Customer Reviews

The Tomes of Delphi 3: Win32 Graphical Api

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Like a fool, I bought this book in spite of the many negative reviews on this page. I was sorely disappointed. As the other reviewers have said, if you can read Visual Basic and you have MSDN, you don't need this book. The examples are beyond useless. The writing is disjoined and poor. Basically, this thing is nothing but a very expensive paper weight.

Is this a tome? I was expecting deep subject coverage. What we have instead is a reproduction of the API docs. Does that a tome make? I think not. What's missing? Complex examples. Real-world examples (who creates windows with API calls when we have TForm?). Undocumented insights behind the APIs -- things you can't find in MSDN or the Platform SDK. More than anything, this book highlights the bloody lack of good Delphi books. This one is definitely a pass.

This book is no tome, unless 'tome' has come to mean a regurgitation of something someone else wrote. The examples are beyond bad. Many are lifted directly from the MSDN and Borland help (translated to Pascal, of course). Delphi Developer's Guide by Pancheco and Texeria is much better.

This book is redundant to a fault. It repeats what is already in the Win32 SDK documentation, merely "translating" it to Pascal on the way. I was expecting alot of "how-to" rather than a mere C-to-Pascal Win32 reference. Also, the writing is redundantly awful. This is very nearly the worst written technical book I've ever had the misfortune to come across.

Absolutely essential. This is what Borland should have done in the first place. I don't go a day without using either this book or the other Tomes book. It covers much more than graphics; things like window placement, icons, palettes, text output, and just about any other visual output function is covered in this book.

Trust me, if you do anything more than loading graphics into a TImage, you'll need this book....I didn't find any problems with any examples, both recompiling or "off the shelf". These guys had great examples in the first Tomes (only found problems with one or two), and it's obvious that they spent the same amount of time making the examples in this book work. They might not all be real world type examples, but at least they show you how to call the API function correctly, which is more than you would get through a newsgroup or mailing list. It's a shame that some people jump to conclusions too quickly.

Get this book. Trust me, well worth your money. Buyer beware indeed...beware if you don't buy this book! You'll be lost and sorry without it!

As the other reviewers have pointed out, this book is mostly a rehash of the Win32 help files and the stuff in Microsoft Developer Network. The examples listes are either so similar to MSDN as to be useless or too simplistic to be useful. Worse yet, the book focuses on showing things you'd never do in a real application (e.g., create a window using API calls rather than letting Delphi's VCL do it for you). And to add insult to injury, these guys do not write well. The prose is sophmoric and befuddled. Don't waste your time with this one. Get Cantu's book or Pancheco's book, they're much better.

All the info in this book can be found in the Win32 API help files and in MSDN. Many of the examples in this book are so similiar to their counterparts in MSDN that they add no value whatsoever. The topics presented herein are covered in very little depth at all -- the book is essentially a regurgitation of the API docs. Cannot recommend this one. Get Cantu's Mastering Delphi instead. It's much better and is actually written well, unlike this book.

I didn't think I really got my money's worth on this one. For the price paid I expected a lot more than a hackneyed translation of the graphics API. For one thing, all the examples use 8 bit graphics -- something that was passe when the book first came out and something that's certainly passe now. For another, there isn't much depth here. Many of the examples are overly simple. Last, there's too much repetition. Do we really need every graphics-related record structure repeated multiple times? I would return this one, but I've waited too long. Don't be like me -- don't waste your money on this one.

If you are already a reasonably competent Windows developer, you do not need this book. It only builds (slightly ) on what's already in MSDN and the online docs, as other reviewers have pointed out. To make matters worse, it's not written well. I found the narrative boring and bland - to a fault. Many of the examples are quite similar to those in MSDN, especially the Visual Basic examples in MSDN. If you have those examples, this book really doesn't offer much value to you.

Couldn't help but notice the obvious similarities between this book and the examples in MSDN and the Platform SDK. If you have either of these, I don't know why you'd need this book. I bought it thinking I'd get expert advice and insights. All it really is is a rehash of what's publicly available from MS anyway.