Perlbooks with animals pictures

[greatshots]

monks,

I am asking this question just on my own Interest. I have seen most of the perl book's cover page ( not always book's cover alone, sometimes I have seen the contents of book too ) and noticed some animal pictures in it. Is there any specific reason behind this, addding an animal in book's cover page ? ( Ex: Camel,Panther.... ). I could have asked this question to the author of the book, unfortunately I have not yet met the perl books authors.

If you monks ( Perl book's author also might be a member of this community ), have any idea on this please explain me.

[davorg]

It's not Perl books that have animals on the cover, it's O'Reilly books (and, actually, only certain kinds of O'Reilly books). Not all O'Reilly books are Perl books and not all Perl books are O'Reilly books :-)

In the case of the Badger book, Andy Wardley (creator of TT and co-author of the book) was sure from the start that he wanted a badger on the front cover (badgers look friendly but are actually very powerful and tenacious) and the editor and the designers were happy to accomodate his request. The colophon of the book contains far more information about badgers.

[fenLisesi]

Encouraged by the whiff of Acme widgets emanating from this thread, I would like to point out that badgers can be deceptive, too. Cheers.

[Callum]

As others have mentioned it's an O'Reilly thing, take a look at the following:

http://www.oreilly.com/animals.html
http://www.oreilly.com/news/ediemals_0400.html
http://www.oreilly.com/news/lejeune_0400.html

and perhaps most importantly:
http://letters.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/letters/2001/spoofcovers_1201.html

[Anonymous Monk]

Why do you think O'Reilly chose the Spot Bill Toucanet for the cover?

[Hofmator]

Well, the books you mention are probably all published by O'Reilly. O'Reilly has published a significant number of (good and well-known) Perl books and O'Reilly likes putting animals on the covers of their books (not only the Perl books).

[jonadab]

For historical reasons, most of the best Perl books are published by O'Reilly. I suspect this is at least partly because the Camel book (Programming Perl) was one of the really early Perl books and, because of who wrote it, also very good. Since that one was published by O'Reilly, which worked out very well for all concerned, some of the other people in the Perl community, when they wrote Perl books, knew about this and chose the same publisher. (O'Reilly is also well regarded in technical circles anyway, but IMO this is especially so in the Perl community.)

There _are_ other Perl books, of course. But the O'Reilly ones tend to be the better ones. For one thing they tend to be written by people whose names are already known in Perl circles, people who know Perl inside and out. (Although, some of those people have also gone on occasion with other publishers, e.g., Effective Perl Programming is published by Addison-Wesley, and MJD published with a company called Morgan Kaufmann, whoever they are, so O'Reilly doesn't have a total monopoly on good Perl books, just the majority of them.)

[friedo]

The Perl books published by Manning are also quite good (and the Manning books have their own consistently weird covers as well.)

• Object Oriented Perl
• Data Munging with Perl
• Extending and Embedding Perl
• Graphics Programming with Perl

...and others.

[j3]

Speaking of other publishers of books on Perl, I recently stumbled upon Onyx Neon, which looks promising.

[merlyn]

I suspect this is at least partly because the Camel book (Programming Perl) was one of the really early Perl books and, because of who wrote it, also very good.

Thank you. It was a great project, and I'm glad to have helped make it a historical event, although at the time, it was just a way to get some more instructions down for Perl users, using my combined skills as an award-winning technical writer and editor as well as being a programmer from nearly birth. {grin}

But truly, O'Reilly was (is still?) the only publisher run by people who started as technical writers, so they're much more inclined to let the smart authors do their thing and concentrate on all the rest of the stuff an author needs to be successful.

[Anonymous Monk]

It's an O'Reilly convention.

[j3]

Is there any specific reason behind this, addding an animal in book's cover page ?

Well, it makes for interesting dialog when talking to your buddies about what you're reading. Ex.: "I just got through the Llama, and was having a look at the Alpaca. The Camel referred me to the Owl, but I think I'll spend more time with the Ram first." ;)

[chromatic]

I have a particular fondness for the coffee stain book and the sturdy pair book.

[fenLisesi]

Thank you (and Ian), for not using a coaster, chromatic -- your notebook is accessible and has what one needs to start building a manageable large project.

[swampyankee]

As others have explained, it's one of O'Reilly's ways of branding their books.

As side issue, in US publishing, the authors of a book may be responsible for the content, but the authors usually do not have much control over packaging issues such as cover design or type of binding: these are the purview of the publishers. In turn, publishers do not normally print the books; that's done by a printer.