hello all,

the editor contacted me about the V2 of the french assembly langage book i've made in 2011.

i'd like to discuss here about what is really worth to write a new version in french.
and what can justify a new book in french where everybody in the world of programming uses the english langage.

maybe i can improve the adaptation and translation of manuals and instruction sets.

a guide for debug using asm symbols...

a multilangage book also, in italian, german, spanish, ....

let me know what you think about it...

I personally like to see more stuff in other languages. Broaden the appeal.

But I don't read French, so perhaps I am not really qualified to opine on it.

for the moment, my idea is to write about boot, os theory, application, librairies and give practical examples and exercises.
also, i'd like a reference about structures, libs, instruction sets, calling conventions and interface with hll.

the current project is like that:


ASMx86(++)


the number of pages is just an estimation...

of course, the content of this sumary is subject to evolve.

i'd like to reference the interrupts, the uefi ,and so on.

this job will force me to read, code and try a lot of stuff but i think it would be very cool.
and if i make a sort of free version in paralel, like a very personnal content, with my own style, i'll have fun to do it.

then feel free to submit ehancements of the summary cause i'm sure i miss a lot of awsome things, and talks about useless stuff.

You must be very knowledgeable to cover all the topics in your book.

From my experience, just describing basic booting and memory management plus a little bit of further possible architectural decisions for an MS-DOS-like OS is around 120 pages, if you’re willing to explain anything with examples, not just copy-and-paste general information from other sources. And all that is for students who already have experience writing programs in FASM, so I had no need to describe x86 instruction set, FASM-specific stuff, etc.

yes, i'll try to make it convenient and maybe i will get my os functionnal in paralell to this book, in order to apply and try the knowledge i'll have to get to write it

Kolibri os, imho, a good example set|base
I wish you creative inspiration, health and good mood

the book is poorly paid. i'm between the willing to write it, overcome my limits and create something new....
and the fact it will just be like writing assembly for food...


what to do is my business, but not so... i want to make it good but the editor just want one more book to sell and earn money... lot of money...

then, i still ask myself why should i loose my time to give them money.$
they don't need this money, and what they got with previous book was ridiculous. my part was like just a coffee...

i dislike this mind and prefer do things for free than do things for the glory, and the fortune of a businessman.

Getting paid for writing books is only the way to go if you are ready to write lies for bad guys and feel they’re going to give your a Nobel prize for that. In all other cases when people start writing books for money the result is cr*p as well, just in their particular sphere/topic.

A good book is written for fun and to share knowledge and experience. And sometimes it pays back. Sometimes.

the editor agree with you. that's why they ask people to work for nothing.

i think i'll dice my choice.

It’s not about editor, it’s about goals. If the primary goal is to earn money, it becomes a necessity to finish writing in particular time, which makes one make decisions on how to save some time when it comes close to the deadline. Even worse, choosing the topic of the book might become a problem: “I don’t have what to write but I have to since that’s what might give me some money”. No good book will appear later on, for sure.

OTOH, when one has an idea, clearly sees its proper implementation and does the work without serious time pressure, the result might be amazing (depends on the author’s skills in general, but in this case on the skills only). And having amazing result plus demand for such book results in people buying it.

Note also that producing a paper book is not cheap, starting from the materials and stuff, through the editors who must read the text looking for mistakes (and they also want to eat) straight to those who are responsible for making the book appear on the shelves. Thus, what the author earns is a very small piece of the pie. To get more the author should better be good at drawing (to make nice illustrations), typesetting (to make the text look good and be easy to read), printing (I mean, you’d better have offset printing device to make it cheaper), etc. Anyway, the idea of your book and how cool it is should be enough to have some profit on top of the costs spent to produce it.

true. the side project i'll make to illustrate the book deserve the effort. the OS would surelly start to be a true thing after that book. and the tools i'll have to use make sense in the way i want this to be.

just imagine if i can write arduino code using fasm, and load it in the devices from the os... would be very interresting.

the dice tend to tell me to write it.

i'll write this book..

maybe under the title, ASM CookBook

and talk mainly about real useage of asm in professional context.

What percent of this do you expect to focus on Professional application versus theory? Professional Assembly Language by Richard Blum was somewhat intended for Professionals but I think people writing drivers have to be way beyond that and people in FinTech for example, using older C/C++ systems (there are a lot of them) mostly would rely on the C interop sections and the theory, of course.

Also just a thought on the longterm benefits of this project: You could certainly make a website with source samples (if the publisher allows it) that people could download. The DirectX 11 learning book author Frank Luna has a website, you could probably put ads on it, I'd imagine.

i would like to write an english version. the editor says i have all rights on the non french versions if i make them
the site, examples and stuff are planned... then i just have to do it

I know only one book in French on the assembler published in 2011 whose examples of code are written for FASM. This book is fabulous. It was it who made me discover Fasm, that I have been using exclusively since.
A new version, more developed, would be highly appreciated, since even if we are all forced to use English to correspond, it is not the language best controlled by all, especially by me (isn't it?).

A book in other language is a good idea, but I think that perhaps it doesn't need to describe all the instructions the CPU has extensively. It's better to refer to manuals and specifications and only describe how to use them.

Also, I don't think x86 is the best architecture to describe. 8080 or Z80 is much easier to learn for instance.