Programming Web Graphics with Perl & GNU Software (O'Reilly Nutshell) [Paperback]

Shawn P. Wallace (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1999

From access counters and log-report graphs to scientific plots and on-the-fly animated GIFs, graphics scripting is within the grasp of most Web authors. It is a little documented field, however, and the many valuable free libraries and tools available on the Internet remain under-utilized. Programming Web Graphics with Perl & GNU Software is aimed at intermediate and advanced Web users who want to use CGI scripts to generate dynamic graphic content. It will also help to demystify the manipulation of graphics formats for newcomers to the Web.

Programming Web Graphics with Perl & GNU Software takes a practical, resource-like approach to the content. It is not a book about design or aesthetics of Web graphics; its focus is on programming or, more accurately, scripting programs that manipulate graphics file to be published on the Web. Most of the examples in the book use Perl as a scripting language, though the concepts are applicable to any programming language. However, several powerful Perl modules for generating graphics (GD, PerlMagick, GIFgraph) should help position Perl as a major contender for your Web graphics applications. Most of the topics covered in the book are applicable to any platform (NT, Linux, Un*x, MaxOS), with the exception of the chapter detailing the Gnu Image Manipulation Program (a free Adobe Photoshop-like application), which requires a connection to an X server. The focus is always on free software, when it is available.

This book covers the following:

• a tour through the most popular Web graphics file formats by implementing parsers for GIF, JPEG, and PNG files
• descriptions of the PNG, JPEG, and giflib libraries, as well as many other free and proprietary libraries and SDKs
• extensive documentation and examples using the Perl graphics modules GD and GIFgraph, and the Perl interface to the powerful ImageMagick libraries
• documentation on the Gnu Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) and the Perl interface that lets you easily script plug-ins or interface to the GIMP via the Web
• the creation of image maps from data extracted from a database
• the implementation of several new Perl modules for the creation of neatly formatted PostScript files
• details on interfacing to a fax gateway
• reusable recipes for many popular applications such as Web counters and Web cams
• the creation of animated GIFs on-the-fly

One of the key ingredients to the success of the Web is that anyone who wanted to could participate in publishing to the world. This book will take its readers to the next level of publishing to the world: learning to use scripting programs to create dynamic graphics for their Web sited. The information in this book is written in a practical, easy manner with high-quality documentation and useful examples throughout. It is a detailed reference that provides Web designers and programmers and with the information they need to program.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

As a how-to book, Programming Web Graphics with Perl & GNU Software covers a narrow but powerful niche of Web development--on-the-fly graphics generation. It also focuses on the Perl language and its associated free code modules, making the techniques you learn in this book immediately available for free.

Author Shawn P. Wallace begins with a look at the popular image formats on the Web: GIF, PNG, and JPEG. This chapter offers a quick and fascinating demystification of these critical graphics file types. The next chapter discusses the dance between graphics and Web browsers, with a look at CGI, HTML display, color schemes, and other details.

Among the tools discussed in this book is the GD Perl module for working with GIF files, the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), GIFScript, and ImageMagick. The author uses a chessboard simulation application to illustrate how to manipulate graphics dynamically. Some sections focus on graphing, animation, and image maps to illustrate the flexibility of dynamic graphics.

Near the end of the book, the author presents a "Web graphics cookbook"--a collection of examples you can use in your sites that includes a graphical Web counter, a JavaScript rollover menu, image thumbnailing scripts, and more. The author finishes with a discussion of creating and integrating PostScript code.

This guide reads more like a brain dump from the author than a comprehensive discussion of Web graphics; however, there's much to be gleaned from his knowledge. --Stephen W Plain

Review

'...is a cross between a how to manual and an idea book. It will empower readers in the often mystical area of graphic creation and suggest new ways to give web sites lively, dynamic content, all without spending a penny on software. 454 pages are hardly enough to provide a thorough course in every tool mentioned, but in each case there is enough material to lift the reader to basic confidence, and the references to take them further. Although without some knowledge of Perl it might be intimidating, the text should be accessible to the complete graphics novice. Shawn Wallace has written an excellent book on a topic which deserves it."'--Gavin Inglis, news@UK, June 2000

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Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (February 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565924789
• ISBN-13: 978-1565924789
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,497,858 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Definitive coverage of freeware programmable graphics tools, April 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Programming Web Graphics with Perl & GNU Software (O'Reilly Nutshell) (Paperback)

This is not an art book. There are not even any color illustrations. Rather, there is uniquely definitive and comprehensive coverage of the most important freeware graphics tools useful for web development. There is a strong bias toward programmatic tools, those which can be controlled from server-parsed HTML or CGI using Perl, which allow drawing graphics interactively with the user on the fly. One example with source code is a Perl "biorhythm" calculator, where the user enters a birthdate and the web page draws a customized GIF bar chart with a sinusoidal envelope, emulating the coin-operated "biorhythm" machine at the Vince Lombardi Rest Area on I-95 in New Jersey. This basic technique can be used for charts of stock performance, server activity, and any other on-demand drawing. The ImageMagick tool, which can be run from a command line to do batch processing (such as thumbnailing) or through a Perl API, is also well covered, showing how to draw text labels onto images and do other tasks essential to good web practice. The GIMP, a web-friendly freeware clone of Adobe Photoshop, is covered primarily from the point of view of its relatively unknown Perl API, but this is not a book about the GIMP and there are better choices of books (especially those with color) if interactive use of the GIMP is your main concern. However, use of the GIMP to create basic web elements such as flaming marbles or imploding cats is covered. This book stands in a class by itself on its subject matter, and is destined to become one of the classic O'Reilly references. While it does have copious pointers to web information via URLs, the book's most serious deficiency is certainly that it is heavily tied to the current snapshot of available tools, and the freeware tool development pace will doubtlessly necessitate frequent revisions of this book, possibly as often as annually. The author is also to be commended for not flinching from discussions of technical issues where appropriate, such as image compression, interlacing, and the internals of GIF, JPEG, and PNG file formats, but these discussions are not essential to the book if the reader has little interest in technical issues and wants to get right to the cookbook graphics recipes.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Nice, could have been better though...., June 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Programming Web Graphics with Perl & GNU Software (O'Reilly Nutshell) (Paperback)

It's a reasonable start if you want to work with GD, ImageMagick and others, but it's too much a printed version of the manpages. With examples and some tips though. It also adresses GIMP but fails to provide indept info on scripting GIMP.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun stuff in Perl..., August 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Programming Web Graphics with Perl & GNU Software (O'Reilly Nutshell) (Paperback)

I don't know about the rest of you, but I can only stand to grab data out of a text file so many times... I have never done graphics programming before and found this book to be a nice introduction. I did notice that there wasn't a lot of troubleshooting information in the book so if you are experienced programming graphics, this book is probably a waste of your time and $$$, you would be better off busting out your lazerjet and printing the man pages...

Anyway, I really enjoyed this book and plan on using ImageMagick in my next project!

If you want something thats a slight change of pace, give this a try!