[Coco] CoCoCoding

[Aaron Wolfe]

Over the past year I've been learning how to write software on the
CoCo.  I've gathered lots of manuals and books from various sources
online.  I've found it frustrating to search due to the many possible
locations, seeing multiple versions of the same document, guessing
what something is from an FTP filename, etc.   Some of the scans are
in pretty bad shape too.  I don't want to sound like I'm complaining,
I do greatly appreciate all the work that has gone into making these
resources available.

One of my favorite sources for more modern programming information is
O'Reilly's Safari book service.  This is a subscription based web site
that contains the full text of thousands of technical books.  Having a
massive library available to you wherever you are is quite a luxury,
but there aren't any CoCo books on Safari.  I've been building my own
CoCo library as I explore different sides of our favorite computer,
and I decided to see if I could create something similar to Safari for
these books.

The result is http://cococoding.aaronwolfe.com

This site uses Google Docs to present a library of PDF documents.
These are files I've gathered from places like the excellent malted
media FTP site.  The difference is that I've organized them to (I
hope) have only the most current version.  I've added a short
description to each file, similar to how BBSes used to present file
areas.  I've also optimized each PDF for readability and file size.
Most I've run through Clearscan OCR which makes them easier to read
and allows full text searching.  Google Docs allows you to read and
search them online without downloading, although you can still
download them if you prefer.  The biggest thing I miss reading online
is that Google Docs doesn't seem to be able to show the indexes.

I have some ideas about other resources that could be gathered to help
the uninitiated (or the forgetful :).  I'll see if this is of use to
anyone and maybe explore adding more.  Hope the site is useful to
someone, and I'm open to suggestions or criticism.

-Aaron