Jython Book - Working with the Sources

The open source version of 'The Definitive Guide to Jython' (aka: Jython book) is available online, both in restructuredText format and HTML via Sphinx. Apress was good enough to send me the final versions for all of our chapters and appendicies in MS-Word format. It is my task to convert them from MS Word format into restructuredText...which is a slow and sometimes painful process.

Overview of Conversion Process

1) Open the MS-Word document in Open Office (my preference) and remove headers and footers from each page

2) Save the document in open office format

3) Try to apply the apress_odt_to_rst.py script that was donated by James Gardner. If that doesn't work, then save document in HTML format and use pandoc to convert.

Command: pandoc -t rst filename.htm > filename.rst

4) Manually parse through each rst file and repair issues (and there are usually a lot...especially with code markup and tables)

Interested in building the sources?

If you are interested in building the sources, you can check the out from bitbucket.org at the following link: http://bitbucket.org/javajuneau/jythonbook/ and then build them using Sphinx

View the Open Source Book

If you'd like to simply view the open source book, it can be found at http://jythonbook.com in Sphinx format. We of course recommend that you purchase a copy of the book from Apress to keep handy as well so that you can mark it up, make notes, etc. However, the open source version will be continually updated and it will be great for using as a quick reference while online.

The Definitive Guide to Jython Is Published

The Definitive Guide to Jython: Python for the Java Platform has been published. This is a work in which five authors: Jim Baker, Victor Ng, Leo Soto, Frank Wierzbicki, and myself, began to author early in 2009. The book covers much detail on the Jython language and it's usage. It was a much needed addition to the library of Jython books that are available today as this book focuses on Jython 2.5.1...the most current release to-date. Many methodologies that hadn't been formally documented previously, such as the object factory pattern, with-statement, django and jython, and concurrency, have been documented in detail in this text.

If you are interested in developing with Jython, I recommend you take a look at this book today. There is also an online open source version of the book that can be found at http://jythonbook.com, but all of it's contents have not yet been updated to include finalized versions of all chapters. I am working on converting the .doc formatted final versions into restructured text at this time, but it is a lengthy process.

Thanks to all of my fellow authors and to the team at Apress for all of their hard work!