Missing Script Code in Afterword of My Book

[Alex Tweedly]

Dan Shafer wrote:

> Yeah, it was less the mistake itself than the questions it raised in  
> my mind. If several hundred people have bought this book in one form  
> or another and nobody has yet pointed out this error -- which made  
> the major example in the book not work -- does this mean: (a) they  
> figured it out themselves (it *was* sort of obvious on one level);  
> (b) they didn't catch it at all; or (c) they haven't read the chapter  
> (or perhaps the book)?

Dan, I have your book. I read it all, I did maybe 50% of the samples - 
the choice of which ones I did versus which ones I did not do wasn't 
particularly because I thought were necessary, or interesting or 
anything .... it was based simply on whether I was reading that section 
in the office, the kitchen or the bath :-)    That's one of the joys of 
a printed book.

I have no recollection whether I did or didn't do this particular one, 
but if I did I must have figured it out without noticing. (Had I 
noticed, I'd have whined .... sorry, I'd have given feedback to the author.)

> As a writer, I know mistakes will appear in my code. I try hard to  
> test it and then copy-paste code directly rather than retyping it.  
> Over the years, reviewers have been consistently kind about the  
> paucity of at least code errors in my books. That's a rep I'd like  
> not to tarnish more than necessary.
>
> Next time, I need to find copy-readers who are perhaps less  
> knowledgeable and who have and can take more time to review copy in  
> greater detail.

This may be impractical ....

Can you apply automated testing techniques to the code intended for 
inclusion in the book ?
  (including the process of getting the code from its original place to 
the publisher's production process) ?

Alternatively, could you devise a method to take the (about to be) 
published version, automatically extract from it the code samples and 
put them into a test framework. I don't know what you use for 
preparation of such books, but many, many years ago I was writing 
reference docs for software libraries (in Framemaker), and we'd use 
paragraph tags in the Frame document to indicate code samples to 
extract, with enough info to determine where each sample should fit in 
the test framework. It was possible (but really quite hard) to get the 
code to appear in the printed book without also getting it into the test 
code.

-- 
Alex Tweedly       http://www.tweedly.net



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