About the Cover Illustration

The figure on the cover of Barcodes with iOS is captioned “Girl from Split, Croatia, Dalmatia.” The illustration is taken from the reproduction published in 2006 of a nineteenth-century collection of costumes and ethnographic descriptions entitled Dalmatia by Professor Frane Carrara (1812–1854), an archaeologist and historian, and the first director of the Museum of Antiquity in Split, Croatia. The illustrations were obtained from a helpful librarian at the Ethnographic Museum (formerly the Museum of Antiquity), itself situated in the Roman core of the medieval center of Split: the ruins of Emperor Diocletian’s retirement palace from around AD 304. The book includes finely colored illustrations of figures from different regions of Croatia, accompanied by descriptions of the costumes and of everyday life.

The girl on the cover is wearing a richly embroidered vest over a white linen shirt, and an embroidered apron over a long, colorfully striped skirt. She is holding a fan in her hand, and a kerchief on her head and coral beads around her neck complete the outfit. The elaborate and colorful embroidery on her costume is typical for this region of Croatia.

The author chose this illustration for the cover because the vertical lines on the girl’s skirt reminded him of a barcode pattern. That’s what happens when you research and write about barcodes for a prolonged period of time: you start seeing barcode patterns everywhere!

Dress codes have changed since the nineteenth century and the diversity by region, so rich at the time, has faded away. It is now hard to tell apart the inhabitants of different continents, let alone different towns or regions. Perhaps we have traded cultural diversity for a more varied personal life—certainly for a more varied and fast-paced technological life.

We at Manning celebrate the inventiveness, the initiative, and, yes, the fun of the computer business with book covers based on the rich diversity of regional life of two centuries ago, brought back to life by the pictures from this collection.