Book Content Complete

I'm excited to say that last night I checked in the last chapter that needed to be completed for the Ruport book. We've got a reasonably large amount of revising and reorganizing in the next week or two, but the code and commentary are now pretty much where we want them to be.

This means if you've been holding off on buying a pre-order, now might be a good chance to pick one up. We're really relying on the community to help us spot problems and clear up any confusing parts of the book before we make it available for print.

Here's more good news. It looks like we'll be on schedule for an end-of-year release of the book, with our first order of a proof print happening late next week. Hooray!

We promise we'll get the HTML formatted version of the book up ASAP after that, probably by early January at the latest.

Pre-orders now open for Ruport Book

Though we've not quite hit the finish line yet, we're far enough along now to open up pre-orders for the Ruport Book. This will give us a chance to see how many folks are actively following the development of the book, and also allow them to help us polish things up before we do a release of the printed work to the general public.

Here's what you can expect if you pre-order now:

• Starting within the next few days, regular preview releases of the typeset PDF, which contains chapters not yet formatted for the web.
• You will receive your printed book before general sales even open up.
• We are selling the pre-order at a slightly cheaper price for the printed work ($25 vs. $30)
• If we don't get to print by January 1st, 2008, we will honor all refund requests from pre-order participants.
• A non-automated process. Once we receive payment, I'll email you with some more details as soon as I notice you've paid, and send you a PDF as soon as it's ready.
  
• If you wish, we will hand draw a Pacman ghost inside the front cover for you, which is clearly valuable.

This process will be somewhat similar to beta books from the established publishers. We'll make revisions based on your feedback, and ultimately the book will be better because of it.

If you're not sure whether or not Ruport is for you, you may wish to wait until the book is finished and the HTML sources are fully available to look over. However, if you already know our project and want to support us, participating in the pre-order program is the best way to do so.

To pick up the PDF or Printed+PDF Combo, head over to the purchase page.