Tutorials Future

[Stephen Wilhelm <swilhelm theriver com>]

First, I would like to thank everyone who has helped me over the past year
or so.  I have received quite a few suggestions and even more complaints
about bugs.  :)  The response is far more than I had anticipated when I
started the project.  And, of course, I would like to thank the vast
number of people who have asked questions for letting me know that my
tutorial was being used.  I can probably track growth in usage of Gtk-Perl
by plotting the increase in questions I get.

I first started the project because I was new to Gtk-Perl (then Perl/Gtk)
and frustrated at the lack of documentation.  At the same time I was
looking for some way to contribute to the open source community.  As a
software engineer, I wasn't too thrilled about the idea of doing
documentation, but I have absolutely no regrets now.  I started off
copying the Gtk Tutorial as much as possible (and thanks to those folks
for letting me), but after a while I started documenting things they
didn't, and went my own way.  As a result, my tutorial has a very
different feel than theirs, even if much of the content is similar.

However, it has recently come to my attention that the Postscript version
of the tutorial, if printed, is 377 pages long.  I had no idea that I had
written that much.  I knew that it was big for a tutorial, and I tried to
include only those things that I felt were necessary.  Apparently I think
that almost everything is necessary.  :)

I feel it is time to start on a rewrite.  Because of this, the tutorial
won't get updated much for the next few months (or more).  Rather than
referring to the document as a tutorial, I've given it the name "Learning
Gtk-Perl".  The organization is tentatively planned to be as follows:

    Table of Contents
      1.  Gtk-Perl Tutorial (just the facts, ma'am)
      2.  Gtk-Perl Widgets
      3.  Gnome-Perl Widgets (which I haven't even started to document)
      4.  General (timeouts, IO, selections, drag-n-drop, and other
          things not widgets)
      5.  Administration
    Index
    Glossary

The organization is intended to be more like a books than an online
document (mainly because of its size, I am not trying to get published,
though that would be cool).

I am also considering a section on custom widgets and a section on Gdk
graphics, though I'm not sure if they should go between 4 and 5, or be
their own documents.

Because of this, I would appreciate it if I could be some input.  First,
what does everyone think of the rewrite?  Second, what works (and what
doesn't) with the existing tutorial?  Any areas where you think I could
use improvement would be appreciated.  And finally, contributions
(especially of example programs and chapters that I've not written yet)
would be very helpful.  I would also like some help on the question of
custom widgets, which I haven't much experience with, except for some
basic object oriented programming.

And finally, I would like to apologize to those who have expressed a
desire in the areas of the tutorial that aren't done yet (styles,
drag-n-drop, etc) for the delay they are going to experience in getting
this information.


-- 
Stephen Wilhelm
    See my Gtk-Perl Tutorial:
    http://personal.riverusers.com/~swilhelm/gtkperl-tutorial/