know how to acquire synonym knowledge from Wikipedia,
the summary is available at slideshare:
http://www.slideshare.net/KojiSekiguchi/wikipediasolr
koji
--
http://soleami.com/blog/lucene-4-is-super-convenient-for-developing-nlp-tools.html
Re: Note on The Book
Posted by Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com>.
Thanks, Erick. I could do the experiment of publishing both spiral and
perfect found and see which "wins". Spiral does have the one downside of not
standing out on a shelf. But, for now, I'll focus on getting the (rough
draft) e-book available ASAP.
-- Jack Krupansky
-----Original Message-----
From: Erick Erickson
Sent: Sunday, May 26, 2013 11:08 AM
To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
Subject: Re: Note on The Book
Jack:
Kudos for carrying on! Having a contract canceled after putting a lot
of work into it must be a bummer...
Personally I'm not buying many paper books any more, so the e-book
version is preferable for me, so take this with a grain of salt.. but
make the paper version spiral bound, _please_. I wish every reference
book or cookbook or whatever, really anything I have to look at when
my fingers are busy doing something else was spiral bound....
Best
Erick
On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 7:14 PM, Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com>
wrote:
> To those of you who may have heard about the Lucene/Solr book that I and
> two others are writing on Lucene and Solr, some bad and good news. The bad
> news: The book contract with O’Reilly has been canceled. The good news: I’m
> going to proceed with self-publishing (possibly on Lulu or even Amazon) a
> somewhat reduced scope Solr-only Reference Guide (with hints of Lucene).
> The scope of the previous effort was too great, even for O’Reilly – a book
> larger than 800 pages (or even 600) that was heavy on reference and
> lighter on “guide” just wasn’t fitting in with their traditional “guide”
> model. In truth, Solr is just too complex for a simple guide that covers
> it all, let alone Lucene as well.
>
> I’ll announce more details in the coming weeks, but I expect to publish an
> e-book-only version of the book, focused on Solr reference (and plenty of
> guide as well), possibly on Lulu, plus eventually publish 4-8 individual
> print volumes for people who really want the paper. One model I may pursue
> is to offer the current, incomplete, raw, rough, draft as a $7.99 e-book,
> with the promise of updates every two weeks or a month as new and revised
> content and new releases of Solr become available. Maybe the individual
> e-book volumes would be $2 or $3. These are just preliminary ideas. Feel
> free to let me know what seems reasonable or excessive.
>
> For paper: Do people really want perfect bound, or would you prefer spiral
> bound that lies flat and folds back easily? I suppose we could offer
> both – which should be considered “premium”?
>
> I’ll announce more details next week. The immediate goal will be to get
> the “raw rough draft” available to everyone ASAP.
>
> For those of you who have been early reviewers – your effort will not have
> been in vain. I have all your comments and will address them over the next
> month or two or three.
>
> Just for some clarity, the existing Solr Wiki and even the recent
> contribution of the LucidWorks Solr Reference to Apache really are still
> great contributions to general knowledge about Solr, but the book is
> intended to go much deeper into detail, especially with loads of examples
> and a lot more narrative guide. For example, the book has a complete list
> of the analyzer filters, each with a clean one-liner description. Ditto
> for every parameter (although I would note that the LucidWorks Solr
> Reference does a decent job of that as well.) Maybe, eventually,
> everything in the book COULD (and will) be integrated into the standard
> Solr doc, but until then, a single, integrated reference really is sorely
> needed. And, the book has a lot of narrative guide and walking through
> examples as well. Over time, I’m sure both will evolve. And just to be
> clear, the book is not a simple repurposing of the Solr wiki content –
> EVERY description of everything has been written fresh, from scratch. So,
> for example, analyzer filters get both short one-liner summary
> descriptions as well as more detailed descriptions, plus formal attribute
> specifications and numerous examples, including sample input and outputs
> (the LucidWorks Solr Reference does a better job with examples as well.)
>
> The book has been written in parallel with branch_4x and that will
> continue.
>
> -- Jack Krupansky
Re: Note on The Book
Posted by Erick Erickson <er...@gmail.com>.
Jack:
Kudos for carrying on! Having a contract canceled after putting a lot
of work into it must be a bummer...
Personally I'm not buying many paper books any more, so the e-book
version is preferable for me, so take this with a grain of salt.. but
make the paper version spiral bound, _please_. I wish every reference
book or cookbook or whatever, really anything I have to look at when
my fingers are busy doing something else was spiral bound....
Best
Erick
On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 7:14 PM, Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com> wrote:
> To those of you who may have heard about the Lucene/Solr book that I and two others are writing on Lucene and Solr, some bad and good news. The bad news: The book contract with O’Reilly has been canceled. The good news: I’m going to proceed with self-publishing (possibly on Lulu or even Amazon) a somewhat reduced scope Solr-only Reference Guide (with hints of Lucene). The scope of the previous effort was too great, even for O’Reilly – a book larger than 800 pages (or even 600) that was heavy on reference and lighter on “guide” just wasn’t fitting in with their traditional “guide” model. In truth, Solr is just too complex for a simple guide that covers it all, let alone Lucene as well.
