Deal with a thing while it is still nothing; keep a thing in order before disaster sets in. A quote from Lao Tzu on the cover of this book which the Sybex production team would have done well to have heeded.
It does not help that the competition - Zeigeler and Langham's offering from New Riders - is both clear, structured and liberally sprinkled with examples. This only accentuates the contrast with this exhibit, which leaves the reader as confused after closing the covers as before he or she opened them. No, correction, make that more confused.
There is no lack of substance here, but also no shape, no argument and no goal. Cocoon is a system where data flows naturally from generators, through transformers, and is dispatched on its way by a final serialiser component. Yet, here in chapter four, the authors announce unconvincingly that a explanation in reverse sequence is ... errr ... in order. Off they go explaining serialisers. Fine. Chapter five, bafflingly, skips transformers and discusses site maps. We finally reach generators in chapter eight. Is this the wrong end of the telescope or are we staring into the proverbial liquid filled boot?
It goes on like this, avoiding any form of educative example and meandering though theory without ever fully explaining why and where. To use a generator I need to know what it generates, but I can search in vain for coverage of even a fraction of Cocoon's generators.
The book almost hits its stride in a reasonable explanation of XSP but then blows it , with a chapter on logic sheets. How would you explain what a logic sheet is? Why, obvious! by listing twenty seven tables of unannotated data before offering any explanation how to put this information to use.
Oh dear. I can imagine the work the writers put into this book. It is often very detailed and many long evenings must have been devoted to research. How sad that the editors at Sybex didn't insist that some shape should be battered into the manuscript before it hit the press.
