Future of the cookbook

A little while ago there was some discussion on
plt-scheme about necessary starts to support
commercial programming (IIRC Alex Peake was an active
participant in this discussion).  One of the things
that came out of the discussion is the need for
practical documentation along the lines of the Perl
Cookbook.  We've got a project at Schematics - the PLT
Scheme Cookbook,
http://schematics.sourceforge.net/cookbook/ - that
attempts to address this but it isn't growing very
rapidly.

I think we can make a big contribution with the
Cookbook but we need to change how it is written. At
the moment you have to be a Schematics member and a
bit of a WebIt! guru to contribute, so we're really
limiting the pool of potential contributors.  Python
has a successful collaboratively developed Cookbook
(http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Python/Cookbook/)
and I think this is a model we can follow.

Some ideas:

  - a Schematician could host a Moshi (or other wiki)
install and we could use that
  - PLT might do the same
  - We could use wikibooks:
http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Programming:Functional_programming:About

There are the usual copyright/control issues. 
Additionally, it would be nice to have a clear path to
a trade press book ala the Perl Cookbook.  If PLT
Scheme is ever going to attract a significant number
of users documentation has to be available in the
bookstores programmers visit (so HtDP, published by
MIT Press, doesn't count as MIT Press doesn't even
sell to most bookstores).  O'Reilly have published the
Python Cookbook so I don't think collaborative
development is a big problem if we get the licence
right.

Thoughts?

Noel

PS:  I've made some fixes to http://schematics.sourceforge.net/new/

=====
Email: noelwelsh <at> yahoo <dot> com
Jabber: noelw <at> jabber <dot> org

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html


-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials
Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of
GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system
administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470&alloc_id=3638&op=click