Tech books size
Let’s take a random tech book from my bookshelf. “Thinking in C++” by Bruce Eckel, Polish edition published by Helion.
This is a great book, one of the best tech books I have ever read. But there is one problem with it. I found the same issue with most of the books printed in the last 25 years or so: it is the size, or its dimensions, to be more precise.
Let’s open our book on one of the first pages. It is trying to close instantly.
You see what I mean? I want to try out something, rewrite a code sample, and it is constantly closing. The book dimensions, 170 x 235 millimetres in this example, makes this book very thick. The way how the pages are glued makes it constantly trying to close.
Let’s have a look at the tech books and manuals back in the day. It is so easy to open it at any page, read it, follow it step by step.
Image from: https://livemorelightly.com/Tech/2019/04/vintage-ibm-convertible-computer/
Let’s have a look at the other example.
Image from: https://livemorelightly.com/Tech/2019/04/vintage-ibm-convertible-computer/
I remember some DB2 manuals in the exact same format. All the code examples and images in this book were easy to read. It was laying flat on the desk. Nothing was closing on me at random places.
A4 to rule them all
I personally think, the best size for all the printed tech books and manuals would be size A4: 210 x 297 millimetres (or 8.27 x 11.69 inches). There should be enough blank space on the page margin to make some notes.
Maybe it will not look good on the bookshelf, but isn’t books should be good to read, not good to look at them?