Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Revised Book Errata Update Policy

In the past, I've collected bug reports for my books and then updated the
web pages two or three times each year, posting to this mailing list the
latest changes to the errata pages. This has been slightly less hassle for
me, but it's not been ideal for readers, who might go months without being
informed of errata that had been reported.

Since publication of EC++/3E, I've been trying to update the books' errata
pages on an ongoing basis, adding new issues as they come in. This
essentially eliminates the time lag between a bug being reported and it
appearing at my web site, but because I don't want to increase the
frequency of postings to this mailing list, it means that I no longer have
an easy way to identify the latest bug reports to come in.

At some point, I hope to have a more sophisticated errata system that would
allow, for example, filtering errata based on when they were reported. I'd
hoped that I could cajole Addison-Wesley into providing such a system for
use by all their authors, but it's become clear that that is unlikely to
happen. For the time being, then, there will be no easy way to identify
the most recent additions to my books' errata lists. On the plus side,
when you visit the errata lists, you should see a comprehensive listing of
all the issues that have been reported.

I hope you find the errata lists useful. They're my Hall of Shame, but I
am always interested in comments on how my publications can be improved.

Scott