Average Customer Review: 
| Easy read introduction to GNOME programming | |
The author full fills his goal of giving an good introduction on how to write basic application for GNOME - going from makefiles over the GTK+ toolkit to the GNOME canvas as well as how to internationalize applications. This is an easy read, but personally I would like to have the code fragments placed closer to the text or on the opposite side, it has always irrated me when I have to move forward or backward to check out code which is referenced in the text.This is a very nice introduction, but I am missing information about Orbit and how to use the ORB in my application or be used from other application. If you are experience GUI (C/C++) programmers from the X11/Motif/KDE background this will be very easy reading (too).
| Use by undergraduate computer science majors | |
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.
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