The Book of Qt 4: The Art of Building Qt Applications Review

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The Book of Qt 4: The Art of Building Qt Applications ReviewThis book is a fairly standard tutorial on building user interfaces. It covers the basics, and should be sufficient to get most C++ programmers up to speed. However, there are quite a few points in the book where the author hand-waves his way through a process. This can make following the tutorials somewhat confusing and gets in the way of the general understanding of the process. In addition, either because of platform differences or poor testing, some of the examples do not work properly. For example, in the cuteedit2 example in Chapter 4, the buttons for the discard changes dialog have their meaning reversed. On the surface it is hard to tell if this is a bug in the book or in the OS X implementation of QT 4. Finally, many key ideas a mentioned almost in passing (like the use of the tr() function to aid in translations), making it imperative to carefully read every word.
This text pales in comparison to the Hillegass text on Cocoa programming, which could be considered the gold standard of UI programming tutorials. In general, you will be able to get yourself started on Qt programming with this text. However, the lack of quality control will make the experience a little less pleasing than it otherwise could have been.The Book of Qt 4: The Art of Building Qt Applications Overview
Cross-platform development is a kind of holy grail, and Trolltech's Qt toolkit may well be the most promising solution yet to this development challenge. Qt is widely used for the development of GUI applications as well as console tools and servers, and it's especially appealing to programmers who need to write cross-platform applications to run on Linux/Unix, Mac, and Windows machines without having to rewrite for each platform.

The Book of Qt 4 offers an in-depth explanation of Qt 4 that goes beyond the common focus on C++ programming. Author Daniel Molkentin uses practical examples to explain features like the signal/slot concept and the event system, as he guides you through developing applications with and without Qt's graphical GUI builder, Qt Designer. And as a core KDE developer, Molkentin's head is full of real-world problems and solutions that he peppers liberally throughout The Book of Qt 4, making it a resource that you'll consult time and again. You'll find coverage of:

Tools for creating dialogs
GUI design with the Qt Designer
Widget layout and dialog construction
Data visualization using Qt's model/view concept
The QtSql module and the graphics library Arthur
File handling, XML, processes, and network connections
Databases and threading
Event handling and using drag and drop
Internationalization and debugging

As well as lots of useful hints on how to use Qt's datatypes, containers, and algorithms and how to develop user-friendly applications.

Whether you're already a Qt developer or you're just considering Qt for cross-platform development, you'll find The Book of Qt 4 to be indispensable.


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Foundations of GTK+ Development (Expert's Voice in Open Source) Review

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Foundations of GTK+ Development (Expert's Voice in Open Source) ReviewI wanted to like this book, but unfortunately I cannot in good conscience give it 5 stars as the other reviewers have.
I will say the book is well organized and is definitely useful as a starting point for studying GTK+ and the author clearly has a great deal of knowledge about the subject. But what should have been the main strength of the book that differentiates it from the mostly inadequate online tutorials is the author conveying to the reader straightforward explanations of important concepts and insider tips and tricks that can only come from extensive experience. He tries to do this, but I found many of his explanations ambiguous and confusing. Important terminology was left undefined or poorly defined which contributed to the confusion.
The author dutifully plods through a presentation of most of the main widgets, providing essentially the same trivial example code each time with minor variations- basically just showing how to put the widget onscreen. But there was a frustrating lack of material devoted to how to use signals and events to perform any useful tasks. The vast majority of the functionality of any GUI application lies in its event handlers and callback functions. After reading this book, you will be able to prototype the GUI for your application, but you may be at a loss to make it actually do something.
By Ch.3 and 4, the same example code has been replicated so many times that there is an increasing frequency of copy-paste errors that gradually becomes very annoying. Also, there are many typos in the text. The lack of editorial oversight and technical review on the part of the publisher combined with the author's lack of attention to detail and failures in exposition has created a book that I can only marginally recommend- mostly because all of the other books that have been published on GTK+ are either out of date or out of print, so this book seems to be the winner by default.Foundations of GTK+ Development (Expert's Voice in Open Source) OverviewThere are only two mainstream solutions for building the graphical interface of Linux-based desktop applications, and GTK+ (GIMP Toolkit) is one of them. As the standard for the GNOME and XFCE desktop environments, it is a necessary technology for all Linux programmers. Foundations of GTK+ Development guides the reader through the complexities of GTK+, laying the groundwork that allows the reader to make the leap from novice to professional. Beginning with an overview of key topics such as widget choice, placement, and behavior, readers move on to learn about advanced issues such as custom widget creation. Replete with real-world examples, the developer can quickly take advantages of the concepts presented within to begin building his own projects.

