<font face="Arial, Lucida Sans, Helvetica">
-<table width=100% border=4 cellpadding=5 cellspacing=0>
+<table width=100% border=0 cellpadding=5 cellspacing=0>
<tr>
-<td bgcolor="#660000">
-<font size=+1 face="Arial, Lucida Sans, Helvetica" color="#FFFFFF">
+<td bgcolor="#C4ECF9">
+<font size=+1 face="Arial, Lucida Sans, Helvetica" color="#000000">
wxWindows Book
</font>
</td>
<a href="#about">About</a> |
<a href="#participants">Participants</a> |
<a href="#publication">Publication</a> |
-<a href="#suggestions">Suggestions</a> |
+<!-- <a href="#suggestions">Suggestions</a> | -->
<a href="#format">Format</a> |
+<a href="#style">Style guide</a> |
+<a href="#titles">Titles</a> |
<a href="#contents">Contents</a>
</center>
+<p>
<hr>
+<p>
<H3><a name="about">About the wxWindows book</a></H3>
-Discussions have been taking place on the wxwin-developers list about
-collaboratively writing a wxWindows book. The concensus is to write a tutorial
-book for people with reasonable C++ experience, with the possibility of including the API reference either in a very compact
-form at the back of the book, or as a separate volume. The book would almost certainly
-contain a CD-ROM with wxWindows and its documentation. It would probably be available
-for free on-line, publisher permitting.<P>
+August 2000: the 'wxBook' project is getting going again,
+with a good response from potential contributors.<P>
+
+Robin Dunn has set up a <a href="http://wxwindows.org/mailman/listinfo/wxbook">wxBook mailing list</a>.<P>
+
+The book will comprise 30 or so chapters dealing with progressively
+more advanced areas of wxWindows; each chapter will be as stand-alone as
+possible. The book will
+not include the API reference, though this could be a
+separate project. The book will be accompanied by a CD-ROM with
+wxWindows and its documentation. It will initially be
+available on-line, and when enough is done we will look for a
+publisher.<P>
+
+There will also be a separate small booklet which can easily be printed
+out and which gives an overview of wxWindows facilities by taking
+the reader through a single worked example. Guillermo Rodriguez
+Garcia has volunteered to write this, and will use his Life!
+demo to illustrate it.<P>
Goals for the book:<P>
It is suggested that any financial return from the book be allocated on a points system,
with a predefined number of points for chapters, indexing, editing, proof-reading etc.<P>
+<p>
<hr>
+<p>
<H3><a name="participants">Participants</a></H3>
So far, the following people are interested in taking part in this project:<P>
<ul>
+<li><a href="mailto:julian.smart@ukonline.co.uk">Julian Smart</a> -
+editor and coordinator of the project; introductory chapter, some other
+chapters.
+<li><a href="mailto:guille@iies.es">Guillermo Rodriguez Garcia</a> - Separate tutorial booklet;
+communication classes (wxSocket, wxXXXServer, some protocol stuff); timing and timers.
+<li><a href="mailto:robin@alldunn.com">Robin Dunn</a> - wxPython chapter.
+</i>
+<li><a href="mailto:zeitlin@dptmaths.ens-cachan.fr">Vadim Zeitlin</a> - drag and drop, several other chapters.
+<li><a href="mailto:roebling@uni-freiburg.de">Robert Roebling</a> - not known.
+<li><a href="mailto:slavik2@czn.cz">Vaclav Slavik</a> - wxHTML section.
+<li><a href="mailto:gtasker@fastpicsystems.com">George Tasker</a> - database chapter.
+<li><a href="mailto:moreno@mochima.com">Carlos Moreno</a> - wxImage, wxBitmap.
+<li><a href="mailto:Shiv@pspl.co.in">Shiv Shankar Ramakrishnan</a> - wxWindows advocacy, convincing your manager,
+container classes and strings, comparison with STL
+<li><a href="mailto:markusneifer@my-Deja.com">Markus Neifer</a> - user-defined events.
