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Happy the man, and happy he alone
Yesterday, I wanted a book on OpenGL ES (if that means nothing to you, then read it as "specific technical area relating to computer graphics"). Being the sort of person who would, if the option is available, rather buy a real book from a real bookshop than click buttons on Amazon I trotted into town. Oxford has two reasonable academic bookshops so I thought I'd be in with a chance.
I browsed around in Blackwells' terrifying Norrington Room, found a book about OpenGL (read: related area, but not quite right) and went over to the enquiry desk. The lady behind it was on the phone. She looked up at me; not wanting to menace, I stood back a little and gazed about while I waited. After a few minutes I look at her more directly, when I eventually caught her eye she said to her phone "Oh, I'll have to go, I have a customer."
She searched for OpenGL ES for me. She said there were no books on it. This surprised me. She told me she'd tried searching for the letters G, L etc independently, which somewhat confused me. However, there were no books to be had (unless I wanted a book on "GLI" - having no idea what she was talking about I decided I probably didn't), and I went away. I've always had excellent service from Blackwells before, and she somewhat disappointed me.
I went to Borders. They've moved their computing section down into the basement. Where Blackwells had had little helpful labels on their shelves to tell you where the different sections (say, "Graphics", or "Oracle") began, Borders just had shelves. With books on them. Wandering around, I completely failed to discern what their filing system was. It certainly didn't seem to be by topic. Books huddled together in little clumps trying to look coherent, but failing. Perl reference books nestled up to Dreamweaver for Dummies. I found books about Ruby on each of the four shelving units, some in the most unlikely company. I couldn't find anything that vaguely resembled a graphics section.
Over at Enquiries, I typed "Open GL ES" into the search terminal. No results. The girl behind the desk advised me that her terminal was better and searched for me. Yup, one book, OpenGL ES for Game Development. Now, game development's not really my thing, but I figured I'd like to look at the book to see how useful I thought it'd be. We walked over to the shelves, and it became increasingly apparent that the enquiry person had no more idea than I had where the actual book might be found.
I pointed out the lack of system. She told me that she was currently refusing to work in the basement for more than an hour as the aircon was broken, and thus she wasn't prepared to sort out the filing of the computer section[*]. She advised me to look on the internet and buy it there "from a dedicated computer bookshop". I asked if there was any logic to the books at all, so I could look in approximately the right area.
"Oh yes, it's mostly Microsoft over there, while this bit's more creative stuff. Like Photoshop."
"What I'm after is probably more likely to be with things like programming languages.[**]"
"Well, games programming will be in creative stuff. There's Dreamweaver."
At this point, I realised she wasn't going to be any help at all. I appreciate that to a lot of people "computer books" are an amorphous blob, and the categories maybe don't make a lot of sense. So I said great, thanks, I'll just have a hunt about myself.
She hung about, pointing out arbitrary books "There's MIDI. As soon as they fix the aircon I'll sort their computer books out, but not before". Eventually she left me in peace, I hunted for a while, then gave up and came home to Amazon.
It seems that - contrary to what I'd been told - there aren't a few books on OpenGL ES. There is currently just one, as mentioned above. A quick online search on Blackwells' network revealed it as well. Amazon let me flick through an electronic copy, and sold me a second-hand one for a tenner.
Real bookshops: nil. Amazon: one. I realise that displaying books to the public makes them harder to find than in Amazon's massive warehouses, but really... rubbish customer service just doesn't help.
[*] She had a point - it was pretty hot. I just don't think this is an appropriate thing to say to a customer.
[**] No, this isn't really true. But when compared to things like M$ and Photoshop it was a good first level approximation.
I browsed around in Blackwells' terrifying Norrington Room, found a book about OpenGL (read: related area, but not quite right) and went over to the enquiry desk. The lady behind it was on the phone. She looked up at me; not wanting to menace, I stood back a little and gazed about while I waited. After a few minutes I look at her more directly, when I eventually caught her eye she said to her phone "Oh, I'll have to go, I have a customer."
She searched for OpenGL ES for me. She said there were no books on it. This surprised me. She told me she'd tried searching for the letters G, L etc independently, which somewhat confused me. However, there were no books to be had (unless I wanted a book on "GLI" - having no idea what she was talking about I decided I probably didn't), and I went away. I've always had excellent service from Blackwells before, and she somewhat disappointed me.
I went to Borders. They've moved their computing section down into the basement. Where Blackwells had had little helpful labels on their shelves to tell you where the different sections (say, "Graphics", or "Oracle") began, Borders just had shelves. With books on them. Wandering around, I completely failed to discern what their filing system was. It certainly didn't seem to be by topic. Books huddled together in little clumps trying to look coherent, but failing. Perl reference books nestled up to Dreamweaver for Dummies. I found books about Ruby on each of the four shelving units, some in the most unlikely company. I couldn't find anything that vaguely resembled a graphics section.
Over at Enquiries, I typed "Open GL ES" into the search terminal. No results. The girl behind the desk advised me that her terminal was better and searched for me. Yup, one book, OpenGL ES for Game Development. Now, game development's not really my thing, but I figured I'd like to look at the book to see how useful I thought it'd be. We walked over to the shelves, and it became increasingly apparent that the enquiry person had no more idea than I had where the actual book might be found.
I pointed out the lack of system. She told me that she was currently refusing to work in the basement for more than an hour as the aircon was broken, and thus she wasn't prepared to sort out the filing of the computer section[*]. She advised me to look on the internet and buy it there "from a dedicated computer bookshop". I asked if there was any logic to the books at all, so I could look in approximately the right area.
"Oh yes, it's mostly Microsoft over there, while this bit's more creative stuff. Like Photoshop."
"What I'm after is probably more likely to be with things like programming languages.[**]"
"Well, games programming will be in creative stuff. There's Dreamweaver."
At this point, I realised she wasn't going to be any help at all. I appreciate that to a lot of people "computer books" are an amorphous blob, and the categories maybe don't make a lot of sense. So I said great, thanks, I'll just have a hunt about myself.
She hung about, pointing out arbitrary books "There's MIDI. As soon as they fix the aircon I'll sort their computer books out, but not before". Eventually she left me in peace, I hunted for a while, then gave up and came home to Amazon.
It seems that - contrary to what I'd been told - there aren't a few books on OpenGL ES. There is currently just one, as mentioned above. A quick online search on Blackwells' network revealed it as well. Amazon let me flick through an electronic copy, and sold me a second-hand one for a tenner.
Real bookshops: nil. Amazon: one. I realise that displaying books to the public makes them harder to find than in Amazon's massive warehouses, but really... rubbish customer service just doesn't help.
[*] She had a point - it was pretty hot. I just don't think this is an appropriate thing to say to a customer.
[**] No, this isn't really true. But when compared to things like M$ and Photoshop it was a good first level approximation.
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Yes. Computing was placed in the 000s (Generalities) rather than the 600s (Technology), which puts computing books in with encyclopedias and dictionaries. As computing becomes a way of life rather than a tool, mind you, I wonder if this was so foolish ... (I think the detailed classification works reasonably well, though programming languages are simply listed alphabetically.)
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To answer
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Even my Dragon 32 had "renum".
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