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From: Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail•com>
To: "Scott Chacon" <schacon@gmail•com>
Cc: "git list" <git@vger•kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Git Books
Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2008 04:54:06 -0800 (PST)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <m34p1hihx4.fsf@localhost.localdomain> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <d411cc4a0812060358ub640ea3kd04072c5640eef68@mail.gmail.com>

"Scott Chacon" <schacon@gmail•com> writes:

> I have been talked into helping write a real, paper-based book on Git
> for a publisher big enough that you may even see it in your local
> Borders or whatnot.  (And, it appears that Junio has been as well:
> http://gitster.livejournal.com/21616.html)
> 
> So, since I'm near the beginning of this process, I was wondering if
> the group had any feedback as to what might be super helpful to
> include.  I mean, I have a pretty good layout and all, but if you
> wanted to point me to some threads that tend to crop up in the mailing
> list and IRC channel from relative newcomers that I might be able to
> nip in the bud, I would like to.  I'm addressing the stuff that _I_
> hear a lot, and I'm scanning the IRC logs and list for topics, but I
> figured many of you must answer the same questions all the time, too.

What I really would like to see in a paper book is _diagrams_, in the
form of simple graphs (and not UML-like diagrams, of flow-control like
diagrams).  You can find them in various slides for presentations
(among others Junio's talks), and sometimes in blog posts[1], but
usually only as ASCII-diagrams[2] in git documentation.  (And the
examples in"The Git Comminity Book" I've seen so far are a bit too
complicated).

For example explaining git object model, explaining refs: local
branches, remote-tracking branches and tags, explaining pulling and
pushing, explaining merging and 3-way merge algorithm are difficult to
do without diagrams; diagrams make it much easier to understand.

Others have emphasized workflows enough...

Footnotes:
==========
[1] http://www.gnome.org/~federico/news-2008-11.html#pushing-and-pulling-with-git-1
[2] This is understandable, as while AsciiDoc format makes it quite
    good on promise to be easy to edit for non-tech users, AFAIK there
    is no such format for diagrams and pictures.  PIC and Asymptote
    nonwithstanding.
-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git

  parent reply	other threads:[~2008-12-06 12:56 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 9+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2008-12-06 11:58 Git Books Scott Chacon
2008-12-06 12:09 ` Thomas Adam
2008-12-06 12:27 ` Christian MICHON
2008-12-06 13:39   ` Dilip M
2008-12-06 12:54 ` Jakub Narebski [this message]
2008-12-06 14:38   ` nadim khemir
2008-12-06 12:56 ` Paolo Ciarrocchi
2008-12-06 19:45 ` Björn Steinbrink
2008-12-06 23:48   ` Deskin Miller

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