The story of a book: 'Pratique d'ActionScript 3'
A couple of weeks ago Thibault Imbert from ByteArray.org announced that he just finished a book on ActionScript 3. It was supposed to be released by O'Reilly France.
However, for different reasons, the editor couldn't publish it. Thibault then decided to release it for free in form of a PDF file! He created a fresh new blog for this occasion, where he announced that the book will be available on April 21st. Given all the great stuff I found on ByteArray.org, I was sure that the book will be amazing, and couldn't wait to see it.
When the day arrived, instead of the book, all we found on the blog was a short and enigmatic post saying that some negotiations are on the way with a new publisher. Many, including myself, felt disappointed, even though we understood the situation.
Today Thibault Imbert added a much longer post explaining what is exactly going on. It is in French, so for those who do not speak the language of Molière here's a short abstract:
- the book will be available for free
- there might be a possibility to order a on-demand printed version in the future
- there will be a wiki setup for the translations and readers feedback
- it will be available to download soon, but no fixed date is announced this time
This is good news. The "Pratique d'ActionScript 3" is written in French, but if the book is published on the web, it won't be long until an English version is available, and maybe even more translations will follow. In the long term, the community will make a huge profit of having a good and freely available resource covering the most important aspect of ActionScript 3. The book can play a similar role as Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in Java" played for the Java enthusiasts.
As you can see, it is a story in development… and interesting to follow. Let's hope the book will be available soon. In any case, I will keep you updated.