Postgres Printed Manuals

"Robert James" <srobertjames@gmail.com> writes:

Also: wouldn't it be a good way for the Postgres project to raise some
money, by publishing and selling bound and printed versions?

It's hard to make any money that way :-(. Rich Morin used to run a
business called "Prime Time Freeware" that published hardcopy versions
of our manuals along with much other open-source documentation.
He gave up on it some years ago, though, and I doubt that the market
has improved.

I believe MySQL has done that for years.

MySQL's situation is a bit different, because they own their
documentation lock-stock-and-barrel and have never distributed it freely
(check the terms sometime, they're not very liberal). Even so, I'll bet
they're not making any noticeable amount of money from selling hardcopy.

regards, tom lane

The Postgres docs are great. Unfortunatelty, at 1600 pages, my printer is a
little weary. Are bound & printed editions available? If not, has anyone
had any good experience printing them via any of the online services? (The
ones I contacted said it was too big for them to print...)

You're right, the page count is just unfeasible.
You could try mpage-ing it to 4 pages per sheet and print it out double-sided,
you would then have a smaller document that could be bound- the only problem
is the text would be so small to be virtually unreadable. I did this
with a Common
Lisp manual years ago and never refer to it for that reason.

A good compromise would be to invest in a PostgreSQL book
(best: PostgreSQL by Korry Douglas
also good: Practical PostgreSQL by Command Prompt,
PostgreSQL: Introduction and Concepts by Momjian)
and refer to the Postgres docs for the definitive reference.

Cheers,
Stuart.

Robert James wrote:

The Postgres docs are great. Unfortunatelty, at 1600 pages, my
printer is a little weary. Are bound & printed editions available?
If not, has anyone had any good experience printing them via any of
the online services? (The ones I contacted said it was too big for
them to print...)

You do have a point, but remember: 1600 pages is 1600 pages, no matter
whether you, or somebody else prints them out. That cost would have to
be translated out somewhere. For instance, I have an old copy of Linux
Programming (2nd edition) that at the time was priced at $40. I'd think
reprinting all of those pages would cost a little more. And you also
have to ask if there is an audience for that in the first place.

I do understand wanting to have a printed manual. In as good as ebooks
are, sometimes they don't compete with having the printed version in
front of you, so you are not constantly switching between screens.

What I would suggest is, rather than hoping somebody has the bankroll
for one LARGE document, somebody might take a close look at a PostgreSQL
Documentation Project to break down those 1600 pages into three or four
"manuals" that would be more reasonable to print one at a time.

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The NCP Revue -- http://www.ncprevue.com/blog

How much would it be to email the PDF manual to someone like Kinkos and
get it printed? Effectively, that might be the cheepest solution
because it is print-on-demand.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

John Meyer wrote:

Robert James wrote:

The Postgres docs are great. Unfortunatelty, at 1600 pages, my
printer is a little weary. Are bound & printed editions available?
If not, has anyone had any good experience printing them via any of
the online services? (The ones I contacted said it was too big for
them to print...)

You do have a point, but remember: 1600 pages is 1600 pages, no matter
whether you, or somebody else prints them out. That cost would have to
be translated out somewhere. For instance, I have an old copy of Linux
Programming (2nd edition) that at the time was priced at $40. I'd think
reprinting all of those pages would cost a little more. And you also
have to ask if there is an audience for that in the first place.

I do understand wanting to have a printed manual. In as good as ebooks
are, sometimes they don't compete with having the printed version in
front of you, so you are not constantly switching between screens.

What I would suggest is, rather than hoping somebody has the bankroll
for one LARGE document, somebody might take a close look at a PostgreSQL
Documentation Project to break down those 1600 pages into three or four
"manuals" that would be more reasonable to print one at a time.

--
The NCP Revue -- http://www.ncprevue.com/blog

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+ If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

On Mon, 14 May 2007, Bruce Momjian wrote:

How much would it be to email the PDF manual to someone like Kinkos and
get it printed? Effectively, that might be the cheepest solution because
it is print-on-demand.

What I would suggest is, rather than hoping somebody has the bankroll for
one LARGE document, somebody might take a close look at a PostgreSQL
Documentation Project to break down those 1600 pages into three or four
"manuals" that would be more reasonable to print one at a time.

Not only is Kinkos (or their competition) in business to do this type of
work, but you could have printed only the chapters you needed.

The docs used to be separate: Language, Programming, Administration;
perhaps others that I've forgotten. Same number of pages, more binders. :-)

I'm a great fan of dead-tree editions of books: I can read them in bed, on
a plane, while waiting for an appointment, etc. Sometimes I just print the
page or two that I need right then. OTOH, the digital form is a lot lighter
to carry on trips; it fits comfortably within my notebook computer.

Rich

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Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. | Accelerator(TM)
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Rich Shepard wrote:

On Mon, 14 May 2007, Bruce Momjian wrote:

How much would it be to email the PDF manual to someone like Kinkos and
get it printed? Effectively, that might be the cheepest solution because
it is print-on-demand.

