In an attempt to improve the documentation available for Jifty, I've begun the process of putting together a book for Jifty. It's designed to be a combination tutorial, reference, best practices guide since we kind of need all three. It won't be superb at any of those roles, but we don't need it to be. Jifty's API docs do a reasonably decent job at getting to the details, what we need is a good introduction at 10,000 feet level. Yet, I'm just a guy and have a family and a real job to attend to, so I'd love some help.
<br><br>Jesse and I started this process shortly after OSCON and we've got what I think is a pretty good outline for the book. The current state of that outline has been posted to the Jifty repository under:<br><br><a href="http://svn.jifty.org/index.cgi/jifty/browse/Jifty-Book">
http://svn.jifty.org/index.cgi/jifty/browse/Jifty-Book</a><br><br>If you're interested in how everything is structured, I recommend starting with the README file in that directory and then reading the POD in Jifty::Book and then moving to the individual chapters under Jifty::Book::(Part-[A-D]|Appendices)::... Some of this will almost certainly get restructured, but it's a good start.
<br><br>The next step for me is getting the tutorial for the book figured out. We've set it up to have a running tutorial throughout the book to help illustrate what each chapter is about. However, we haven't completely settled on what the tutorial should be. Jesse has suggested Spensive and after looking at it, I think it's a great candidate. I'm open for other ideas if anyone has them.
<br><br>Unless someone makes another suggestion that looks better, I'm going to continue working with Spensive to learn how it works, clean out it's busty innards, improve it's documentation, and clear up issues with the current tests. I'd appreciate help. Once I get it in a state where I can run it cleanly, I'm going to start filling in the chapter outlines regarding the tutorial and then start filling in the book as I have time. I hope to spend a good chunk of my Christmas break and perhaps take some time off from work in January to try and get things going.
<br><br>Cheers,<br>Sterling<br>