>
> I’ll announce more details in the coming weeks, but I expect to publish an e-book-only version of the book, focused on Solr reference (and plenty of guide as well), possibly on Lulu, plus eventually publish 4-8 individual print volumes for people who really want the paper. One model I may pursue is to offer the current, incomplete, raw, rough, draft as a $7.99 e-book, with the promise of updates every two weeks or a month as new and revised content and new releases of Solr become available. Maybe the individual e-book volumes would be $2 or $3. These are just preliminary ideas. Feel free to let me know what seems reasonable or excessive.
>
> For paper: Do people really want perfect bound, or would you prefer spiral bound that lies flat and folds back easily? I suppose we could offer both – which should be considered “premium”?
>
> I’ll announce more details next week. The immediate goal will be to get the “raw rough draft” available to everyone ASAP.
>
> For those of you who have been early reviewers – your effort will not have been in vain. I have all your comments and will address them over the next month or two or three.
>
> Just for some clarity, the existing Solr Wiki and even the recent contribution of the LucidWorks Solr Reference to Apache really are still great contributions to general knowledge about Solr, but the book is intended to go much deeper into detail, especially with loads of examples and a lot more narrative guide. For example, the book has a complete list of the analyzer filters, each with a clean one-liner description. Ditto for every parameter (although I would note that the LucidWorks Solr Reference does a decent job of that as well.) Maybe, eventually, everything in the book COULD (and will) be integrated into the standard Solr doc, but until then, a single, integrated reference really is sorely needed. And, the book has a lot of narrative guide and walking through examples as well. Over time, I’m sure both will evolve. And just to be clear, the book is not a simple repurposing of the Solr wiki content – EVERY description of everything has been written fresh, from scratch. So, for example, analyzer filters get both short one-liner summary descriptions as well as more detailed descriptions, plus formal attribute specifications and numerous examples, including sample input and outputs (the LucidWorks Solr Reference does a better job with examples as well.)
>
> The book has been written in parallel with branch_4x and that will continue.
>
> -- Jack Krupansky
Re: Note on The Book
Posted by Alexandre Rafalovitch <ar...@gmail.com>.
Jack,
It is worth considering something like https://leanpub.com/ . That way
people can pre-pay for the result and enjoy (however 'draft'-y)
results earlier.
In terms of reference vs narrative, my strong desire would have been
for the narrative part. The problem always seems to be around
understanding how the pieces/flow fit together and - only then - what
specific parameters have what syntax.
For printed books, I'd probably go for a ring binder for basic version
and maybe combined hard-cover for premium one. The premium one would
be the one you get office to buy or as a present. :-)
Regards,
Alex.
Personal blog: http://blog.outerthoughts.com/
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrerafalovitch
- Time is the quality of nature that keeps events from happening all
at once. Lately, it doesn't seem to be working. (Anonymous - via GTD
book)
On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 7:14 PM, Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com> wrote:
> To those of you who may have heard about the Lucene/Solr book that I and two others are writing on Lucene and Solr, some bad and good news. The bad news: The book contract with O’Reilly has been canceled. The good news: I’m going to proceed with self-publishing (possibly on Lulu or even Amazon) a somewhat reduced scope Solr-only Reference Guide (with hints of Lucene). The scope of the previous effort was too great, even for O’Reilly – a book larger than 800 pages (or even 600) that was heavy on reference and lighter on “guide” just wasn’t fitting in with their traditional “guide” model. In truth, Solr is just too complex for a simple guide that covers it all, let alone Lucene as well.
>
> I’ll announce more details in the coming weeks, but I expect to publish an e-book-only version of the book, focused on Solr reference (and plenty of guide as well), possibly on Lulu, plus eventually publish 4-8 individual print volumes for people who really want the paper. One model I may pursue is to offer the current, incomplete, raw, rough, draft as a $7.99 e-book, with the promise of updates every two weeks or a month as new and revised content and new releases of Solr become available. Maybe the individual e-book volumes would be $2 or $3. These are just preliminary ideas. Feel free to let me know what seems reasonable or excessive.
>
> For paper: Do people really want perfect bound, or would you prefer spiral bound that lies flat and folds back easily? I suppose we could offer both – which should be considered “premium”?
>
> I’ll announce more details next week. The immediate goal will be to get the “raw rough draft” available to everyone ASAP.
>
> For those of you who have been early reviewers – your effort will not have been in vain. I have all your comments and will address them over the next month or two or three.
>
> Just for some clarity, the existing Solr Wiki and even the recent contribution of the LucidWorks Solr Reference to Apache really are still great contributions to general knowledge about Solr, but the book is intended to go much deeper into detail, especially with loads of examples and a lot more narrative guide. For example, the book has a complete list of the analyzer filters, each with a clean one-liner description. Ditto for every parameter (although I would note that the LucidWorks Solr Reference does a decent job of that as well.) Maybe, eventually, everything in the book COULD (and will) be integrated into the standard Solr doc, but until then, a single, integrated reference really is sorely needed. And, the book has a lot of narrative guide and walking through examples as well. Over time, I’m sure both will evolve. And just to be clear, the book is not a simple repurposing of the Solr wiki content – EVERY description of everything has been written fresh, from scratch. So, for example, analyzer filters get both short one-liner summary descriptions as well as more detailed descriptions, plus formal attribute specifications and numerous examples, including sample input and outputs (the LucidWorks Solr Reference does a better job with examples as well.)
>
> The book has been written in parallel with branch_4x and that will continue.
>
> -- Jack Krupansky