Two new Ruby/Rails books in beta form

O’Reilly and Associates have started a new program, similar to the [Pragmatic Programmers](http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/) program, called [Rough Cuts](http://www.oreilly.com/roughcuts/).

> Rough Cuts is a new service from Safari Books Online that gives you early access to content on cutting-edge technologies — before it’s published. It lets you literally read the book as it is being written. The beta version of the Rough Cuts service is debuting in January 2006, with four works-in-progress from O’Reilly Media. We’ll be adding features and titles throughout the year.

Basically, while a book is being written, you have online and PDF access to the rough drafts. It worked quite well for the Pragmatic Programmers and their [Agile Web Development with Rails](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/097669400X/billturner/ref=nosim) book (I subscribed to the PDF +book deal).

The reason this new O’Reilly program is good for Rails developers is because two of the books in this new program are Ruby or Rails books. First is a general Ruby book: [Ruby Cookbook](http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/rubyckbk/) by Leonard Richardson and Lucas Carlson. The second is [Ruby on Rails: Up and Running](http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/rubyrails/) by Bruce A. Tate and Curt Hibbs. I’m not sure at what stage these “Rough Cuts” of the books are at, but if it works at all like the PP program, it’s a pretty good deal.