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Humble Book Bundle: Unix

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Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#111

Post by pawadu »

bathory wrote: post #3

My biggest gripe with this bundle is that they are all digital. I'd rather have less books but then in a printed format. I have noticed that I can't concentrate on reading books when they are presented to me on my computer screen. I do have a kindle (1st or 2nd generation) and that device doesn't support PDF well, furthermore it is rather slow. It works fine for regular books though, where I don't have to flip throug…

Slightly on-topic: so what ebook readers (kindle, nook, bookeen, icarus, boox, kobo, sony, etc) can be used to _comfortably_ browse a PDF?

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#112

Post by midgetjones »

torrent-of-ions wrote: post #109
bathory wrote: post #3

My biggest gripe with this bundle is that they are all digital. I'd rather have less books but then in a printed format. I have noticed that I can't concentrate on reading books when they are presented to me on my computer screen. I do have a kindle (1st or 2nd generation) and that device doesn't support PDF well, furthermore it is rather slow. It works fine for regular books though, where I don't have to flip throug…

There are several problems with ebook textbooks. I have problems concentrating with them too. But also, I need to use my computer while I read the textbook. I find it much easier to have the book on the desk and the thing I'm doing on the screen. The typesetting and layout of textbooks is also very important. It's not just free flowing text. This means they are simple not compatible with the screen sizes of computers…

Would a tablet with the PDF on your desk be an acceptable compromise? That's what I tend to do. You can 'flip through' in iBooks by either using the text search, or just hopping over to the contents/notes/bookmarks. It can be pretty effective once you get used to it.

You could also pay a relatively small amount to get the PDFs printed and spiral-bound at a print shop. That solves your problem of free-flowing text, plus they lay flat, which is a godsend.

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#113

Post by davidchua »

strzalek wrote: post #103

I bought it, got frustrated that I can't download them all at one, downloaded awk/sed one to refresh my skills, wrote script to download them all: https://gist.github.com/lukaszx0/0044aeb9ce86a7859a235093986...

Thanks! you just made my life so much easier.

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#114

Post by ambulancechaser »

marklawrutgers wrote: post #17

Does anyone know the legality of putting the DRM free pdf files into a public Dropbox folder? Not sure what copyrights or licenses still apply if I decide to buy these and share this with other people.

And just so we are clear, DRM is independent of copyright and license. the lack of DRM does not mean the author/publisher relinquishes claims over distribution channels, but here they are saying "we trust you not to share it". Your argument reads like "if its easy it must be legal".

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#115

Post by anjefu »

derekp7 wrote: post #34
dublinben wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like what you're really asking for is a proper e-book format, like EPUB. PDF is not an e-book format, it's a presentation format, for print-equivalent documents. They aren't interchangeable.

Right, but the problem with EPUB and Mobi is that I haven't really seen technical books done well with them, with various tables, diagrams, charts, etc. These are presented much better when they have a human eye lay them out on the page. That's where a multi-format PDF would come in handy -- you could still have a human editor lay out the pages for 2 or 3 different page sizes, and then the reader would pick the appro…

You could get close to this by just using multiple PDFs. However, no one seems to do this (@haskellbook is the only exception I can think of), so perhaps editors feel it's not worth the extra time and effort.

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#116

Post by anjefu »

bathory wrote: post #3

My biggest gripe with this bundle is that they are all digital. I'd rather have less books but then in a printed format. I have noticed that I can't concentrate on reading books when they are presented to me on my computer screen. I do have a kindle (1st or 2nd generation) and that device doesn't support PDF well, furthermore it is rather slow. It works fine for regular books though, where I don't have to flip throug…

I agree for small screens -- reading anything on my laptop is painful -- but reading on a 32"-40" 4K screen, where you can have two pages shown in full at a larger-than-life size, makes a huge difference. I still prefer paper overall, but I no longer mind digital.

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#117

Post by detaro »

rollover wrote: post #104
jsjohnst wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every ebook I bought (which is over a thousand now) from O'reilly, Pragmatic Programmers, Manning, and Apress in the past ten years or so has been DRM free.

O'Reilly, NoStarch, Packt and Leanpub books are fine since they're completely clean. But books from Pragmatic Programmers, Manning, Apress, Addison Wesley, Pearson and Sams are watermarked which I consider just as bad as DRM. I never buy digital books from publishers who watermark.

Why is watermarking "just as bad"? It doesn't interfere with me using the files, so I personally don't care.

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#118

Post by newscracker »

jbmorgado wrote: post #87

What I would appreciate from fellow HN commenters, is their opinion if these books are actually the best ones (or amongst the very best ones) in their particular areas. That's something I always struggle when it comes to IT/programming. There are just so many written materials about a particular subject that it becomes very difficult to find which ones are those that I should actually read.

UNIX Power Tools would be relevant and a great resource even today. When I read the paperback version long ago I was impressed by the book and by what's possible.

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#119

Post by derekp7 »

jsjohnst wrote: post #96
derekp7 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just bought this bundle, which is all O'reilly, so I'm assuming the ePub's are from them. Was looking at the Emacs one, and so far not too bad. But there are still issues, such as I came across a table that had the headers line at the bottom of one page, and the rest of the table on the next page. Things like this, you can probably put hits / rules in the ePub file for, but it still benefits more from having a huma…

I already own that ePub so I'll check it on my end to see if it's specific to the Humble Bumble version. Which table should I check? Also, which reader are you using out of curiosity?

I tried it using Google play books, and also FBreader. The specific table depends on the screen size, font, orientation, etc. In my case, it was one of the tables in the preface, when viewing portrait mode on my phone. When bringing it up on my tablet, the same effect could be seen on any other table that happens to start at the end of the page.

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#120

Post by jsjohnst »

detaro wrote: post #117
rollover wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

O'Reilly, NoStarch, Packt and Leanpub books are fine since they're completely clean. But books from Pragmatic Programmers, Manning, Apress, Addison Wesley, Pearson and Sams are watermarked which I consider just as bad as DRM. I never buy digital books from publishers who watermark.

Why is watermarking "just as bad"? It doesn't interfere with me using the files, so I personally don't care.

Ditto! This might be an unfair stance for me to take, but my thought is anyone opposed to them adding your name inside the book isn't using the book for a legitimate authorized use case most likely. It most certainly isn't a DRM to me in any normal sense and I'm perfectly ok with it.
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