newly formatted, expanded MARK book now online...

[egc]

Phase I of reformatting/rewriting the MARK book is now complete. Everything is online at

http://www.phidot.org/software/mark/docs/book/

These online versions are now the canonical versions of everything. For those of you who haven't updated chapters in a while, I suggest (quite simply) that you toss out everything you have, and simply download the entire book as a single file. In fact, even if you have been updating, the formatting is now so different, downloading the entire book is, at this point, probably the way to go. You'll also want to grab the newly updated markdata.zip file with sample data files in it.

Some things about the revision:

1. bowing to popular request, pagination is done within chapter - so, each chapter begins with page 1. This is to simplify handling updates to individual chapters in future.

2. the PDF files are bigger than with the old version - in part, this reflects increased length, but also, higher resolution, larger images in general, and change in typeface to improve legibility

3. the book is perpetually in beta. It is never finished. Phase II will add chapters on close estimators, robust design, and occupancy, at least. Sometime by Xmas, if not sooner.

4. the number of typographical errors has been reduced from previous version - but is never 0. If you find something, feel free to send me an email.

5. indexing - I'm fooling with creating an index for the book. Its somewhat of a pain to create (especially given within-chapter pagination), but I'll eventually get there. The book does, however, have a table of contents which together with the rudimentary index rudimentary in its current form) is pretty useful for navigating. However, the utility of both the TOC and the index is moot for new users - you need neither, since what you should do is go through the book, each chapter in turn.

Have fun...

[egc]

To simplify keeping track of which chapters I've tweaked, simply compare the date-stamp of the version you have (lower right-hand corner of the first page of each chapter), against the date-stamp of the version you find online. Generally, I'll post some sort of announcement when chapters are changed, but when in doubt, check the date-stamp, as described.

Also, if I've tweaked a particular chapter then

1) I *may* have also tweaked the index, which can be dowloaded as a separate file

and

2) I will have updated the *entire-book-as-a-single-PDF* file also.