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  15 wxWindows Book
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  23 <center>
  24 <a href="#about">About</a> |
  25 <a href="#participants">Participants</a> |
  26 <a href="#publication">Publication</a> |
  27 <a href="#suggestions">Suggestions</a> |
  28 <a href="#format">Format</a> |
  29 <a href="#contents">Contents</a>
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  33
  34 <H3><a name="about">About the wxWindows book</a></H3>
  35
  36 Discussions have been taking place on the wxwin-developers list about
  37 collaboratively writing a wxWindows book. The concensus is to write a tutorial
  38 book for people with reasonable C++ experience, with the possibility of including the API reference either in a very compact
  39 form at the back of the book, or as a separate volume. The book would almost certainly
  40 contain a CD-ROM with wxWindows and its documentation. It would probably be available
  41 for free on-line, publisher permitting.<P>
  42
  43 Goals for the book:<P>
  44
  45 <ol>
  46 <li> to allow users to become accomplished wxWindows developers rapidly;
  47 <li> to be useful over a longer period than just the first few weeks, since
  48 there are a lot of complex areas to address and not all features will be
  49 used up-front in a project;
  50 <li> to promote wxWindows to a wider audience;
  51 <li> to make at least some money for the authors.
  52 </ol>
  53
  54 <P>
  55
  56 Audience: beginners + experienced wxWindows users, but with reasonable C++
  57 knowledge.<P>
  58
  59 It is suggested that any financial return from the book be allocated on a points system,
  60 with a predefined number of points for chapters, indexing, editing, proof-reading etc.<P>
  61
  62 <hr>
  63
  64 <H3><a name="participants">Participants</a></H3>
  65
  66 So far, the following people are interested in taking part in this project:<P>
  67
  68 <ul>
  69 <li><a href="mailto:tomr@scitechsoft.com">Tom Ryan</a>, SciTech Software.
  70 <li><a href="mailto:robin@alldunn.com">Robin Dunn</a>. <i>Chapter on wxPython.</i>
  71 <li><a href="mailto:mheck@www.surveyorcorp.com">Matt Heck</a>, SurveyorCorp Inc.
  72 <i>
  73 <ol>
  74   <li>a case study of how and why we've used wxWindows at Surveyor Corp., and
  75   how it's worked out so far;
  76   <li>an appendix something similar about how to use wxLIVID for video capture and display;
  77   <li>proofreading
  78 </ol>
  79 </i>
  80 <li><a href="mailto:julian.smart@ukonline.co.uk">Julian Smart</a>.
  81 <li><a href="mailto:zeitlin@dptmaths.ens-cachan.fr">Vadim Zeitlin</a>.
  82 <li><a href="mailto:slavik2@czn.cz">Vaclav Slavik</a>. <i>wxHTML section</i>
  83 <li><a href="mailto:csomor@advancedconcepts.ch">Stefan Csomor</a>. <i>the sequence of events i.e. which action provokes which event sequence,
  84 this is implicit for the use on MSW, but very important for other systems; and porting to new platforms</i>
  85 <li><a href="mailto:karsten@phy.hw.ac.uk">Karsten Ballueder</a>. <i>short tutorials on some useful
  86 GNU tools, like autoconf/configure/make, programming
  87 strategies, etc.</i>
  88 </ul>
  89
  90 <hr>
  91
  92 <H3><a name="publication">Publication</a></H3>
  93
  94 Tom Ryan originally wrote:<P>
  95
  96 <PRE>
  97 Hi Guys,
  98
  99 I just wanted to let you know that I have spoken with officials here
 100 at California State University, Chico and they are potentially
 101 interested in publishing a book on wxWindows!  A wxWindows
 102 book would give wxWindows a great deal of exposure.
 103
 104 These discussions came out of the fact that CSUC wanted to
 105 switch from MFC to wxWindows in their GUI programming classes,
 106 but there was not a book available for students to work with.
 107
 108 I was thinking that the first edition could be primarily the reference
 109 documentation combined with a basic wxTutorial and examples. In
 110 this case, it would be fairly straightforward to get something out
 111 initially and then we could take it from there.
 112 </PRE>
 113
 114 <p>
 115
 116 <a href="mailto:benles@powernet.net">Ben Allfree</a> has also expressed an interest
 117 in publishing a wxWindows book, and distributing it via Amazon. Ben was thinking
 118 in terms of a quickie job using the existing reference manual.<P>
 119
 120 Another publishing name to think of is O'Reilly. They would probably give us a lot
 121 of guidance for style, formatting, etc.<P>
 122
 123 <a href="mailto:Roald.Ribe@winlink.no">Roald Ribe</a> writes:
 124 "<a href="http://www.bruceeckel.com/javabook.html" target=_new>Thinking in Java</a>
 125 is published both as a PDF for internet (by the author) and in print by Prentice Hall."<P>
 126
 127 <hr>
 128
 129 <H3><a name="suggestions">Suggestions and comments</a></H3>
 130
 131 <ul>
 132 <li>Chapter on converting from MFC. (Julian Smart)
 133 <li>A chapter on why some inconsistencies are almost always going to show up in a
 134 multiplatform toolkit, how to avoid them, how to deal with when you have
 135 no choice, and (if wxBook explains the internals or philosophy of
 136 wxWindows at all) how wxWindows attempts to minimize the number we
 137 encounter. (Matt Heck)
 138 <li>Creating the shortest possible path to writing "Hello World" from scratch in wxWindows. (Matt Heck)
 139 <li>How will royalties for subsequent editions be shared out? (Tom Ryan)
 140 <li>"My personal feeling is that this project will wind up being developed
 141 by a small team, led by an editor that will wind up doing about half
 142 of the total amount of work." (Tom Ryan)
 143 </ul>
 144
 145 <hr>
 146
 147 <H3><a name="format">Text format</a></H3>
 148
 149 This depends partly on the publisher, but one possibility is to target Word but have
 150 submissions in a number of formats including Latex. We should eventually write a style
 151 and formatting guide.<P>
 152
 153 <hr>
 154
 155 <H3><a name="contents">Contents</a></H3>
 156
 157 This is open to suggestion.<P>
 158
 159 Last year, <a href="mailto:mlorenz@visionx.com">Mike Lorenz</a> of <a href="http://www.visionx.com">VisionX</a>
 160 suggested this
 161 <a href="http://www.visionx.com/wx/tutorial_outline.htm">tutorial outline</a>, which could
 162 be a good starting point.<P>
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