Re: [Boost-users] [serialization]

On 11/12/05 12:21 PM, "David Abrahams" wrote:

Nigel Rantor writes:

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David Abrahams wrote:

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Nigel Rantor writes: [SNIP]

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Any idea regarding the extreme difference in price of them? ["them" is the C++ standard as ANSI's book v. ANSI's PDF v. Wiley's book]

It costs a lot more to print a book than to duplicate a PDF?

No, one comes either as a book for $175 OR as a PDF for $18. The other is only available as a book for £34.00.

Oh, AFAIK the $175 is due to the fact that ANSI can't publish books efficiently and it uses the purchase of hardcover standards to keep the organization running.

Worse, I think the _authors_ also have to pay for the privilege to create standards! Only the publishers-in-the-middle ANSI & ISO get any money. Both readers and writers have to spend it. (Also, PDFs made from a scanning of a book form keep the original price [i.e. expensive, crappy-looking, and unusable]. So the early C standard PDFs were really expensive, until the 1999 version was written electronically. Then the price lowered to the similarly-created C++ standard's price.)

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I was wondering why/how they can get away with $175...

The book from Wiley only came out a year or two ago; for a while the ANSI document was the only choice. [TRUNCATE]

-- Daryle Walker Mac, Internet, and Video Game Junkie darylew AT hotmail DOT com