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 featured on the cover of UNIX in a Nutshell is a tarsier, a nocturnal mammal related to the lemur. Its generic name, Tarsius, is derived from the animal's very long ankle bone, the tarsus. The tarsier is a native of the East Indies jungles from Sumatra to the Philippines and Sulawesi, where it lives in the trees, leaping from branch to branch with extreme agility and speed. A small animal, the tarsier's body is only six inches long, followed by a ten-inch tufted tail. It is covered in soft, brown or grey silky fur, has a round face, and huge eyes. Its arms and legs are long and slender as are its digits, which are tipped with rounded, fleshy pads to improve the tarsier's grip on trees. Tarsiers are active only at night, hiding during the day in the tangles of vines or in the tops of tall trees. They subsist mainly on insects, and though very curious animals, tend to be loners. Mary Anne Weeks Mayo was the production editor and copyeditor for UNIX in a Nutshell, Third Edition; Ellie Maden, Ellie Cutler, and Jane Ellin provided quality control. Maureen Dempsey, Colleen Gorman, and Kimo Carter provided production assistance. Lenny Muellner provided SGML support. Seth Maislin wrote the index.

Edie Freedman designed the cover of this book, using a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover layout was produced by Kathleen Wilson with Quark XPress 3.32 using the ITC Garamond font. Whenever possible, our books use RepKover™, a durable and flexible lay-flat binding. If the page count exceeds RepKover's limit, perfect binding is used.

The inside layout was designed by Alicia Cech, based on a series design by Nancy Priest, and implemented in gtroff by Lenny Muellner. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book. This colophon was written by Michael Kalantarian.