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rdc · Post by **rdc** » Jun 02, 2006 12:53

Just a quick update. The work on the book is progressing. I am currently working on Chapter 9, Pointers. Right now the book is about 80 pages and I am probably a third or so of the way through. I'll update the link when I finish this chapter.

My daughter was in the hospital last week. She had to have her spleen removed and there were a few complications, so I didn't get much done last week, and this week has been slow going as well. She is home now and doing better, so I should be able to get back on track with my schedule.

When will I get the first draft done? When its done. :) The wait should be worth it though. Some of the things I will covering are all the data types, symbolic types, composite types, Unicode, file handling, sub and functions, creating dlls and libs, intros to using some of the third party libraries and a bunch more.

The book should be a fairly complete guide on using FreeBasic. I have been comparing my work to some of the retail beginner's guides, and I have to tell you, I think my book will out-do them in most cases. :) Just hang in there for a little while longer.

anonymous1337 · Post by **anonymous1337** » Jun 02, 2006 13:23

Gotcha! Thanks for updating! Glad your daughter's back home :P. It'd be a mess if something happened x_x;;

80 pages? Niice! This day had to come. A community like ours, where we all work together and are all great friends, had to reach this point. The point where we out-do other people and their communities lol :P (Let's be zealots, jk)

sleepy · Post by **sleepy** » Jun 06, 2006 8:02

rdc

First of all this book is a long time coming. I drew a complete blank when it came to using the C runtime library and your chapter cleared a lot of things up. I did notice something on page 44 Listing 5.2 when you broke down the line you forgot to describe the "cdecl" command and I couldn't find it anywhere else in the book. It is kind of a trivial find but it was a sort of a "hiccup" for a while until I went back to the FB manual.

I also woder if in a future chapter you wer going to go into library files in a little more detail like creating one. I await in anticipation.

Everything after your daughter gets better, and it is my hope she does.

Thanks again

rdc · Post by **rdc** » Jun 06, 2006 13:17

Thanks guys for the kind words. My daughter is doing quite well now, thank you.

@Sleepy: I am glad to see the info in the book helped. Thanks for catching the cdecl. I meant to add the passing types but overlooked it. I'll add it to the chapter.

@anonymous1337: Kill the infidels!! :)

relsoft · Post by **relsoft** » Jun 06, 2006 14:01

How about distributing the book in as many formats as possible?

Number one on my list is CHM. :*)

aetherFox · Post by **aetherFox** » Jun 06, 2006 18:42

Reminds me of the book I started a year ago and never finished (Allegro and Freebasic programming, I actually began work on it again). I like what you have so far, make sure to let as many proof-read it. I'll be happy to help, let me know.

As for lulu, I couldn't recommend it more. It's a -fantastic- service, and I've had some stuff done on it. Make sure your artwork is at least 300 dpi and you're sorted.

tunginobi · Post by **tunginobi** » Jun 07, 2006 3:37

relsoft wrote:How about distributing the book in as many formats as possible?

Number one on my list is CHM. :*)

CHM: Microsoft Compressed HTML Help file. As in MS's proprietary format, for which tools on Linux don't have 100% support of. Can't recommend it.

Why not just a plain zipped-up set of HTML docs and images?

rdc · Post by **rdc** » Jun 07, 2006 12:10

Once I get it done and ready to go, I am going to see about exporting it to html. Once it is in html, it would be fairly easy to convert it to chm.

relsoft · Post by **relsoft** » Jun 07, 2006 12:44

tunginobi wrote:
relsoft wrote:How about distributing the book in as many formats as possible?
Number one on my list is CHM. :*)
CHM: Microsoft Compressed HTML Help file. As in MS's proprietary format, for which tools on Linux don't have 100% support of. Can't recommend it.

Why not just a plain zipped-up set of HTML docs and images?

Bolded.

VirusScanner · Post by **VirusScanner** » Jun 07, 2006 21:19

I like CHM because it's easier than downloading a ton of HTML files (I'm also lazy and don't like unzipping them :P), but I'm aware that they don't exactly work well with linux. I like the "as many formats as possible" idea, because although they are "professional", I hate PDFs

rdc · Post by **rdc** » Jun 08, 2006 21:03

I have updated the book with a chapter on pointers. See link in first post.

rdc · Post by **rdc** » Jun 09, 2006 16:25

While I was at LuLu getting the cover templates, I did a quick calc on the cost of the book using 300 pages (the book will be less), paperback with perfect binding using their book calculator. Keeping in mind that this is an estimate only, and subject to change of course, the cost of the book will be less than $20.00 US. For a technical book, that is pretty darn cheap, at least here in the US.

stylin · Post by **stylin** » Jun 09, 2006 19:30

Cool. Great work. $20 is rediculously cheap; I'll be buying a copy. I want mine signed, too. :)

Deleter · Post by **Deleter** » Jun 09, 2006 19:50

yeah, $20 would be sweet...I already own a lot of computer progamming books, and the cheapest one was like $15 after sales...all the others where from $30-$60 with the majority in the $40-$50 range. No doubts that I'll be buying this one. :)

rdc · Post by **rdc** » Jun 09, 2006 20:49

stylin wrote:Cool. Great work. $20 is rediculously cheap; I'll be buying a copy. I want mine signed, too. :)

Heh. I will have to figure out something on that. :)