Padraic Brady recently made a post about the some of the "deception" that various publishing companies (he specifically mentions Wrox) have made when it comes to publishing books on PHP6. In his latest post he shares a response Wrox made to some of his comments.

In "The Art Of Deception Or Publishing PHP6 Books" I aired my unflattering opinions about publishers who have been selling "PHP 6" books. PHP 6, last I checked, was a bit like Leprechauns. [...] It's certainly not complete and stable, and its future feature list remains a bit flexible. You could see PHP 5.4 in 2011 before PHP 6 is finished...guessing here. As its developers would say - it'll be ready when it's ready. One day. Maybe.

He shares their response to his comments by looking at easy of the books covering PHP6 and two things they're doing to help the situation - pulling the Beginner book and a call for those wanting to make the books better to get involved.

Padraic Brady has posted about the art of deception that several publishers have involved themselves in - already publishing books about PHP6.

I was strolling around a bookstore today, Easons on O'Connell Street here in Dublin, when I found myself staring at a bookshelf in near shock. Kid, I thought, you've been out of the loop for only two months and somehow those crazy people have managed to release PHP 6 right under your nose! [...] The more I stared at the three youthful faces grinning at me from the cover, the more I convinced myself this was a publishing error. No way was PHP6 going to be released without me noticing. Google Reader would have been on fire with that news. So what the hell was I looking at? I was apparently looking at a big fat lie.

He goes on to talk about PHP6 (aka the "long standing grail" of PHP) and how publishers, apparently misinformed as to the release date of the version, preempted its release and assumed that it would be out as soon as or before the book was. Obviously this was the wrong choice and now they're paying for it with the egg on their face.

Sure these PHP6 books have a lot of the PHP 5.3 features mentioned in them, but they're mashed up with other features that won't be ready until PHP6 actually arrives. Oddly enough, upon looking at the contents of most of the books, Padraic discovered something interesting - their content is less about PHP6 and more about the PHP 5.2 series that was current. Seems they're only really PHP6 in name.