Developing Linux Applications with GTK+ and GDK

Author: Eric Harlow List Price: $34.99 Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price ISBN: 0735700214 Publisher: Que (08 February, 1999) Edition: Paperback Sales Rank: 58,144 Average Customer Rating: 3.1 out of 5

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Customer Reviews

* There should be a number of rather large realistic examples - not just dozens of snippets rivaling the "Hello, World's" complexity. In this sense, Harlow's book is fine: there are good examples of real-life programs that could get the programmer going.

* There should be no cheesy stripped down (and ultimately useless) API reference, occupying the last third of a book. This book doesn't make this mistake either.

* API calls described must be presented clearly, with all parameters documented and return values explained. And that's where this book screws it up real bad.

Let me make it clear - it will be almost impossible for you to try any of the smaller examples from the book without having access to the API reference (or another book for that matter). I mean, having an example like:

htable = g_hash_table_new(HashValueKey, HashValueComparator);

how am I supposed to figure out what the type of htable is? And most examples in the book are just like that. This is a serious problem with the book that should've been caught by the editor or by anyone trying to look at the text with a fresh set of eyes.
And it is a pity - this book doesn't violate the two main principles stated above so it could've been the best one on the subject.

Sure, it's not perfect, but I learned a lot years ago from Herb Schildt's books (remember him?) HIS code was fragile as cut glass... but debugging is good practice, and some of his methods were brilliant. (but sloppy)

Eric Harlow is much better. Many of the errors in the code presented (gpointer *data at the end of a callback declaration, when it should be gpointer data, for instance) may well be typographical in nature. I downloaded the example code and built several of the programs with much less difficulty than many console apps I have ported.

Give the man a break. He was the first into the breach, so to speak. If you need a more advanced book, get Havoc Pennington's "GTK+/Gnome Application Programming" and have at it. I have both, and am still learning a lot from them.

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