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C++ GUI Programming with Qt 4 (2nd Edition) (Prentice Hall Open Source Software Development Series) Review

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C++ GUI Programming with Qt 4 (2nd Edition) (Prentice Hall Open Source Software Development Series) ReviewThis book contains the most thorough coverage of the many functionalities in Qt. The second edition is also the most current of all the books (a fleeting feature, but noteworthy depending on what you want to learn). Its well written and after over 1 year of working with the book I have yet to find any erroneous information of code.
We own all of the Qt books, but we use this one for teaching Qt in our Internship program. The Basic Qt Section starts simple and builds up from individual widgets and signals/slots to dialogs to windows to the full fancy application functionality (menus, toolbars, docking objects, tabs, MDI windows) that Qt makes pretty effortless in a number of ways.
The book covers the very powerful Model-View structure very well. We have also benefitted from the XML, layout and networking chapters. The book has also been of help in dealing with look and feel issues (stylesheets and subclassing QStyle). It also covers a number of fascinating topics that I've read about but just never used professionally, such as plug-ins.
Some criticized its style of covering the development and structure of a small (spreadsheet-type) application. This is actually the most beneficial way to learn how to use the library since you wind up with the ability to see how the pieces interact with each other. Its easy to show how a QAction works; showing how to make it flow through an MDI to the right window, however, is much easier in a whole application context. This book is not a book on computer science (algorithms, etc); its certainly a book on the specifics of how to work with the Qt library and its also a book on application development generally. The downloadable code from InformIT is a nice bonus.
The Qt library, like any actively developed library, is constantly evolving so it should be no surprise that there are some features added since publication. I think its more a positive about Qt than a negative about the book. Each chapter is well organized, with each chapter covering one of the many aspects of Qt programming. Its impossible to cover every class and method because the Qt library is huge. This book clocks in at over 700 pages and, in my opinion, more than hits the highlights. I have no problem hitting the web or documentation for more in depth info. But with this book, I feel like I've got enough background to tackle the issues.
Lastly, in response to those who criticize Qt: I have tried a number of the other major libraries and I have found nothing better for GUI than Qt. But Qt covers so much more. It provides data types and containers (eg QString, QList, QHash), model-view-controller GUI, networking, regular expressions, signals-slots. I've moved my apps from using a mix of MFC, boost, and other libraries to just using Qt. Qt is highly consistent and all data can be moved from one class to the next with minimal effort. It truly is the best available and this is easily our book of choice for training with the Qt library.C++ GUI Programming with Qt 4 (2nd Edition) (Prentice Hall Open Source Software Development Series) Overview
The Only Official, Best-Practice Guide to Qt 4.3 Programming
Using Trolltech's Qt you can build industrial-strength C++ applications that run natively on Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS X, and embedded Linux without source code changes. Now, two Trolltech insiders have written a start-to-finish guide to getting outstanding results with the latest version of Qt: Qt 4.3.

