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 insects featured on the cover of DNS and BIND are grasshoppers. Grasshoppers are found all over the globe. Of over 5000 species, 100 different grasshopper species are found in North America. Grasshoppers are greenish-brown, and range in length from a half inch to four inches, with wingspans of up to six inches. Their bodies are divided into three sections: the head, thorax, and abdomen, with three pairs of legs and two pairs of wings.

Male grasshoppers use their hind legs and forewings to produce a "chirping" sound. Their hind legs have a ridge of small pegs which are rubbed across a hardened vein in the forewing, causing an audible vibration much like a bow being drawn across a string.

Grasshoppers are major crop pests, particularly when they collect into swarms. A single grasshopper can consume 30 mg of food a day. In collections of 50 or more grasshoppers per square yard (a density often reached during grasshopper outbreaks) grasshoppers consume as much as a cow would, per acre. In addition to consuming foliage, grasshoppers attack plants at vulnerable points and cause the stems to break off. UNIX and its attendant programs can be unruly beasts. Nutshell Handbooks(R) help you tame them.

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Edie Freedman designed this cover and the entire UNIX bestiary that appears on other Nutshell Handbooks. The beasts themselves are adapted from 19th-century engravings from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover layout was produced with QuarkXPress 3.1 using the ITC Garamond font.

The inside layout was formatted in sqtroff by Lenny Muellner and Kismet McDonough using ITC Garamond Light and ITC Garamond Book fonts, and was designed by Edie Freedman. The figures were created in Aldus Freehand 3.1 by Chris Reilley.