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 qmail is a tawny owl. Generally, it's dark brown and streaked with black and buff, but occasionally, it is grey. The tawny owl is the most common owl in Britain, and its distribution extends from Europe to North Africa and eastward to Iran and western Siberia. It is also found in India, southern China, Korea, and Taiwan.

The tawny owl does not built its own nest, rather it nests in natural holes and in the abandoned nests of crows, magpies, and even the nests of buzzards. It remains within its nesting territory all year round and pairbonds last for life. The female tawny owl will stay with her nestlings while the male gathers food. While the male hunts for rabbits, moles, mice, shrews, and other rodents, the female defends her territory passionately with threatening behavior and erratic flying. Occasionally, a human is attacked; in Britain, at least two people are known to have lost an eye, including Eric Hosking, the famous bird photographer.

The tawny owl is best known for its distinctive song. The normal song of the male owl announces territory, courtship, and food. The song begins with a drawn out hooo and then is followed by a pause before the male owl abruptly sings out ha, followed immediately by huhuhuhooo. Occasionally, the female tawny owl makes a similar hooting sound in response to the male's call. However, unlike the clear, resonant sound of the male song, the female's song possesses a wailing quality of wowowhooo. The duet that is performed between the two has led to a myriad of names for the tawny owl, including Billy hooter and Jenny howlet. Sarah Sherman was the production editor and the copyeditor for qmail. Genevieve d'Entremont was the proofreader. Reg Aubry and Mary Anne Weeks Mayo provided quality control. Tom Dinse wrote the index.

Emma Colby 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.

David Futato designed the interior layout. 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. This colophon was written by Sarah Sherman.