>mark is a genius.
I see bowerbird's fiction is even better than his poetry!
I would rate myself a high 2 or a low 3 on Jim's rating scale.

>but in this case, it was more 
>a matter of simple and plain hard work and dedication,
>as mark saved out hundreds of posts from this very listserve
>(this was what mark sent me in november of '98, way back.
>my guess is that his current infostructure is much bigger.)

What I did was cut out what _I_ thought was useful from the mesaages and 
tried to catagorize them. I am sure others have done the same. However 
shortly after giving this to bowerbird, I switched to the digests and just 
cataloged them. And then in May 99, I stopped altogether because I had other 
commitments, one was writing a book by coincidence, and I no longer had the 
time it took to save these as I wanted. In fact, until Ken's popup menu 
question of a week or so ago, I had not even tried anything with FB^3 
although I got it last August when STAZ first made it available. I have been 
the ultimate lurker since then I guess.

>Not to rain on anyone's parade, but IMHO we've tried this type of thing
>before with dismal results. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of good
>intentions, good people, honorable ideas, but when the rubber hits the
>road, the majority of people don't contribute and it's left up to just a
>few, or the one, to get the job done. 

I agree with tedd. I have personally been involved in several and they all 
have fallen short, mainly due to the lack of time of the parties involved. 
Back in 95, Wayne Campbell (are you still out there Wayne?) said he would 
make special list files if someone made a reader. I offered TEXTbook at that 
time and even made a special FB version, called FB Viewer, that would read 
the files (basically SimpleText files with embedded TEXT resources to allow 
the display of code clippings in separate windows from the main text window). 
FB Viewer even allowed you to create the files yourself if you wanted to do 
your own. I offered it to any list member but only got one request (thanks 
Bill if you are still out there).

>mark already has leapfrogged farther than hypercard can.
If that were true I should be making a lot more sales of TEXTbook than I am!

>The main point is to get the material in the first place! We can publish 
>it in more than one form, to satisfy more than one person. So the 
>"challenge" is as has been said. WRITE SOMETHING!

I agree with Bill here. That is the main stumbing block. It takes a lot of 
work to write that first sentence if the information is going to be accurate, 
understandable and useful.

>Solution: (Recognize and accept the fact that this is an enormous task)
>
>1.  Break the potential information into categories.
>2.  Find someone who is willing to tackle each category. Form committees of 
volunteers to help them.
>3.  Find someone who is willing to coordinate the whole thing.
>4.  Do it!

I agree with Joe here. If (and that is a big IF) you can get someone to 
commit to writing an individual chapter or demo or FAQ etc and get someone to 
put it all together, you will reach the goal of a complete book. But I have 
been on many a commitee in my life that has gotten nowhere because you could 
never get a consensus on what to do and no one wanted to take the initiative 
to make it happen because they knew how big a job it would be for one person. 
I would guess that there is enough information already available if someone 
wnated to put it together but that is a big job. And the benefits are few 
beyond the personal satisfaction of seeing the completed work. Frank wrote 
two excellent books but I'll bet he didn't make much on the sale of the 
books. He even had some left over in his garage that he sold for $10 which is 
probably less than he paid to get them printed. Good work often goes 
unrewarded (at least in this life).

>or go directly to the source, mark's "sequoia software", at:
>http://members.aol.com/mawrph/scs/sequoia.html

Anyway, if anyone wants to try TEXTbook it is available as bowerbird 
indicated above. Or if you can't get it, I will email it to you. I can also 
send anyone FB Viewer if they want to see that (no room left of my meger 2MBs 
from AOL). Since I rated myself a 2-3 on Jim's programmer scale, I don't feel 
competent enough to write a chapter, especially for FB^3.

However, if something does get written, I would be willing to do some HTML 
work on it to make it readable on- or off-line with your browser (I did the 
Function Junction III manual that is at futurebasic.org) or put it into FB 
Viewer or TEXTbook format if that will help.

Mark
(an un-gnome gnome)