Re: [Caml-list] Re: A labltk book?

[Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com>]

On Wednesday 17 October 2007 01:36:34 Matt Gushee wrote:
> Could be ... some time ago (2 years, maybe?) I proposed the idea of (me)
> writing a book on LablTk; there was very little response, favorable or
> otherwise, but at least one person thought it would be nice to have a
> book on GUI programming in OCaml, perhaps including LablTk but with
> greater emphasis on LablGTK. Even if I had agreed with the idea, at that
> time I had little experience with (Labl)GTK. But I don't agree with the
> idea: you could write a book about GUI *design*, but that should be
> neither toolkit-specific nor language-specific. On the other hand, a
> book about GUI programming techniques in a specific language will
> probably appeal mainly to people with specific projects in mind, which
> implies that they probably want to learn one good GUI toolkit ... which
> in the case of OCaml would have to be LablGTK.

I'll write OCaml Journal articles covering GUI programming using LablGTK. 
There is already one very nice example in there (Sudoku solver) but there's 
plenty of scope for more complicated applications with more widgets, 
threading and so forth.

> I realize Tk is progressing and making some much-wanted improvements,
> but to me it seems like too little, too late.

I certainly get that feeling but I'm not a Tk man myself.

> As for Jon's idea, sure, great! But I wonder if any major publisher
> would take it on. After all, O'Reilly *has* an introductory OCaml book;
> it would need to be updated and translated, but that's still much easier
> than creating a new one. Yet they don't seem interested in doing that.
> So some brave soul might have to self-publish something.

Actually, I was reading a blog entry recently where someone from O'Reilly 
explicitly stated that they are interested in publishing more books on OCaml. 
You could easily strip out any deprecated stuff from their current 
(unpublished) book and publish it. I would certainly buy a copy...

With the current uptake of OCaml in industry (and the productization of F#), I 
think there will be ample market for OCaml teaching material, including 
books.

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?e