Colophon

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 Squid: The Definitive Guide is a giant squid (Architeuthis dux). Of the class Cephalopoda, which means "head foot ," the giant squid holds much fascination for humans , part of which has to do with the fact that it has never been observed alive in its natural habitat. Scientists have only been able to study specimens that have been caught or found washed up on beaches. This invertebrate can grow to 60 feet in length and weigh as much as a ton. It's a deep-sea dweller (660-2,300 feet) that is found throughout the world's oceans.

A giant squid consists of seven parts . Its head houses a complex brain. Its eyes are the largest in the animal kingdom-up to 10 inches in diameter. (Most deep-sea animals have very large eyes so they can gather the small amounts of light available in the depths of the ocean.) Its fins are relatively small and help it to balance and maneuver as it swims. Its main body is called a mantle: it's a muscular sac that contains most of the organ systems. Its eight arms are studded with two rows of suckers; it also has two much longer feeding tentacles, the ends of which also have suckers and are called clubs. Finally, its funnel is a multipurpose tube used to breathe, squirt ink, lay eggs, expel waste, and propel itself.

To eat, a giant squid captures its prey with its two long feeding tentacles. Holding the intended dinner with its shorter arms, its sharp horny beak cuts the food up, and a file-like radula sends it down the throat and esophagus ; the food then passes directly through the brain to the stomach. Scientists believe giant squid may be solitary hunters because no more than one has ever been caught in the same fishing net.

Mary Anne Weeks Mayo was the production editor and copyeditor for Squid: The Definitive Guide . Sada Preisch proofread the book, and Marlowe Shaeffer and Claire Cloutier provided quality control. Jamie Peppard and Mary Agner provided production assistance. Johnna Dinse wrote the index.

Ellie Volckhausen designed the cover of this book, based on a series design by Edie Freedman. The cover image is a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. Emma Colby produced the cover layout with QuarkXPress 4.1 using Adobe's ITC Garamond font.

Melanie Wang designed the interior layout, based on a series design by David Futato. This book was converted by Joe Wizda to FrameMaker 5.5.6 with a format conversion tool created by Erik Ray, Jason McIntosh, Neil Walls, and Mike Sierra that uses Perl and XML technologies. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont's TheSans Mono Condensed. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano and Jessamyn Read using Macromedia FreeHand 9 and Adobe Photoshop 6. The tip and warning icons were drawn by Christopher Bing. This colophon was compiled by Mary Anne Weeks Mayo.

The online edition of this book was created by the Safari production group (John Chodacki, Becki Maisch, and Ellie Cutler) using a set of Frame-to-XML conversion and cleanup tools written and maintained by Erik Ray, Benn Salter, John Chodacki, and Jeff Liggett.