Content of GNOME Developer's Guide

[John R Sheets <dusk smsi-roman com>]

Hullo,

Sorry I've been so slow to get going on this...the last couple
weeks have been pretty hectic.  Anyway, here is a quick pass at
some of my ideas for organizing a professional-level book-length
guide for application development with GNOME.

* Scope:

- Covers the fundamentals of programming GNOME, including Baboon,
plus useful side issues like dealing with autoconf/make, i18n,
CVS, and maybe a quick tutorial on converting GTK+ apps to GNOME
apps.  It would assume basic programming skills.  A developer
should be able to sit down with no previous knowledge of GNOME,
and leave the book being able to write a fully-compliant
well-styled application.

- I don't know how much GTK+ it should cover (probably in the
Appendix), but it will need to cover some.

---------------------

* Table of Contents (titles need work)

- Intro - What is GNOME & what does it offer; quick run-through
of terms & what the various software packages (e.g. auto*, CVS,
GTK+) do.

- Part One - Building GNOME Apps
     (The everpresent Hello World program, hopefully with a
twist)
  - Chapter 1: GnomeApp
  - Chapter 2: Menus
  - Chapter 3: Toolbars
  - Chapter 4: Controls (worthy of its own section???)

- Part Two - GNOME Components
     (Tools/components unique to GNOME)
  - Chapter 5: Common Dialogs
  - Chapter 6: Dialogs
  - Chapter 7: GnomeCanvas
  - Chapter 8: Applets (for Panel -- maybe in Appendix??)

- Part Three - The GNOME Framework
     (The backend glue that holds everything together; only
needed
      for advanced GNOME programming)
  - Chapter 9: Data Storage (XML, config, session mgt.)
  - Chapter 10: Communication (libGnorba)
  - Chapter 11: Baboon (reusable components)

- Appendix
  - Installation (CVS, Autoconf/make)
  - Glib Primer (data structures, portability, modules)
  - GTK+ Primer
  - Internationalization
  - Sound

---------------------

Does this sound reasonable?  Any suggestions for
improving/defining the scope, or changing the topics?

John