This Week in "Windows 8.1 Field Guide": Signing Off on the Final Manuscript

Last week, I wrote that I expected to finish the initial 1.0 release of "Windows 8.1 Field Guide" this past week. A ton of edits later, and I think we're there.

Please buy the book.

Remember, we're charging just $2 for Windows 8.1 Field Guide, and you can contribute in other ways as well. Check out my earlier post Buy Windows 8.1 Book! or the Windows 8.1 Book web site for the details.

In the past, I've provided links to my weekly posts on the Windows 8.1 Field Guide web site. This time around, I'll simply repeat what I've posted most recently on that site: We're basically done.

OK, this could be it

With the understanding that Windows 8.1 Field Guide will never really be completed, we still need to sign off on a release that we can call the initial, 1.0, release. This could be it.

We started work on this book about 6 months ago. Since then, I've posted:

- Over 100 updates to various chapter documents (it's hard to count this one)

- 90 updates to the full book document

- 111 blog posts (including this one) describing these updates plus some other related topics

That's a lot of writing. The book is 582 pages long, but it's really less than that, probably 555 pages or whatever, without all the contents stuff. It's about 104,000 words in all. And a ton of shots, of course. I do like to be visual.

More to the point, it was a lot of work. But it's winding down.

Anyway. Here's what we could "sign off on" as the 1.0 release barring any major issues. This is the version we'll push out to Amazon Kindle and other e-book platforms. More on that when we know more. But once 1.0 does happen, we'll look at updating the book. We have a list of stuff we'd like to add, and of course many of you have written in with some ideas too. So that will be the focus after we get this milestone out of the way.

Feedback is always appreciated. Never more so than now.

One more thing

A number of readers have noted that the logo and design for the book cover has a distinctly "Indiana Jones" vibe to it. Right! Most people seem to like it, and it's the result of some fun interplay with Martin McClean, who made the design happen. He also sent the following fun image over after someone complained that book doesn't have an "Indiana Paul" graphic. I won't be including this in the book, but Martin complied. :)