On Sat, Jul 02, 2005 at 12:46:44PM -0500, Herb Martin wrote:
> Does the new book have much value over and above the online
> specification?
Absolutely. I've been running exim4 since it was released, know exim
well enough to have submitted source patches, have attended the exim
course in-person, read the spec start to finish at least twice and still
learned from the book. Very well worth owning, hell, at least twice.
> It's rather pricy if it is "just the same thing" -- what sort of
> additional value has it provided you?
It's an excellent, well-structured book. Even for an experienced exim
administrator it serves as a great refresher. The specification itself,
like all specifications are, and with good reason, is is rather dry.
Excellent reference material, and the spec is some of the most excellent
reference material on any software I've ever encountered, on it's own is
not enough to feed you ideas.
By reading and re-reading the book, it's a great way to be reminded of
features, or condense everything relevant on a particular topic in an
easy to digest manner. When changing or adding new configurations, the
book is a great first place to look to learn about caveats.
It's one thing to be able to look up features in a spec, but it's
completely different to be inspired to use them by being shown how easy
they integrate in particular cookbook-like snippets. It's been my
experience when reading it that I'll go "Oh yeah, *that* feature, I must
enable it", or "Oh yeah, I forgot about that quirk and workaround".
The other great thing about the book is that it's excellent training
material. I can hand the book to an exim newcommer and be confident
it'll get them up to speed, with the minimum amount of clarifications
required.
--
Colm MacCárthaigh / HEAnet, Teach Brooklawn, / Innealtóir Líonra
+353 1 6609040 / Bóthar Shelbourne, BÁC, IE / http://www.hea.net/
