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: Email 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, octopi 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 the cover of this book, using a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover layout was produced with Quark XPress 3.3 using the ITC Garamond font.

The inside layout was designed by Edie Freedman and Jennifer Niederst and implemented in gtroff by Lenny Muellner. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book. The illustrations that appear in the book were created in Aldus Freehand 4.0 by Chris Reilley. This colophon was written by Michael Kalantarian.