+
+<!--
+<li><a href="mailto:csomor@advancedconcepts.ch">Stefan Csomor</a>. The sequence of events i.e. which action provokes which event sequence,
+this is implicit for the use on MSW, but very important for other systems; and porting to new platforms
+-->
+<!--
<li><a href="mailto:tomr@scitechsoft.com">Tom Ryan</a>, SciTech Software.
-<li><a href="mailto:robin@alldunn.com">Robin Dunn</a>. <i>Chapter on wxPython.</i>
+-->
+<!--
+<li><a href="mailto:karsten@phy.hw.ac.uk">Karsten Ballueder</a>. Short tutorials on some useful
+GNU tools, like autoconf/configure/make, programming
+strategies, etc.
+-->
+<!--
<li><a href="mailto:mheck@www.surveyorcorp.com">Matt Heck</a>, SurveyorCorp Inc.
<i>
<ol>
<li>an appendix something similar about how to use wxLIVID for video capture and display;
<li>proofreading
</ol>
-</i>
-<li><a href="mailto:julian.smart@ukonline.co.uk">Julian Smart</a>.
-<li><a href="mailto:zeitlin@dptmaths.ens-cachan.fr">Vadim Zeitlin</a>.
-<li><a href="mailto:slavik2@czn.cz">Vaclav Slavik</a>. <i>wxHTML section</i>
-<li><a href="mailto:csomor@advancedconcepts.ch">Stefan Csomor</a>. <i>the sequence of events i.e. which action provokes which event sequence,
-this is implicit for the use on MSW, but very important for other systems; and porting to new platforms</i>
-<li><a href="mailto:karsten@phy.hw.ac.uk">Karsten Ballueder</a>. <i>short tutorials on some useful
-GNU tools, like autoconf/configure/make, programming
-strategies, etc.</i>
+-->
</ul>
+<P>
+Others welcome! Please contact <a href="mailto:julian.smart@ukonline.co.uk">Julian Smart</a>
+if you would like to contribute.
+
+<p>
<hr>
+<p>
<H3><a name="publication">Publication</a></H3>
+We wll investigate publishers, especially O'Reilly. We will have to get together
+several sample chapters to convince a publisher that the many-author approach will
+work.<P>
+
+<!--
Tom Ryan originally wrote:<P>
<PRE>
"<a href="http://www.bruceeckel.com/javabook.html" target=_new>Thinking in Java</a>
is published both as a PDF for internet (by the author) and in print by Prentice Hall."<P>
+-->
+
+<P>
<hr>
+<P>
+
+<!--
<H3><a name="suggestions">Suggestions and comments</a></H3>
of the total amount of work." (Tom Ryan)
</ul>
+<P>
+<hr>
+<P>
+-->
+
+<H3><a name="format">File format</a></H3>
+
+Possible formats:
+
+<ul>
+<li>Word
+<li><a href="http://www.abisource.com" target=_top>Abiword</a>: possibly not developed enough yet, but
+it can output Latex which would make conversion to Tex2RTF format quite simple
+<li>Latex: favoured format so far. The LyX near-WYSIWYG word processor (Unix only) can output Latex.
+See also <a href="http://www.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/~minten/NTTeXing/NTTeXing.html" target=_top>NTTex</a>
+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>.
+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>.
+<li>XML: hard to read/write
+<li>SGML: ditto
+<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>
+uses it.
+<li><a href="http://www.zope.org//Members/jim/StructuredTextWiki/StructuredTextNG" target=_top>Structured text</a> -
+plain text with indentation and other elements to provide structure. The tools seem under-developed and there
+doesn't seem to be a simple way of getting them without using the CVS Zope archive.
