Perl Technical Editing

I have been privileged to have been a technical editor for some very good Perl books.

• Object Oriented Perl by Damian Conway

This was my first foray into technical editing of Perl books and my introduction to Damian Conway, who has become a good friend and colleague. This is one of the best technical books I have ever read as well as a great Perl book. Its review of Perl in chapter 2 is worth the cover price on its own. It then clearly explains the basic Perl OO features and later gets into many different aspects of it.

• Core Perl by Reuven Lerner

This is a good general introduction to Perl book. I had the nice experience of being on the first Perl Whirl cruise with its author and we had some intense editing sessions. It has been the only time I have ever worked on editing with in person with the author of a book.

• Perl Medic by Peter Scott

This book is due out in March 2004. Peter is a great writer and I hope this book gets the sales it deserves. It covers a fresh aspect of Perl development - how to take over and improve a legacy Perl application. But beyond that, it has great insights and ideas on developing new Perl projects such as writing test code first (an XP concept but well covered here).

• Perl6 Now

This book is being written now and I recently signed up to be a technical editor for it. It will cover various Perl 5 modules and new features that have been created to do or emulate Perl 6 features. More on this as I get into the editing process.