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Here’s one thing I missed in PiL while learning Lua and getting beyond the basics http://www.thijsschreijer.nl/blog/?p=693
Thijs From: lua-l-bounces@lists.lua.org [mailto:lua-l-bounces@lists.lua.org]
On Behalf Of Jay Glascoe Hi all, This is my first post here, so please be kind :o) So I'm writing a book on Lua. First of all, let me just say I don't think I'm some kind of prophet in the wilderness; I just want to write a book where I do the leg work for my expert/pro readers to see how to do all the things you can do with Lua. The excellent "official" Lua book Programming in Lua is a sometimes terse, mostly
K&R C Book experience leaving plenty of room for examples and further discussion. For one, like K&R C, it doesn't mention current apps/technologies (and as such remains mostly timeless). Book contents so far (ALL the garbage) is here: http://www.jayglascoe.com/Lua%20Book) you can see I'm just getting started. I realize now I need the community to help me understand what kind of Lua book they could look at and recommend to a hacker friend. Perhaps together we can write the next Snakes
on a Plane : o) My tentative, high level TOC is Preamble: Lua: Getting Started; Glider, Outlaw, and $YOUR_FAVORITE_TEXT_EDITOR Part I: Lua, the Basics Part II: Lua, Object Oriented Lua Part III: Lua, Using Native Extentions in Java and/or C Part IV: Putting It All Together: Lua: The Killer Lua App(s) Corona and/or Gideros Appendix I: The Metaclass code (and alternatives e.g. lua-Coat) Appendix III: Practical Lua; A Focus on the Lua Interpreter, the LuaJIT, and Lua Extensions Appendix ??: Sneak in Lua: Functional Lua Basically, I need your help coming up with a coherent plan for what all you would like to see addressed. And no, this isn't about you writing a TOC for me to forward to a publisher; it's not about money, it's not about getting published;
it's just me writing my blog (and if a publisher is interested, great! If not, so what, no one makes money on tech books anyway!) I really want to write a book like
Mark Lutz's Python Book. But for Lua... you get the idea. Here's the problem: there's a lot of Corona SDK books out there right now (and Corona/Gideros are sort of the killer Lua app(s)
nowadays) that seem to treat Lua as a simple tool command language. (A modern TCL which ironically the
original Lua paper talks a lot about). Here's the other problem: so far with the numeric analysis and metaprogramming I'm completely alienating everyone I've asked for review. Really I'm sort of working my way towards a better understanding of Lua and unfortunately taking all
the early readers along for the more advanced ride. Obviously, I can't reference Scheme or Lisp in the book because these are sometimes loved but mostly hated languages. But basically anything you're likely to do in Lisp-y can be done in Lua (and that's saying a lot). I'm definitely sneaking
that stuff in, but I need to appeal to the more casual readers as well. thank you, Jay |