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RedHanded

Reading Hal Fulton's The Ruby Way Online #

by why in inspect

I recently got my hands on a copy of Hal Fulton’s The Ruby Way, published in 2002 by Sams Publishing. It’s huge. I would not have the stamina to write something like this. Biblical in proportions.

Your assignment is pages 46-64, which encompasses the Ruby gotchas section. Parser wierdness, syntax subtleties, handy tricks. It’s an eighteen-page bulleted list.

Here’s a link chain to get you into the book on print.google.com:

  1. Search for ruby way on Google.
  2. Under Book Results, click the “ruby way” link. (600 pages by Hal Fulton, Guy Hurst.)
  3. You should be seeing a scan of page 10. Click on “More results from this book.”
  4. Check it out, every page of the book. Go to page 4 of the search results. Page 46 should be the first result.

I wanted to write a script to calculate the URL for you, but a solution was evading me. Perhaps someone else can give it a go?

said on 22 Jan 2005 at 03:28

Obviously Google does not want you to read the whole book online which is why they don’t list the pages in an useful order, have those weird URLs and stop you from requesting more than X pages from a result.

You can work around all this by using a proxy and some magickery in Ruby, of course, but you’re getting yourself on problematic legal terrain by doing so. (And by using the highlighting feature of the image generation script you could even do OCR fairly easily.)

said on 22 Jan 2005 at 03:37

Doesn’t this URL work?

said on 22 Jan 2005 at 04:33

Only until you reach page 48.

said on 22 Jan 2005 at 07:15

Of course, those of you who’d like to give the author his well-deserved cut might like to work out how to use Amazon (or bookseller of choice) to buy the book…

said on 22 Jan 2005 at 07:56

I actually own it since a bunch of months ago. :)

said on 22 Jan 2005 at 09:22

Google print limits the number of pages viewable as well. Either with cookies or on IP. I didn’t bother to check. I also own the book, but a pdf would be handy on the powerbook. I bought pickaxe2 both as pdf and paper for that very reason

said on 22 Jan 2005 at 09:40

I think it’s a useful hack. Especially for those of you who’ve never heard of the book and may not have a bookstore where you can leisurely browse such titles.

said on 22 Jan 2005 at 10:28

I hadn’t considered that – browsing the text is sensible, and these 18 pages obviously come highly recommended. I think I mean, “If you find them useful, then think about buying the book.”

I was just worried about gurus producing tools that allowed a small number of people to take advantage – that’s not the “Ruby Way” :)

said on 23 Jan 2005 at 07:41

I’d also like to get a pdf of “The Ruby Way”. I could only bring a couple of dead tree books with me to Italy so I sometimes miss not having “Ruby Way” available as at home. It’s great to have the lightweight, Pickaxe II pdf, tho.

said on 23 Jan 2005 at 10:08

I read it on safari. Still checked out, hoping that some small change will find its way to the author.

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