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 on the cover of Learning Python is a wood rat ( Neotoma, family Muridae). The wood rat lives in a wide range of living conditions (mostly rocky, scrub, and desert areas) over much of North and Central America, generally at some distance from humans, though they occasionally damage some crops. They are good climbers, nesting in trees or bushes up to six meters off the ground; some species burrow underground or in rock crevices or inhabit other species' abandoned holes.

These greyish-beige, medium-sized rodents are the original pack rats: they carry anything and everything into their homes, whether or not it's needed, and are especially attracted to shiny objects such as tin cans, glass, and silverware.

Mary Anne Weeks Mayo was the production editor and copyeditor of Learning Python; Sheryl Avruch was the production manager; Jane Ellin, Melanie Wang, and Clairemarie Fisher O'Leary provided quality control. Robert Romano created the illustrations using Adobe Photoshop 4 and Macromedia FreeHand 7. Mike Sierra provided FrameMaker technical support. Ruth Rautenberg wrote the index, with input from Seth Maislin.

Edie Freedman designed the cover of this book, using a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover layout was produced with Quark XPress 3.32 using the ITC Garamond font.

The inside layout was designed by Alicia Cech and implemented in FrameMaker 5.5 by Mike Sierra. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book. This colophon was written by Nancy Kotary.