Writing Gnome Applications [Paperback]

John R. Sheets (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 21, 2000

GNOME is coming of age, offering developers the opportunity to write remarkably powerful graphical applications for Linux and other platforms, using 100% open-source technology. But until now, finding detailed, practical information for GNOME development has been extremely difficult. Writing GNOME Applications fills the gap, giving developers expert guidance and extensive sample code that demonstrates exactly how GNOME works, and how to make the most of it. Expert GNOME developer John R. Sheets begins by introducing the GNOME project and all of the tools that go with it, including editors, compilers, debuggers, autoconf, automake, and how GNOME builds on the X Window System. The book's across-the-board coverage includes GTK+, Glib, the GNOME Build Environment, and each key element of a GNOME interface, including menus and toolbars, dialogs, and the GnomeMDI multiple document interface. Sheets reviews session management, explains how graphics are implemented in GNOME, and reviews the GNOME Canvas. He demonstrates how to make the most of GNOME's internationalization features, and shows how to use -- and even write -- GNOME documentation. For all developers who want to build graphical applications for Linux.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

The process of authoring Writing GNOME Applications was very organic, much like the process of an open source project like GNOME. I started off with a huge, ambitious goal to cover everything under the sun (or toadstool as the case may be), but eventually whittled my ideas down to a clearer, more focused presentation than would have occured to me in the early stages. Like many software projects, this book took on a personality of its own.

GNOME's perpetual undercurrent of change didn't make it any easier to plan out a book. With the GNOME 1.2 platform constantly on the verge of release, and my deadline hovering ever closer, I had to live on the edge a bit, monitoring the many helpful mailing lists, and writing about features that I wasn't sure would be released in time for the book. In particular, the section about the gdk-pixbuf library was a gamble, since it didn't exist as part of the GNOME 1.0 platform, but was one of the shining stars of the new GNOME 1.2 platform. In order to have a cutting-edge book, I needed to cover gdk-pixbuf, but if the book went to press before the API stablized, I could end up with a disaster on my hands.

Fortunately, GNOME 1.2 hit the streets a few short weeks before the book went into the final copyediting stage, and I was able to send it off with a clear conscience.

My fervent hope is that this book will be useful to people as a learning tool, and as a reference guide. I've done my best to offer clear descriptions of how things work, while at the same time provide complete API listings and enough hands-on examples to give you a good intuitive feel for things.

Feel free to contact me and let me know what you think about the book. I plan to maintain this book as if it were an ongoing software project (at openbooks.sourceforge.net) and continue to track the GNOME platform as it evolves.

Thanks, John R. Sheets

From the Back Cover

Writing GNOME Applications will help Linux programmers learn the basics of GNOME and understand how to write real-world applications using this important programming environment. Focusing on the essentials, this book guides you through GNOME's fundamental elements and explains how and why these elements function as they do. Rather than serving as an exhaustive reference, the book offers detailed discussion on the most important function calls, demonstrating how to put them to work in application development.

You will also find important background on UNIX and the X Window System, upon which GNOME is based. Writing GNOME Applications also presents the essentials of GTK+, GNOME's GUI toolkit. Featuring GNOME 1.2, the latest version, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the GNOME development environment and then discusses in detail such vital GNOME programming topics as:

* Menus and toolbars, focusing on the GTK+ and GNOME menu systems
* Dialogs, featuring the GnomeDialog Widget
* GNOME MDI
* Session management
* Graphics, including X Window graphics, GdkRGB, Libart, and GdkPixbuf
* The GNOME canvas for scrolling, mouse control, and grabbing, dragging, and dropping
* Documentation, focusing on HTML help systems for applications

Sample applications throughout the book illustrate how these elements function in practice. You will come away from this book with a solid grounding in GNOME fundamentals and the knowledge you need to write a complete GNOME application from front to back. 0201657910B04062001

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1st edition (September 21, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201657910
• ISBN-13: 978-0201657913
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,250,065 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointment, May 12, 2001

By 

zack (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Writing Gnome Applications (Paperback)

Do NOT get this book! It's not worth your time. It's hard to describe how disappointed I was after reading this book. I'm not talking about the style with which the author presents his ideas (which is pretty good) but about the contents. GNOME stands for GNU Network Object Model Environment, which implies that CORBA is a big part of it. This book doesn't talk about ORBit, OAF or Bonobo at all (which are the libraries that implement CORBA environment in GNOME). I'm not sure how this book could even be named "Writing GNOME Applications". It doesn't talk about gconf, bonobo, gnorba, oaf, pango etc. All that, wouldn't be probably such a big problem because none of the books available today talks about those technologies. What made this book so unbearable in my eyes is the fact that author omits the concept of packing widgets!! You will NOT be able to write ANY useful application after reading this book. How can you write any graphical application with one widget? You can't. Oh, and author doesn't talk about creating widgets either. In conclusion, after reading this book you won't be able to write widgets, you won't be able to place more than one widget in your application, you won't be able to write any GNOME specific application, you won't be able to write a GTK+ application and you won't have a clue what the new and exciting technologies in GNOME are all about.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The beginner's must have..., November 5, 2000

By 

Jaka Mocnik (Ljubljana, Slovenia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Writing Gnome Applications (Paperback)

This is a book aimed mainly at the uninitiated in the world of UNIX and X-Window programming. It is, however, necessary that the reader has the basic knowledge of C programming.

In the beginning the book presents the reader with an overview of basic concepts of UNIX, X-Window system programming and the GLib and GTK+ libraries which are the foundations of GNOME libraries. For an in-depth understanding of these topics, further reading is necessary, but for the purposes of this book, they are covered well enough.

The reader is then provided with a thorough description of the GNOME libraries, especially the UI framework and with special emphasis on more complicated sections like the GNOME canvas, MDI and session management, which have chapters dedicated solely to them. It also discusses a lot of graphics related stuff including latest additions to GNOME like the gdk-pixbuf library which replaces the deprecated imlib. Throughout the book all the important and hard-to-understand issues are very well illustrated with example source code.

Yet another strong side of the book is the discussion of the GNU build system, which can be quite cryptic for the newcomers and migrants from the Windows world.

One of its weak points is the rather spartan coverage of the help system and preparation of documentation which tend to be the weak sides of most applications and would therefore require a better description.

To sum it up: an experienced UNIX programmer would perhaps rather use another, more reference-like book, but for a beginner that would like to get familiar with the world of GNOME programming as quickly and as painlessly as possible, this book is a must have!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Use by undergraduate computer science majors, November 22, 2000

By 

John A Cross (Indiana, PA, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Writing Gnome Applications (Paperback)

This book has an easy reading style that supports the almost "hobby" or "fan club" interest of some of my undergraduate computer science students. The author, John Sheets, did what he set out to do: "My fervent hope is that this book will be useful to people as a learning tool, and as a reference guide. I've done my best to offer clear descriptions of how things work, while at the same time provide complete API listings and enough hands-on examples to give you a good intuitive feel for things."

This book is informative, yet straightforward. It is ambitious, but there is enough detail to get somewhere without getting lost in deadly unstated details. The author is also open to interaction with readers in the amazing and delightful nature of people who actively pursue projects like this and change the world along the way. I expect that readers will value the attitude expressed by the author that this book needs to be treated as an ongoing, evolving software project. The book in its current form is very good. With the hopes and attitude expressed by the author, it is something that I will recommend to my students who are capable and interested in GNOME. Without meeting John Sheets personally, I added a 5th star to my rating because I liked his attitude and his style.