Missing Section(s) in iBook and Amateurish Editing
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By Flash Sheridan
It may seem harsh to condemn a book whose content is free in most places (though not the iBooks Store) as amateurish, but many fully open-source projects maintain a high degree of professionalism. This is not one of them. At least one section, entitled Hydrocarbon Rings, is completely hidden in the iBooks version (defect ID 13191). The text is present somewhere in the file, as a search for “aliphatic” will reveal its initial definition, which is not visible in the text. I suspect there may be other missing sections, as I merely chanced to discover this one, but I have not done a systematic search. Neither, demonstrably, have the editors.
To their credit, there is an open errata page, which I suggest perusing before deciding on whether to use this textbook, and especially on whether to use this edition or to wait for corrections to be made. More subjectively, on topics I have read about previously, the exposition here is generally less clear and lacking in polish; on topics which are new to me, the exposition is often hard to follow, and once I understand the material, seems unnecessarily unclear.
