The following tools are used to write this book. If you are interested in contributing to this book, you will need to download the following software:
- Asciidoc
- A very lightweight markup format with a strong community and a collection of solid tools. For more information, see http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/
- A Text Editor
- Emacs, vi, TextMate, Notepad - it doesn’t matter. All you need to contribute to this book is a text editor.
- Git
- Sonatype stores the source code for all books in GitHub so you will need to download Git. In addition to downloading Git, if you need read/write access to the repository you will also need to sign up for an account on GitHub - http://www.github.com
Download the latest version of Git from http://git-scm.com/
This next set of tools are optional, and are only required if you are involved in generating diagrams or formatting the final PDF for the pre-print production process. In short, there is only one or two people who will need to have access to the following set of tools, and, in a normal publishing house, all of these functions would likely be performed by a separate "Production" team.
- Omnigraffle
- Many of the diagrams in this book have been generated using a OSX-specific tool named Omnigraffle.
If you are interested in helping us create diagrams don’t feel compelled to purchase a copy of Omnigraffle. Send us a rough outline of your diagram, and Sonatype will gladly transform your idea into a diagram if your contributions are accepted into the book.
Adobe Photoshop
All of the screen shots are generated using simple screen capture tools. The resulting raw images (PNGs) are then processed using a set of very simple Photoshop macros. These macros add a border to each screen shot and apply a standard drop shadow. Once the drop shadow has been applied, these macros then save a 72 dpi PNG image for the HTML version of the book in addition to a 150 dpi PDF image for the printed version of the book,
While Adobe Photoshop is a capable (and somewhat formidable) graphics manipulation tool, Sonatype is exploring alternatives to using this commercial utility in the content generation process. Alternatives currently being investigated are open source packages such as GIMP or systems which can rely on ImageMagick for scripted conversion of raw screen shots to multiple web and print image formats.
If you are interested in contributing, but you do not want to bother with the process of formatting images for both web and print, Sonatype welcomes contributions which include raw screen captures. We can take care of the formatting.
- Adobe Illustrator
- The book cover, the promotional material insert, and the print binder for Lulu are all generated with Adobe Illustrator. Adobe Illustrator can open and edit PDFs natively, and can be used to generate the static PDFs which are concatenated together to produce the final book output.
