Beginning GTK+ and GNOME [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

by Peter Wright (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Linux continues to go from strength to strength, not only taking 20% of the server market but becoming an increasingly popular choice as a standalone desktop platform. The hot issue for the future of Linux is building a graphical front end to compete directly with Windows. Thankfully, the source code is open and available for download and everything about the Graphical User Interface (GUI) is programmable.

This book teaches you how to do it using the GNOME architecture

(GNU Network Object Model Environment) and GTK+ - the interface which GNOME applications use to interact with the user.

From the Publisher
Beginning GTK+/GNOME is aimed Programmers who are excited by the infinite possibilities offered by the open source user interface, as opposed to the Windows 'any color you want so long as its black' approach.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 613 pages
• Publisher: Peer Information; 1st edition (May 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1861003811
• ISBN-13: 978-1861003812
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,232,972 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another good Wrox book, June 21, 2000

By	R. Krause (Tempe, AZ) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is well written and on a whole well executed. The two sample projects that he walks you through I thought were excellent additions to the book. The author also gives you a brief background of the GNOME project and how it is different from KDE which uses QT.

One thing I did not like about this book was the fact he does not give any mention to GTK-- which is the C++ kit or any of the many other languages that can take advantage of GTK beyond acknowledging it's existance. It would have been really nice for this book to have had a chapter on other languages and GTK.

Also the chapter on the rapid application development (AKA RAD) tool GLADE was rather skimpy.

However if you are a C programmer looking for a good GTK book, look no further.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well written and diverse, June 7, 2000

By	Jonathan Butler "zenblaster" (Mount Pleasant, SC United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is very easy to read thanks mainly to the author but also to a nice font and layout. The examples are very helpful and cover a broad range of areas within GTK and GNOME programming. Bottom line would be the quality of writing and the diverse coverage. I have 5 GTK/GNOME books, and I like this one the best.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book so far on GTK+/GNOME Programming, October 5, 2000

By	Richard Ibbotson, Sheffield Linux User Group (Sheffield, UK,) - See all my reviews

From the beginning you get a strong sense of being directly in touch with the subject. The authors ideas and his writing style are easy to understand and make for interesting reading if you want to know more about GNOME programming methods. The welcome at the front of the book says it all and it gives a clear explanation of any introductory topics that may be helpful before progressing into the later chapters. Even the Free Software Foundation and Richard Stallman are mentioned in order to help you to understand some basic ideas. The rest of the book goes into some detail about libraries, widgets and other parts of the sophisticated programming language that GNOME really is. Chapter two starts out with thirty pages of introduction to Glib. All of the introductory subjects that you won't see anywhere else are here and can be easily understood. Next is introducing GTK+. This is enormously useful and gives some simple ideas about code and how to use it properly. The next part of the book goes into the subject of controlling the user interface layout. It was at about this point that I was beginning to think something like "I wonder why you can't get visual basic books that are as good as this ?" Also, "It would have cost me thousands of dollars to have done this with MS Windows programming tools". I thought that the last two chapters which are about gIDE and Glade were the best part of the book. There's also the advantage of being able to subscribe to a GNOME internet list to ask the sort of questions that you wouldn't have been able to ask before you read the book. If you haven't done much with GTK+ then do go ahead and buy this book. Your world will change!