+<li>troff - favoured by O'Reilly
+</ul>
+
+<P>
<hr>
+<P>
-<H3><a name="format">Text format</a></H3>
+<H3><a name="style">Style guide</a></H3>
-This depends partly on the publisher, but one possibility is to target Word but have
-submissions in a number of formats including Latex. We should eventually write a style
-and formatting guide.<P>
+We should write a style and formatting guide.<P>
+<P>
<hr>
+<P>
+
+<H3><a name="titles">Book Titles</a></H3>
+
+It would be good to include certain buzzwords such as Linux and open source, to get
+a publisher's (and the potential reader's) attention. The trick is to do that and
+not narrow the scope unduly.<P>
+
+Suggestions for the main book:<P>
+
+<ul>
+<li>Multiplatform GUI development with wxWindows
+<li>wxWindows: an open source multiplatform toolkit
+<li>wxWindows: GUI development for Linux and other platforms
+</ul>
+
+<P>
+Other book titles that a publisher might be interested (but would be distinct projects):<P>
+
+<ul>
+<li>Writing GTK+ Application Using wxWindows
+<li>Migrating MFC Apps to Linux Using wxWindows
+</ul>
+
+<P>
+<hr>
+<P>
<H3><a name="contents">Contents</a></H3>
-This is open to suggestion.<P>
+The following is open to discussion.<P>
-Last year, <a href="mailto:mlorenz@visionx.com">Mike Lorenz</a> of <a href="http://www.visionx.com">VisionX</a>
-suggested this
-<a href="http://www.visionx.com/wx/tutorial_outline.htm">tutorial outline</a>, which could
-be a good starting point.<P>
+<ul>
+<li>Chapter 01: Introduction to wxWindows: history, advocacy, future developments
+<li>Chapter 02: Installing wxWindows (and what tools to use)
+<li>Chapter 03: C++ and wxWindows. Summarises the sorts of constructs used/not used, plus wxString class,
+some conventions. Vadim suggests putting it in 1st chapter but I think it deserves a chapter of its own.
+<li>Chapter 04: Getting started: Hello World. Introduces app class, frames, menus, status bar, message box
+<li>Chapter 05: Basic event handling
+<li>Chapter 06: Frames and menubars. The components of a frame, menubars.
+<li>Chapter 07: Toolbars and status bars
+<li>Chapter 08: Basic controls
+<li>Chapter 09: Common dialogs
+<li>Chapter 10: Custom dialogs and resources (XML + WXR)
+<li>Chapter 11: Drawing on device contexts
+<li>Chapter 12: Handling input (mouse, keyboard, joystick)
+<li>Chapter 14: Sizers
+<li>Chapter 15: Images and bitmaps
+<li>Chapter 16: Clipboard and drag and drop
+<li>Chapter 17: Advanced controls (list,tree,notebook,splitter,wxWizard,wxCalCtrl...)
+<li>Chapter 18: Document/view classes
+<li>Chapter 19: Scrolling
+<li>Chapter 20: MDI
+<li>Chapter 21: Printing
+<li>Chapter 22: Providing help in your applications
+<li>Chapter 23: Strings and internationalization
+<li>Chapter 24: Collection and container classes
+<li>Chapter 25: Memory management and debugging (including wxLog)
+<li>Chapter 26: Run-time class information
+<li>Chapter 27: Advanced event handling (user-defined events, ...)
+<li>Chapter 28: Communication classes, including wxSocket
+<li>Chapter 29: Database classes
+<li>Chapter 30: File and stream classes
+<li>Chapter 31: Configuration classes
+<li>Chapter 32: Time, timers and idle processing
+<li>Chapter 33: Writing multithreading applications
+<li>Chapter 34: Perfecting your UI (Adapting to system settings, accelerators, ...)
+<li>Chapter 35: Platform-specific programming (metafiles, OLE automation, taskbar, ...)
+<li>Chapter 36: Using wxHTML
+<li>Chapter 37: Using wxPython
+<li>Chapter 38: wxBase?
+<li>Appendix: Comparison with other toolkits: MFC, Qt etc.
+</ul>
</font>