Author: Clif Flynt
Publisher: Academic Press Professional/Morgan Kaufman [L1 ]
Publication date: December 1998 ISBN: 0122612051 Pages: 698 + CDROM Price: 49.95 US WWW book information: http://www.msen.com/~clif/RealProgrammer.html
This book is designed to be a general Tcl/Tk reference and tutorial for the experienced programmer. Introduces the syntax for most commands, and discusses how the commands can be used. Topics covered include namespaces, packages, building mega-widgets, writing extensions, extending the html library, an overview of existing tools and extensions, and tips for debugging and writing better Tcl code. There are "real world" chapters on-line [L2 ].
The CD-ROM includes a set of Tcl/Tk tutorials (to augment the tutorial information in the book), a set of chapters on real world Tcl/Tk applications, Tcl/Tk distributions for MS-Windows, Mac and Unix, extensions for MS-Windows, Mac and Unix, man pages in html, Tcl Engineering and Style guides, and a bit more.
Not a bad book from a tutorial point of view, but it has the worst index I've ever seen in a technical book. Totally useless for reference purposes.
Clif Flynt, Jan 17, 2001: I'm starting work on the second edition of "Tcl/Tk for Real Programmers", and I'd appreciate a note from anyone with comments pro or con about the book so I can address failings and maybe keep the good parts. mailto:[email protected]
LV: Sorry, but I still haven't had the privilege of using the first edition, so I don't know what to recommend.
Clif Flynt: The first edition of the book had 2 indexes - one "normal" one that listed all the topic keywords, and a second index of Tcl commands that were used in examples. This indexed sample usage of the commands.
I'm wondering if the previous reviewer didn't realize that there were two indexes and tried to find topics in the example usage index.
The next edition (to be titled: BOOK: Tcl/Tk: A Developer's Guide) will use some typography to distinguish the two indices better.
escargo 10 Jan 2003 - I seem to remember an emacs manual that had three indexes. If memory serves, there was a concept index, a topical keyword index, and an index of function names and variable names. Depending on what you wanted to find, it did allow pinpointing the item relatively easy.