Raw

I just submitted the last of the chapter first drafts for Beginning RSS and Atom Programming. The project's far from finished, any minute now I'll start getting back earlier submissions post-review for rewrite, and there are still a handful of bits and pieces to tie up.

We've run beyond the original schedule by several weeks, due in part to Andrew being tied up with a prior project (he finished his chunk yesterday). Also due to my extreme, nay, pathological propensity for procrastination and getting distracted. But we should be able to make up a bit of time on the rewrites, with the book still coming out on the publisher's schedule.

But phew! it's a major relief to get that bit out of the way. Overall I'm happy with the way it's coming along. Time pressure was bound to be a pain, what I didn't expect was that space would be a limiting factor too. Several of the chapters I'd estimated at 25 or so pages came in at 40+. I do reckon we've got in all the essentials (and some), but still there were quite a lot of nice-to-have marginal bits that had to be skimmed over rather than going deep. On the plus side I think the balance across the different approaches (RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom) has worked out well. The fluid status of Atom meant that was going to be problematic whatever. The amount of coverage we were realistically able to do turned out to be more or less what we anticipated. I was also pleased to find that the structural approach looks like it's going to work - Andrew's introduces the ideas (and formats), then discusses existing tools. Later I pick up on these and provide the do-it-yourself side. So the "Beginning" in the title gets covered, but there's still plenty of munchy stuff for folks already familiar with the subject.

Yep, so far so good. Time to have a bath and see what's on TV.

PS. Sales rank today at amazon.com: #384,090

[Danny]