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  15 wxWindows Book
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  21 <P>
  22
  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="#style">Style guide</a> |
  30 <a href="#titles">Titles</a> |
  31 <a href="#contents">Contents</a>
  32 </center>
  33
  34 <p>
  35 <hr>
  36 <p>
  37
  38 <H3><a name="about">About the wxWindows book</a></H3>
  39
  40 August 2000: the 'wxBook' project is getting going again,
  41 with a good response from potential contributors.<P>
  42
  43 Robin Dunn has set up a <a href="http://wxwindows.org/mailman/listinfo/wxbook">wxBook mailing list</a>.<P>
  44
  45 The book will comprise 30 or so chapters dealing with progressively
  46 more advanced areas of wxWindows; each chapter will be as stand-alone as
  47 possible. The book will
  48 not include the API reference, though this could be a
  49 separate project. The book will be accompanied by a CD-ROM with
  50 wxWindows and its documentation. It will initially be
  51 available on-line, and when enough is done we will look for a
  52 publisher.<P>
  53
  54 There will also be a separate small booklet which can easily be printed
  55 out and which gives an overview of wxWindows facilities by taking
  56 the reader through a single worked example. Guillermo Rodriguez
  57 Garcia has volunteered to write this, and will use his Life!
  58 demo to illustrate it.<P>
  59
  60 Goals for the book:<P>
  61
  62 <ol>
  63 <li> to allow users to become accomplished wxWindows developers rapidly;
  64 <li> to be useful over a longer period than just the first few weeks, since
  65 there are a lot of complex areas to address and not all features will be
  66 used up-front in a project;
  67 <li> to promote wxWindows to a wider audience;
  68 <li> to make at least some money for the authors.
  69 </ol>
  70
  71 <P>
  72
  73 Audience: beginners + experienced wxWindows users, but with reasonable C++
  74 knowledge.<P>
  75
  76 It is suggested that any financial return from the book be allocated on a points system,
  77 with a predefined number of points for chapters, indexing, editing, proof-reading etc.<P>
  78
  79 <p>
  80 <hr>
  81 <p>
  82
  83 <H3><a name="participants">Participants</a></H3>
  84
  85 So far, the following people are interested in taking part in this project:<P>
  86
  87 <ul>
  88 <li><a href="mailto:julian.smart@ukonline.co.uk">Julian Smart</a> -
  89 editor and coordinator of the project; introductory chapter, some other
  90 chapters.
  91 <li><a href="mailto:guille@iies.es">Guillermo Rodriguez Garcia</a> - Separate tutorial booklet;
  92 communication classes (wxSocket, wxXXXServer, some protocol stuff); timing and timers.
  93 <li><a href="mailto:robin@alldunn.com">Robin Dunn</a> - wxPython chapter.
  94 </i>
  95 <li><a href="mailto:zeitlin@dptmaths.ens-cachan.fr">Vadim Zeitlin</a> - drag and drop, several other chapters.
  96 <li><a href="mailto:roebling@uni-freiburg.de">Robert Roebling</a> - not known.
  97 <li><a href="mailto:slavik2@czn.cz">Vaclav Slavik</a> - wxHTML section.
  98 <li><a href="mailto:gtasker@fastpicsystems.com">George Tasker</a> - database chapter.
  99 <li><a href="mailto:moreno@mochima.com">Carlos Moreno</a> - wxImage, wxBitmap.
 100 <li><a href="mailto:Shiv@pspl.co.in">Shiv Shankar Ramakrishnan</a> - wxWindows advocacy, convincing your manager,
 101 container classes and strings, comparison with STL
 102 <li><a href="mailto:markusneifer@my-Deja.com">Markus Neifer</a> - user-defined events.
 103
 104 <!--
 105 <li><a href="mailto:csomor@advancedconcepts.ch">Stefan Csomor</a>. The sequence of events i.e. which action provokes which event sequence,
 106 this is implicit for the use on MSW, but very important for other systems; and porting to new platforms
 107 -->
 108 <!--
 109 <li><a href="mailto:tomr@scitechsoft.com">Tom Ryan</a>, SciTech Software.
 110 -->
 111 <!--
 112 <li><a href="mailto:karsten@phy.hw.ac.uk">Karsten Ballueder</a>. Short tutorials on some useful
 113 GNU tools, like autoconf/configure/make, programming
 114 strategies, etc.
 115 -->
 116 <!--
 117 <li><a href="mailto:mheck@www.surveyorcorp.com">Matt Heck</a>, SurveyorCorp Inc.
