Reviewing in paper
As part of writing Beginning Rails 3, I am reviewing Beginning Rails to identify areas that we need to improve, as well as the pieces that will need major rewriting due to changes in Rails, or just need changes due to a slightly different direction we want to take with the book. The main tool I’m using for the review is a red pen.

Being a software guy and trying to do every possible task in front of the computer, I did start some of the reviewing/rewriting work going over the chapters in Word format - yes, Apress uses a Word template
- but I felt that I was being very unproductive, not as connected to the reader as I should be. I moved to reading the actual book and highlighting the changes I want to go over, which makes the experience so much closer to the end user, it’s so much easier to move between pages within each chapter I am working on. There is something about having the physical book in hands that makes reading more enjoyable and helps me work and see the end result so much clearer; so, I’ll very likely have a heavily marked copy of the Beginning Rails in a few weeks. I was never a big fan of reading on a computer screen for a long period of time, and never really wanted to have most of the books I own in digital format, books feel a lot better in a non-digital format.






