Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects.
The animals on the cover of Perl and LWP are blesboks. Blesboks are African antelopes related to the hartebeest. These grazing animals, native to Africa's grasslands are extinct in the wild but preserved in farms and parks.
Blesboks have slender, horselike bodies that are shorter than four feet at the shoulder. They are deep red, with white patches on their faces and rumps. A white blaze extends from between a blesbok's horns to the end of its nose, broken only by a brown band above the eyes. The blesbok's horns sweep back, up, and inward. Both male and female blesboks have horns, though the males' are thicker.
Blesboks are diurnal, most active in the morning and evening. They sleep in the shade during the hottest part of the day, as they are very susceptible to the heat. They travel from place to place in long single-file lines, leaving distinct paths. Their life span is about 13 years.
Linley Dolby was the production editor and copyeditor for Perl and LWP, and Sarah Sherman was the proofreader. Rachel Wheeler and Claire Cloutier provided quality control. Johnna VanHoose Dinse wrote the index. Emily Quill provided production support.
Emma Colby designed the cover of this book, based on a series design by Edie Freedman. The cover image is a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. Emma Colby produced the cover layout with QuarkXPress 4.1 using Adobe's ITC Garamond font.
This colophon was written by Linley Dolby.
Then Sean Burke did lots of HTML+CSS retooling, and copy-reëditing, all these years later.