Re: GTK+ doc

[Liam Quin <liam holoweb net>]

Luke Scharf <luke vt edu> writes: 
> Any opinion as to the highest quality titles?

Havoc wrote:
> Well, I'm partial to "GTK+/GNOME Application Development" by Havoc
> Pennington. ;-)

As well he might be :-)

I have also Eric Harlow's book on Gtk+, but I generally use Havoc's more,
along with the docs on the web site.  Both are available online.

The biggest use for the books is if they have good pictures, because
no amount of words saying that a CTree is a tree with columns is
as good as a picture -- Doric columns supporting the branches? columns
of text inside the trunk?  I genuinely had no idea until I looked in a
book and saw a screenshot.

There is supposed to be a program that demonstrates with widgets, but
I don't know its name and it wasn't included with the red hat distribution
I was using before, nor (I think) with helix gnome.

Peter Wright's "Beginning Gtk+/Gnome Programming" (Wrox) is worth a look
at. It has more pictures, and a slightly better index.

Really, I wanted a book that (1) showed me the architecture both of
gnome overall and of Gtk+, and (2) had an api reference.  But I have
been programming with GUI toolkits for years.  If you haven't, I'd
suggest the Peter Wright book to start out, not Havoc's (sorry) nor
Eric's.  Event based programming takes some getting used to for
many people.

I wish we could get someone like Dan Heller to do a Gnome book; no idea
if he is still around, though.

Lee

-- 
Liam Quin - Barefoot in Toronto - liam holoweb net - http://www.holoweb.net/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net www.valinor.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org
author, The Open Source XML Database Toolkit, Wiley, August 2000
Co-author, The XML Specification Guide, Wiley, 1999