Acknowledgements
The production of a book is always teamwork, but the merits (or the blame) mostly go to the author whose name happens to be on the cover. So, the following paragraphs not only express my deep-felt gratitude toward all the people that helped to bring this book into the world, but also serve the purpose of self-protection.
In particular, if you are feeling uncomfortable with the book’s content, don’t blame me; blame the reviewers, Daniel Krech and Dave Hollander. Personally, I think they did a wonderful job and really helped to bring the book into shape. Especially enjoyable were my discussions with Dave about the intricacies of the XML Schema type system and the Unique Particle Attribution. There were also two anonymous reviewers who preferred to remain in the dark—probably for good reasons. So, this is also in honor of the Unknown Reviewer.
The next ones to blame are the people at Morgan Kaufmann Publishers and dpunkt.verlag for giving me the opportunity to publish this work. Maybe they already regret it. Thanks go especially to Tim Cox and Stacie Pierce from Morgan Kaufmann, who patiently helped me through the materialization and publication of the book, and to René Schönfeldt from dpunkt. Production was managed at Morgan Kaufmann by Howard Severson initially, then later in the process by Kevin Sullivan, who took over from an already exhausted Howard.
Copyediting and proofreading were done by Judith Brown and Jennifer McClain, respectively. They are the ones to blame for any problems with grammar and spelling. Authors are never responsible for these sorts of problems. They can adopt a rather liberal attitude to grammar and orthography. The copyeditors and proofreaders have to do all the hard work. I think they deserve a big hand.
If you dislike the page layout, blame goes to the interior designer, Mark Ong at Side by Side Studios. I, in fact, like it a lot. My first reaction to the finished proofs was, “Wow, this really looks nice!” So, a big hand for Mark, and for Bill Turner at TBH Typecast, who did the typesetting. Thanks for that, Bill.
Finally, big thanks—I think from all of us—go to you, the reader. (If you acquired this book by unlawful means, ignore this and don’t read on.) By buying this book, you made this production possible. And despite all the electronic gadgets I own, I still like making books.