 118 <i>
 119 <ol>
 120   <li>a case study of how and why we've used wxWindows at Surveyor Corp., and
 121   how it's worked out so far;
 122   <li>an appendix something similar about how to use wxLIVID for video capture and display;
 123   <li>proofreading
 124 </ol>
 125 -->
 126 </ul>
 127
 128 <P>
 129 Others welcome! Please contact <a href="mailto:julian.smart@ukonline.co.uk">Julian Smart</a>
 130 if you would like to contribute.
 131
 132 <p>
 133 <hr>
 134 <p>
 135
 136 <H3><a name="publication">Publication</a></H3>
 137
 138 We wll investigate publishers, especially O'Reilly. We will have to get together
 139 several sample chapters to convince a publisher that the many-author approach will
 140 work.<P>
 141
 142 <!--
 143 Tom Ryan originally wrote:<P>
 144
 145 <PRE>
 146 Hi Guys,
 147
 148 I just wanted to let you know that I have spoken with officials here
 149 at California State University, Chico and they are potentially
 150 interested in publishing a book on wxWindows!  A wxWindows
 151 book would give wxWindows a great deal of exposure.
 152
 153 These discussions came out of the fact that CSUC wanted to
 154 switch from MFC to wxWindows in their GUI programming classes,
 155 but there was not a book available for students to work with.
 156
 157 I was thinking that the first edition could be primarily the reference
 158 documentation combined with a basic wxTutorial and examples. In
 159 this case, it would be fairly straightforward to get something out
 160 initially and then we could take it from there.
 161 </PRE>
 162
 163 <p>
 164
 165 <a href="mailto:benles@powernet.net">Ben Allfree</a> has also expressed an interest
 166 in publishing a wxWindows book, and distributing it via Amazon. Ben was thinking
 167 in terms of a quickie job using the existing reference manual.<P>
 168
 169 Another publishing name to think of is O'Reilly. They would probably give us a lot
 170 of guidance for style, formatting, etc.<P>
 171
 172 <a href="mailto:Roald.Ribe@winlink.no">Roald Ribe</a> writes:
 173 "<a href="http://www.bruceeckel.com/javabook.html" target=_new>Thinking in Java</a>
 174 is published both as a PDF for internet (by the author) and in print by Prentice Hall."<P>
 175
 176 -->
 177
 178 <P>
 179 <hr>
 180 <P>
 181
 182 <!--
 183
 184 <H3><a name="suggestions">Suggestions and comments</a></H3>
 185
 186 <ul>
 187 <li>Chapter on converting from MFC. (Julian Smart)
 188 <li>A chapter on why some inconsistencies are almost always going to show up in a
 189 multiplatform toolkit, how to avoid them, how to deal with when you have
 190 no choice, and (if wxBook explains the internals or philosophy of
 191 wxWindows at all) how wxWindows attempts to minimize the number we
 192 encounter. (Matt Heck)
 193 <li>Creating the shortest possible path to writing "Hello World" from scratch in wxWindows. (Matt Heck)
 194 <li>How will royalties for subsequent editions be shared out? (Tom Ryan)
 195 <li>"My personal feeling is that this project will wind up being developed
 196 by a small team, led by an editor that will wind up doing about half
 197 of the total amount of work." (Tom Ryan)
 198 </ul>
 199
 200 <P>
 201 <hr>
 202 <P>
 203 -->
 204
 205 <H3><a name="format">File format</a></H3>
 206
 207 Possible formats:
 208
 209 <ul>
 210 <li>Word
 211 <li><a href="http://www.abisource.com" target=_top>Abiword</a>: possibly not developed enough yet, but
 212 it can output Latex which would make conversion to Tex2RTF format quite simple
 213 <li>Latex: favoured format so far. The LyX near-WYSIWYG word processor (Unix only) can output Latex.
 214 See also <a href="http://www.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/~minten/NTTeXing/NTTeXing.html" target=_top>NTTex</a>
 215 which uses EMACS as an editor. For an introduction to Latex, see <a href="ftp://ftp.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/info/lshort" target=_top>here</a>.
 216 A free TeX for Windows: see <a href="http://www.miktex.org/" target=_top>MikTex</a>. More TeX info: <a href="http://www.tug.org/" target=_top>TUG</a>.
