I naturally vote for a reader like myself :). Namely, someone who is not
familiar with MTAs and needs orienting material. As others have pointed
out, the spec is already there for those who need to go in depth. What I
felt some need for was a general orientation to how the whole thing
worked--really an expansion of the early chapter in the spec on how mail is
processed. The chapter actually seemed a very good guide after I got to
know things a bit, but it was that first part that was an obstacle.
I am not a mail administrator (except for my personal systems), and don't
wish to become one. But I would like to be able to get my mail to work,
and am also just curious how things work. This probably makes me
atypical--more amateurish--than most people on this list, and certainly
puts me outside the original target audience and functioning for exim. But
probably there are a fair number of users like me.
Such a book might be quite difficult for you to write; once one is an
expert, it is hard to approach things with a novice's eye.
You might consider what your goals are:
* Filling in a documentation gap (this is what I'm describing)
* Reducing the burden on yourself
* Selling lots of books (-> go for the numerous amateurs)
* Promoting the use of exim (-> target serious sys admins, probably)
* Enabling others to work on the code.
Personally, I prefer introductory discussions of concepts to provide an
orientation, but I usually hate tutorials. I know they are popular, but
they usually have such low density of information that they annoy
me. Judiciously chosen examples, however, can be good.
You might also consider a kind of "the making of exim" book in which you
describe in more detail the process that led you to write it: the existing
solutions, the inadequacies you saw in them, the way you improved on
existing practice, the lessons you learned, how the thing evolved. The
book would be organized as a narrative/history/memoir. This might be more
fun to write and to read, and could end up serving several of the previous
goals pretty well.
At 04:44 AM 8/15/2000, you wrote:
>It's a day for asking your views ...
>
>Many of you know that I'm trying to write a book about Exim. I should
>have asked this earlier: What kind of Exim book would you like to have?
>
>1. Is it an introductory book, with lots of tutorial material and
>examples, missing out on the more arcane options and internals?
>
>OR
>
>2. Is it an in-depth book that does contain tutorial and example material,
>but aims to cover absolutely everything?
>
>OR
>
>3. Something else?
>
>I suppose another way of putting the question is: What kind of reader
>should the book be aimed at?
>
>Note: I am certainly not going to write more than ONE book. That is
>proving quite hard enough.
>
>--
>Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
>ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
>
>
>--
>## List details at http://www.exim.org/mailman/listinfo/exim-users Exim
>details at http://www.exim.org/ ##
