On 15-Aug-00 at 15:27:11 Ronny Adsetts wrote:
>> 2. Is it an in-depth book that does contain tutorial and example
>> material, but aims to cover absolutely everything?
>
> Everyone else seems to have pretty much covered what is wanted; as an
> addition I would like see to a glossary of terms, something which missing
> in many technical books.
>
I would tend to agree. Perhaps the early chapters could explain the
terminology used in SMTP (headers, envelope, SMTP itself, etc), as well as
the Exim terminology (directors, transports, etc). A glossary is good for a
quick lookup of a word without having to read through a chapter again.
However I would also like to see a good index too. The current manual is
good on this point in most things.
I also would opt for the second book proposal. Installing Exim was no
problem, and from what I remember (version 1.62) it was no problem to get
working. The 'problem' has and still is in configuring the damn thing! :-)
For that reason I can learn more from examples, although you still need the
explanation of the actual configuration options of course. Eg, I understand
what a file lookup is but something like:
@@partial0-lsearch;TABLES/banned/users
and @@cdb;TABLES/banned/spam/reject_hostaccounts.cdb
are obviously more confusing than a simple lookup
(like 'TABLES/banned/networks') :-)
A couple of other things to bear in mind may be:
1) Regular expressions (my bane!) may need some hefty explanation if you
intend to go into real depth! But then O'Reilly already have a book on
these, and where does PCRE fit into this? Will there be a chapter on RE's,
and/or on PCRE, or will there just be a reference to the ORA book with some
examples?
2) With Exim's continuous development will the book become dated too
quickly? I'm not sure how this is dealt with with the Sendmail book (Edition
3 I think), but after a year or so will there be much more in Exim than the
book states? Or will it just be the internals that is now changing (to avoid
the creeping featurism)?
As to cost, well I've already told the Manager that we need a book, and he
said yup fine go buy it (on his account)...so no problem there :-)
John.
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E-mail: jhorne@???
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