Packed with realistic examples and in-depth advice, this is the book Trolltech uses to teach Qt to its own new hires. Extensively revised and expanded, it reveals today's best Qt programming patterns for everything from implementing model/view architecture to using Qt 4.3's improved graphics support. You'll find proven solutions for virtually every GUI development task, as well as sophisticated techniques for providing database access, integrating XML, using subclassing, composition, and more. Whether you're new to Qt or upgrading from an older version, this book can help you accomplish everything that Qt 4.3 makes possible.

Completely updated throughout, with significant new coverage of databases, XML, and Qtopia embedded programming

Covers all Qt 4.2/4.3 changes, including Windows Vista support, native CSS support for widget styling, and SVG file generation

Contains separate 2D and 3D chapters, coverage of Qt 4.3's new graphics view classes, and an introduction to QPainter's OpenGL back-end

Includes new chapters on look-and-feel customization and application scripting

Illustrates Qt 4's model/view architecture, plugin support, layout management, event processing, container classes, and much more

Presents advanced techniques covered in no other book—from creating plugins to interfacing with native APIs

Includes a new appendix on Qt Jambi, the new Java version of Qt


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Real World Instrumentation with Python: Automated Data Acquisition and Control Systems Review

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Real World Instrumentation with Python: Automated Data Acquisition and Control Systems ReviewThis a comprehensive handbook for Interfacing Instrumentation With Computers and Programming of Data Acquisition, Analysis and Display. This extensive introduction and cookbook approach will be invaluable to a number of audiences, including: 1. Laboratory Scientists for whom the computer is a tool to perform their research in domains ranging from psychophysiology to high-energy physics, 2. Control System and Process Plant Engineers who need to interface, control and data log from a variety of equipment in a reliable manner, 3. Embedded System Engineers and Designers who need an understanding of interfacing to a variety of equipment and developing application programs for data analysis and control, and 4. Hobbyists and Makers who may have experimented with Arduino and simple Open Source hardware who now need to make computers work in a real application (or who may wish to interface a conventional PC to other hardware).
This book develops the background for Interfacing and Programming Computers in all Real-Time Applications. It does much more than it claims in being a programming manual for Python in Instrumentation Applications. The background needed to understood what Instrumentation is and how it is used in a variety of applications is provided; this handbook also goes into the essential Electronics for all sorts of computer and instrumentation interfaces; a self-sufficient Python Programming tutorial is provided, the Tools and Methods of hardware interfacing and testing is given; all of these topics are well covered in sufficient detail for the novice in addition to the extensive tutorial on Programming Data Acquisition, Analysis, Logging and Graphical Display promised in the title.
I would have welcomed a similar book on interfacing and programming minicomputers and early microprocessor systems to laboratory systems in my university days, and with the current proliferation of real-time embedded applications, hobbyists and makers and inexpensive data-acquisition hardware the value of this handbook is multiplied many-fold.
Ira Laefsky, MSE/MBA
IT & HCI Consultant and Researcher
formerly on the Senior Consulting Staff of Arthur D. Little, Inc. and Digital Equipment CorporationReal World Instrumentation with Python: Automated Data Acquisition and Control Systems Overview
Learn how to develop your own applications to monitor or control instrumentation hardware. Whether you need to acquire data from a device or automate its functions, this practical book shows you how to use Python's rapid development capabilities to build interfaces that include everything from software to wiring. You get step-by-step instructions, clear examples, and hands-on tips for interfacing a PC to a variety of devices.

Use the book's hardware survey to identify the interface type for your particular device, and then follow detailed examples to develop an interface with Python and C. Organized by interface type, data processing activities, and user interface implementations, this book is for anyone who works with instrumentation, robotics, data acquisition, or process control.

Understand how to define the scope of an application and determine the algorithms necessary, and why it's important
Learn how to use industry-standard interfaces such as RS-232, RS-485, and GPIB
Create low-level extension modules in C to interface Python with a variety of hardware and test instruments
Explore the console, curses, TkInter, and wxPython for graphical and text-based user interfaces
Use open source software tools and libraries to reduce costs and avoid implementing functionality from scratch


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