A book by Adam Mechtley & Ryan Trowbridge, with contributions from Seth Gibson and Kristine Middlemiss
Due to a miscommunication between Elsevier Press and the Python Software Foundation, the first printing of this title used an unauthorized modification of the trademarked Python logo. We apologize to the PSF for this, and they have been understanding of our in-press status; in the 2nd and subsequent printing of this title, we shall use a cover design that has been approved as non-dilutive by the Python Software Foundation.
We’ve received notification that the indentation problems on the Kindle version should now be fixed, which seems to be reflected in the Kindle preview on Amazon. Please feel free to share your experiences reading the Kindle version with us.
Not sure about how extensive the indentation problems were in the previous version of this book, but the current one (just purchased after seeing this post) still looks strange on a kindle.
1) The overall font size is one level too high. I had to go into the settings to reduce it, which I haven’t had to do with any other books.
2) Regarding the actual code, it seems that the combination of small screen size and word wrap is breaking up the formatting. Would it be possible to reduce the font size in order to have it fit? Even if it were harder to read, at least everything would be more likely in place.
Please let me know if and when an update is available.
Thanks,
Marc
Also.. what’s up with the trailing semicolons on non-MEL code?
Hi Marc,
Thanks for your feedback! I’ll pass it along. In the Introduction chapter, we actually discussed part of the problem is we were given no guarantees of how the text would display on different e-reader hardware. As such, we included the semicolons in the Python code (ugly, but still syntactically allowable) in order to indicate where actual line endings need to occur in cases where the text wraps incorrectly.
I got mine from the amazon.co.uk store back when it was released.
I re-downloaded it yesterday and the indentation is still the same.
Was it only updated for the amazon.com kindle market? If you have any further information about the update policy of amazon, please let me know, as far as I see there are no visible informations about the version.
Thanks for the info Sascha. When I look at the Kindle Preview in my browser on amazon.co.uk, it looks correct (like the one available on amazon.com, and, respectively, like the sample I download to my iPad from amazon.com). That said, the multi-line code samples appearing in the preview are all quite short. It is possible that much longer code samples look incorrect, however, if they wrap onto additional lines. If that’s the case, I unfortunately don’t know that there’s anything we can do about it, which is why, as we mention in the intro, we include the semicolons in the printed code samples. Can you take a look at the Kindle preview available for download and compare its code samples to those in the full copy you have? Do those ones match indentation?
I actually looked up the while loop that you have on page 17 to make sure of this.
On amazon.com, the preview is correct with indenting the loop.
On my iPad, as well as desktop’s Kindle, there is no change in indentation with either orientation of the device.
I have a screenshot of the the iPad’s display of page 17 if you would like it (there was no where to attach a picture) .
I also just re downloaded my copy of the book before looking at this right now.
Hi Travis. Are you saying that the preview looks right (on p. 17) when you view it in your web browser, or when you download it to your device and read it with the Kindle app? I’m just wanting to clarify if the copy that does not look right on your device is the preview or the actual full book. When I tested the preview in the Kindle app on my iPad, it looks correct. If what you’re looking at (and seeing indentation problems on) is the actual full book, then I’m wondering if this may be a problem with how Amazon makes updates available to customers who have already purchased and downloaded a version of the book. If that is the case, then I will try to track down someone at Focal Press to see what can be done. (May take awhile because they are in the middle of being acquired by a new parent company.)
Sorry for the long delay. It is when I am viewing it both on my device (iPad) and my kindle application on my desktop. This is for the full book.
I had bought the book a while ago, so it might be a problem with me trying to download an older version?
Amazon kindly updated the kindle version for me today. Nice to see the code the way it should look now.
Great! This is wonderful news. Thanks for sharing.