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 MH & xmh: E-mail for Users & Programmers is an octopus, an eight-armed marine mollusk. An invertebrate with no shell or fins, the octopus moves by crawling across rocks and sand, using the double row of suckers on the underside of its tentacles to pull itself along, or by swimming ejecting spurts of water from a siphon near the base of its head which propel it forward. Found throughout the world, both in shallow water and deep, the octopus comes in a variety of sizes, from two inches across to monsters with arms 16 feet long. Octopi can change color quickly to blend in with their surroundings. When threatened they can eject a brown or black inky fluid which will block an enemy's vision and anesthetize its olfactory senses. Though very shy animals, octopus are also very curious. Divers frequently lure them out of hiding by blowing bubbles at them or showing them shiny objects. 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 text of this book is set in Times and Courier. The text pages are formatted in troff. Figures were created by Chris Reilley in Aldus Freehand. The cover was produced in QuarkXPress.