RE: can you recommend a good book on the mysteries of Illustrator and graphic file formats in general?

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Elizabeth O'Shea [mailto:elizabeth -dot- oshea -at- virtualaccess -dot- com] pleaded for:

> a book that explains things for
> a not-very-graphically-orientated newish user of Illustrator and gives
> lots of tips and tricks. 
 
>  What I don't need is a
> book that steps me through a hypothetical project. I need a book that
> explains what everything is. For example, I can save an image for the
> web, and I can choose different settings for the gif. What do those
> settings mean? That's what I need to know.
 
> I also need to know about different image file formats. When do I use
> tiffs? How do I decide optimal image sizes for the web? 
> What's the best
> way to manage our graphics library (which doesn't exist. 
> There's just a huge collection of images all over the network).

I'd pay good money for a well-organized, well-written tome 
that brought all of that stuff together.
Trouble is, it probably wouldn't sell. Most people are looking 
for recipe books.

One problem that keeps biting me (not just graphics stuff) is 
that, yes, I can learn by eventually generalizing from a 
series of cookbook experiences, to extrapolate some rules 
and underlying hypotheses, but those extrapolations can 
be wrong or incomplete, and I won't know it. I may not be 
doing something that breaks what I'm working on, but I may 
be doing unnecessary things or counter-productive things 
because I generalized improperly from earlier trial-and-terror 
learning.

/kevin