What I would suggest is, rather than hoping somebody has the bankroll for
one LARGE document, somebody might take a close look at a PostgreSQL
Documentation Project to break down those 1600 pages into three or four
"manuals" that would be more reasonable to print one at a time.

Not only is Kinkos (or their competition) in business to do this type of
work, but you could have printed only the chapters you needed.

Right. Printing the hundreds of pages taken up by the release notes is
almost always a waste of paper, for example. And unless you're a
beginner you're likely not to need the tutorial either.

--
Alvaro Herrera http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support

On 5/14/07, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com> wrote:

Rich Shepard wrote:

On Mon, 14 May 2007, Bruce Momjian wrote:

How much would it be to email the PDF manual to someone like Kinkos and
get it printed? Effectively, that might be the cheepest solution because
it is print-on-demand.

What I would suggest is, rather than hoping somebody has the bankroll for
one LARGE document, somebody might take a close look at a PostgreSQL
Documentation Project to break down those 1600 pages into three or four
"manuals" that would be more reasonable to print one at a time.

Well, I didn't do that, but as an exercise I split the manual in 740
page chunks (maximum size at lulu), which misses the last couple
hundred pages (old release notes and index, mostly) and put them on
lulu. It comes to $19.33 each volume for 2 volumes.

I agree that it would be great to have them split up a bit so they
could fit in normal sized books, but there it is, if you want a dead
tree version. pdftk is an open source pdf breaker-upper I used for
this.

http://www.lulu.com/content/863723
http://www.lulu.com/content/864445

- Ian

On May 13, 2007, at 10:43 PM, Tom Lane wrote:

It's hard to make any money that way :-(. Rich Morin used to run a
business called "Prime Time Freeware" that published hardcopy versions
of our manuals along with much other open-source documentation.
He gave up on it some years ago, though, and I doubt that the market
has improved.

Seems like an ideal use of those print-on-demand services like
lulu.com among others. The project could post an official PDF of the
docs, and take a cut every time someone ordered a printed copy. The
question is who would take the time to make a professional looking PDF.

Vivek Khera wrote:

On May 13, 2007, at 10:43 PM, Tom Lane wrote:

It's hard to make any money that way :-(. Rich Morin used to run a
business called "Prime Time Freeware" that published hardcopy versions
of our manuals along with much other open-source documentation.
He gave up on it some years ago, though, and I doubt that the market
has improved.

Seems like an ideal use of those print-on-demand services like lulu.com
among others. The project could post an official PDF of the docs, and
take a cut every time someone ordered a printed copy. The question is
who would take the time to make a professional looking PDF.

http://www.lulu.com/content/863723
http://www.lulu.com/content/864445

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On Wed, 16 May 2007, Vivek Khera wrote:

Seems like an ideal use of those print-on-demand services like lulu.com
among others. The project could post an official PDF of the docs, and
take a cut every time someone ordered a printed copy. The question is who
would take the time to make a professional looking PDF.

I have no idea how the docs are written, but using LaTeX (and the LyX GUI
front end) produces typeset output. The pdf is, literally, camera-ready.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D. | The Environmental Permitting
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. | Accelerator(TM)
<http://www.appl-ecosys.com&gt; Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863

Excellent!

Two questions:
1. Might it be better to include the index and TOC (in both volumes), and do
something like this:
http://www.postgresql.org/files/documentation/pdf/8.2/postgresql-8.2.1-US.pdf
Vol I: 1-621, 1674-end
Vol II: 1-38, 622-1395, 1672-end
(Dropped some other things, I think...)

2. I'm not familiar with Lulu - can anyone set it up? If I would like
to do one run of the manuals that way, can I? If not, do you care to
offer that break up as well?

+1 100% for having Postgres set this up and take a cut.

Anyone can set up anything that is either not copyright protected, or
freely distributable, or they create. I can (and will) modify these
existing tomes to your revised format or any better ones that come
along! I am pleased to see that a couple have sold already.

I also think it would be great to generate these records in lulu's
database (that's all they are until someone orders) with each version.
It could be automated since they use plain old http and allow ftp
uploads. Someone would just have to do what you did, which is to
decide which pages go in which volumes, and run the script.

If PGDG could make a dollar or two that would be great.

On 5/17/07, Ian Harding <harding.ian@gmail.com> wrote:

I did have to change one a bit, I hope the breaks aren't in bad spots.

Did you just split it into 3 portions, or did you include the TOC and index
in each one, and drop the Release notes/appendixes?

This could be done so much better if there were a profit motivation,

but I think this is pretty acceptable.

There is! - Put a nice one together and take the profit. I'm sure
you can get a link off the
postgresql.org site. You're helping the community, and making a
profit while you do it.
(I think you should an include a list of what exactly is included in each
volume - (Example: Volume II is TOC, Reference, and Index, pages 1-35,
503-912, and 1651-end of http://postgresql.org/...original.pdf)

http://www.lulu.com/iharding