book titles

from Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003)

book titles


   There is a tradition in hackerdom of informally tagging important
   textbooks and standards documents with the dominant color of their
   covers or with some other conspicuous feature of the cover. Many of
   these are described in this lexicon under their own entries. See
   {Aluminum Book}, {Camel Book}, {Cinderella Book}, {daemon book},
   {Dragon Book}, {Orange Book}, {Purple Book}, {Wizard Book}, and
   {bible}; see also {rainbow series}. Since about 1993 this tradition
   has gotten a boost from the popular O'Reilly and Associates line of
   technical books, which usually feature some kind of exotic animal on
   the cover and are often called by the name of that animal.

from The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)

book titles

   <publication> There is a tradition in hackerdom of informally
   tagging important textbooks and standards documents with the
   dominant colour of their covers or with some other conspicuous
   feature of the cover.  Many of these are described in {this
   dictionary} under their own entries.  See {Aluminum Book},
   {Blue Book}, {Cinderella Book}, {Devil Book}, {Dragon Book},
   {Green Book}, {Orange Book}, {Pink-Shirt Book}, {Purple Book},
   {Red Book}, {Silver Book}, {White Book}, {Wizard Book},
   {Yellow Book}, {bible}, {rainbow series}.

   [{Jargon File}]

   (1996-12-03)