I think it's definitely the right time for a book about Fantom... is there something already planned?

Cool idea. I wonder if there are enough active people here to have each do one or more chapters (as they feel up to explaining a particular topic). Someone would have to be "final editor" (ideally, someone with actual english skills :-) to copy-edit it so it sounds like one voice.

I would recommend a format like Learn You Some Erlang or Learn You A Haskell for any kind of such book. The web sites in question are both very popular in their community (and usually the ones newcomers are pointed to), light on the reading, heavy on the content and concepts and both are being published. (LYAH has been published, in fact, and LYSE is in the editing stage and should be released in autumn of this year.)

Learn You A Haskell For Great Good is indeed fantastic, and should be the guide for anyone wanting to write a beginner's introductory text on a language. I'm glad I went through it, even though I don't use Haskell.

I think this comment (in an Amazon review) says it best:

I was learning Haskell on the online version of this book while the last several chapters were being written. On the Haskell IRC channel, you could tell when a chapter went up because all of a sudden, people stopped asking questions about monads, or whatever the latest chapter was about.

Wow.

This raises an interesting question of "What should the Fantom book be about?"

Should it be a "mere" beginner's introduction, or a "mere" reference book?

I'd recommend the Ruby Pickaxe book for an example of a book that does a very good job of doing both, but it's huge.

Perhaps a Kernighan and Ritchie on C style slim cookbook/reference first, then a LYAH-style introductory book as a separate project.

There are three layers of documentation, in general:

• tutorial;
• guide (or "cookbook");
• reference.

IMO reference documentation for Fantom is fine (not great, but fine) provided you actually know what the things you're are called (and thus know where in the docs to find them).

A K&R style slim guidebook could be very nice, yes, but… how many Ks or Rs do we have in our community? I know I can't write beautifully elegant and concise text like K&R at this point. Is there anybody out there who feels up to the task?

The LYAH/LYSE approach to things has several advantages over writing a K&R-style book:

1. The picaresque style lends itself well to serial publication. (This is, indeed, how both LYAH and LYSE got presented and caught the attention of a dead tree publisher.)
2. Having semi-independent chapters and sections would allow parallel writing with experts in each domain contributing raw materials (although there would have to be one overarching writer to tie it all together into a common voice).
3. It takes far less skill to write a LYAH/LYSE-style book than it does to write K&R-for-Fantom.

Okay, so, what first? I'm thinking:

1. Set up a wiki somewhere
2. Decide on a table of contents to a pretty detailed level.

I'm guessing that having a wiki page per TOC entry (or sub-entry) "pre-built" will let people come in, quickly write a small section, and feel like they've really done something.

I'll go through the Ruby Pickaxe book in a few days and come up with a starter TOC if no one else does one.

1. Set up a wiki somewhere

May I suggest Wikibooks? The Computer programming languages section does not yet include a book on Fantom (or Fan).

2. Decide on a table of contents to a pretty detailed level.

I'm guessing that having a wiki page per TOC entry (or sub-entry) "pre-built" will let people come in, quickly write a small section, and feel like they've really done something.

The Wikibooks help on starting a book agrees:

To help others contribute to a new book, it helps very much to define and publish the concept, layout and scope of the book right from the beginning.

the idea stems from the simple observation that people generally appreciate the utility of material coming from various sources and books are very important in this... Go language, for example, is benefiting a lot of different books that were published. Wikibooks may be a good idea....

.

When do you start? ;-)