Colophon

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 animal featured on the cover of Perl Cookbook, Second Edition is a bighorn sheep. Bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) are wild sheep noted, not surprisingly, for their large, curved horns. Male bighorns grow to approximately 5 feet long and 40 inches tall to the shoulder and weigh up to 350 pounds. Their horns measure up to 18 inches in circumference and 4 feet long and can weigh up to 30 pounds. Despite their bulk, bighorns are adept at negotiating mountainous terrains. With their sharp, cloven hooves they can walk on ledges as thin as two inches. They have excellent eyesight that enables them to locate footholds and to accurately judge distances between ledges. They can jump as far as 20 feet from ledge to ledge.

Competition for ewes is intense and often leads to fierce battles that can continue for a full day. During the battle two rams race at each other at speeds of up to 20 miles an hour, clashing their horns together. The skull of the bighorn sheep is double-layered to provide protection from these blows. Horn size is a significant factor in determining rank, and rams will only fight other rams with an equivalently sized horn. Mature males usually stay apart from the females and young. In these "bachelor flocks" the lower-ranking males often play the part of ewes and behave in a submissive manner toward the dominant males. The dominant male, in turn, behaves like a courting ram and mounts the lower-ranking male. This behavior is believed to enable the rams to live together without rank disputes that might otherwise drive the lower-ranking males out of the flock.

Bighorns can be found in the Rocky Mountains from Canada to Colorado and in the desert from California to west Texas and Mexico. They are threatened with extinction as a result of disease, habitat reduction, and hunting.

Genevieve d'Entremont was the production editor and copyeditor for Perl Cookbook, Second Edition. Phil Dangler, Emily Quill, Matt Hutchinson, and Colleen Gorman provided quality control. Mary Agner and Jamie Peppard provided production assistance. Nancy Crumpton wrote the index.

Edie Freedman designed the cover of this book, using 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.

David Futato designed the interior layout. This book was converted by Julie Hawks and Andrew Savikas from Pod to FrameMaker 5.5.6 with a format conversion tool created by Erik Ray, Jason McIntosh, Neil Walls, and Mike Sierra that uses Perl and XML technologies. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont's TheSans Mono Condensed. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano and Jessamyn Read using Macromedia FreeHand 9 and Adobe Photoshop 6. The warning icon was drawn by Christopher Bing. This colophon was written by Clairemarie Fisher O'Leary.