 217 <li>XML: hard to read/write
 218 <li>SGML: ditto
 219 <li>DocBook: don't have any information about this, but <a href="http://www.LinuxNinja.com/linux-admin/" target=_top>Linux Admin Made Easy</a>
 220 uses it.
 221 <li><a href="http://www.zope.org//Members/jim/StructuredTextWiki/StructuredTextNG" target=_top>Structured text</a> -
 222 plain text with indentation and other elements to provide structure. The tools seem under-developed and there
 223 doesn't seem to be a simple way of getting them without using the CVS Zope archive.
 224 <li>troff - favoured by O'Reilly
 225 </ul>
 226
 227 <P>
 228 <hr>
 229 <P>
 230
 231 <H3><a name="style">Style guide</a></H3>
 232
 233 We should write a style and formatting guide.<P>
 234
 235 <P>
 236 <hr>
 237 <P>
 238
 239 <H3><a name="titles">Book Titles</a></H3>
 240
 241 It would be good to include certain buzzwords such as Linux and open source, to get
 242 a publisher's (and the potential reader's) attention. The trick is to do that and
 243 not narrow the scope unduly.<P>
 244
 245 Suggestions for the main book:<P>
 246
 247 <ul>
 248 <li>Multiplatform GUI development with wxWindows
 249 <li>wxWindows: an open source multiplatform toolkit
 250 <li>wxWindows: GUI development for Linux and other platforms
 251 </ul>
 252
 253 <P>
 254 Other book titles that a publisher might be interested (but would be distinct projects):<P>
 255
 256 <ul>
 257 <li>Writing GTK+ Application Using wxWindows
 258 <li>Migrating MFC Apps to Linux Using wxWindows
 259 </ul>
 260
 261 <P>
 262 <hr>
 263 <P>
 264
 265 <H3><a name="contents">Contents</a></H3>
 266
 267 The following is open to discussion.<P>
 268
 269 <ul>
 270 <li>Chapter 01: Introduction to wxWindows: history, advocacy, future developments
 271 <li>Chapter 02: Installing wxWindows (and what tools to use)
 272 <li>Chapter 03: C++ and wxWindows. Summarises the sorts of constructs used/not used, plus wxString class,
 273 some conventions. Vadim suggests putting it in 1st chapter but I think it deserves a chapter of its own.
 274 <li>Chapter 04: Getting started: Hello World. Introduces app class, frames, menus, status bar, message box
 275 <li>Chapter 05: Basic event handling
 276 <li>Chapter 06: Frames and menubars. The components of a frame, menubars.
 277 <li>Chapter 07: Toolbars and status bars
 278 <li>Chapter 08: Basic controls
 279 <li>Chapter 09: Common dialogs
 280 <li>Chapter 10: Custom dialogs and resources (XML + WXR)
 281 <li>Chapter 11: Drawing on device contexts
 282 <li>Chapter 12: Handling input (mouse, keyboard, joystick)
 283 <li>Chapter 14: Sizers
 284 <li>Chapter 15: Images and bitmaps
 285 <li>Chapter 16: Clipboard and drag and drop
 286 <li>Chapter 17: Advanced controls (list,tree,notebook,splitter,wxWizard,wxCalCtrl...)
 287 <li>Chapter 18: Document/view classes
 288 <li>Chapter 19: Scrolling
 289 <li>Chapter 20: MDI
 290 <li>Chapter 21: Printing
 291 <li>Chapter 22: Providing help in your applications
 292 <li>Chapter 23: Strings and internationalization
 293 <li>Chapter 24: Collection and container classes
 294 <li>Chapter 25: Memory management and debugging (including wxLog)
 295 <li>Chapter 26: Run-time class information
 296 <li>Chapter 27: Advanced event handling (user-defined events, ...)
 297 <li>Chapter 28: Communication classes, including wxSocket
 298 <li>Chapter 29: Database classes
 299 <li>Chapter 30: File and stream classes
 300 <li>Chapter 31: Configuration classes
 301 <li>Chapter 32: Time, timers and idle processing
 302 <li>Chapter 33: Writing multithreading applications
 303 <li>Chapter 34: Perfecting your UI (Adapting to system settings, accelerators, ...)
 304 <li>Chapter 35: Platform-specific programming (metafiles, OLE automation, taskbar, ...)
 305 <li>Chapter 36: Using wxHTML
 306 <li>Chapter 37: Using wxPython
 307 <li>Chapter 38: wxBase?
 308 <li>Appendix: Comparison with other toolkits: MFC, Qt etc.
 309 </ul>
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