Chris: You're right. I thought identity maps were on by default, but apparently I'm wrong—they have to be enabled, and I hear that they'll be removed from Rails 4. So it's back to using the instance variable... Sigh

default_scope is problematic: see http://pragdave.blogs.pragprog.com/pragdave/2012/03/be-careful-using-default_scope-and-order.html

Greg: Nothing to do with top n. But the name "first" implies ordering where there is none. And in the case of "offset", there's genuine potential for incorrect results.

We decided to take the "code-as-text" approach several years ago now, so you won't see code images in our books. The current issue is what to do about wrapped code lines—still a challenge, given that we don't control the width of the device, but nowhere near as obnoxious as the initial problem with a lack of code font support in the readers.

“Dude, what you're doing is asking Amazon for a free ride” That would be true if the Kindle had a subsidized price of $99, and Amazon relied on revenue from future sales to make back the initial loss. But Kindles are expensive out of the box. At that price, I'd expect open access. I'd be happy to pay reasonable network fees, but these charges seem to be designed to be punitive.

The problem with using a non-fixed width font is that the Kindle only has its serif font and a fixed font: if I could use a decent sans, I'd jump at it. The sad thing is that it's relatively easy to hack a Kindle and substitute your own fonts. I wish Amazon gave us this option officially, so then we could recommend switching to a narrower font for code.

The problem with turning the PickAxe into an eBook is one of technologies used. Our other books are authored in our own markup system, and they're amenable to a systematic conversion process. The PickAxe predates these books, and is written using a very involved toolchain based on TeX. It makes significant use of TeX magic, and converting the 960 pages into the xml needed to create the eBooks would be a horrendous job.

We can't make it switch to landscape, only the user can. And we can't highlight lines dynamically. The line numbers are there because the text references them. It's easy to take out, but I'd rather find a visual way of decluttering (I wanted to invert the colors and make a solid margin, but can't find a way to do that on the Kindle)