Re: [gnome-love] GTK Book: A Journey Through GTK+

[Elijah Newren <newren gmail com>]

On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 07:21:24 -0800 (PST), Muthiah Annamalai
<dearestchum yahoo co in> wrote:
> Hello Hackers!
> Im writing a Book on GTK titled 'A Journey Through
> GTK+', started with another guy, Ishan Chattopadyay.
> The book is organised like 13 chapters with 5
> appendices.

Wonderful!

> It is GFDL'ed. You can find a incomplete version here.
> http://www.nitt.edu/profiles/profiles/2001/ec10130/GtkBook.pdf

Doh!  An incompatible license.  Oh well, separate project I guess.  :)

> Im using LaTeX to write the documents, and writing
> example applications in C/GTK. I also happen to
> write Octave-GTK , a GTK binding for Octave.
> [http://octave-gtk.sourceforge.net].

It appears that you're using latex and then dvips from viewing the pdf
file.  That's fine if people just print the pdf file, but it tends to
look awful when viewing the pdf file in a pdf viewer.  Is there any
chance you could use pdflatex instead which fixes this problem?

[Going off-topic] Oh, and it's cool to hear that there's a octave-gtk
project.  Octave is cool and promising, but the only reason I and
several other people I know us Matlab is because of the easiness of
the plotting--last I checked octave only used Gnuplot and
Gnuplot...um, leaves a *lot* to be desired.  Are there any plans to
incorporate plotting abilities such as matplotlib's (see
http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/) into octave or octave-gtk?

> I want people who can
>
> + write C++,Python, Java language bindings chapters.

I _may_ be able to help with c++, python, and/or perl, though I'm
pretty busy on my own guide (see below).  I can't and won't help with
Java.  Sorry, I hate it.  That's probably unfair of me to say because
my exposure came from a professor that really sucked (nice guy but his
teaching was awful), but the feeling lingers anyway.

> + write GDK.Pango chapters

Did you mean GDK, Pango (i.e. comma, not dot?)   ;-)

> + Editors to review content, style.

I'll try to help here if you like.  Likewise, it'd be great if you
read over my guide at
http://www.gnome.org/~newren/tutorials/developing-with-gnome/ and gave
me pointers and told me things you liked and/or didn't like.

> + Programmers to give code snippets.
>   [Most of it is hacked from FreeSoftware].

The license covering code snippets must be different or there's no way
I'll contribute.  (This is actually a problem with my tutorial too; as
pointed out by others, programming books should typically license code
under a BSD license or even stick it in the public domain--after all,
it's *meant* to be used by others, right?)

> + GTK+ API users to read, and use the stuff.
>
> Well Ishan & I wrote a few chapters set up some CVS
> etc, but couldnt really get it going. THe project
> launched on July 2004 is basically stuck there.
>
> I would like GNOME community to
>
> + volunteer to write missing parts.

Um, the pdf didn't have any parts filled in _at all_ -- it only had
the outline.  This seems to suggest that you do have some parts filled
in somewhere.  Is there another pdf?

> + Workflow help via gnome.org [CVS, HTTP ]
> + Lots of Motivation :-)

Our guides are already fairly complementary (yours is mostly a gtk+
tutorial whereas I try to skip it and just let users pick up gtk as
they go, and skip gdk and pango altogether), but it may make sense to
make them more so.  Thoughts and ideas on the matter appreciated.  :)


Cheers,
Elijah