San Francisco, CA – April 16, 2004 – An increasing number of developers worldwide are interested in GNOME, the user-friendly GUI and desktop development platform for UNIX and Linux. However, the development documentation for GNOME, while voluminous, is intimidating to a developer not wholly familiar with the GNOME development process. To help rectify this situation, No Starch Press and the GNOME Foundation announce the release of The Official GNOME 2 Developers Guide, the first English-language book about developing with GNOME 2. With this book, current and would-be GNOME developers can come up to speed with the building blocks of GNOME development: GLib, GTK, and the GNOME API’s.
The GNOME 2 Developer’s Guide gives the reader a solid introduction to these GNOME building blocks and teaches the reader how to fully understand the various libraries and API’s that are used to build GNOME applications:
- Use the GTK widget set to design user-friendly interfaces
- Learn the GNOME framework, extension widgets, and GConf to build graphical applications
- Discover the GNOME virtual file system (GNOMEVFS), a powerful means of navigating the system
- Learn the GLib standard data structures, algorithms, utilities, and the GObject system
- Point and click with Glade and libglade for GNOME-style rapid application development
- Learn the roles of pkg-config, GNU Autotools, and other software building automation tools
This book contains numerous well-annotated examples that clearly demonstrate each GNOME feature, with an accompanying reference section to support each topic. A detailed glossary and extensive index round out the book, making it a necessary addition to every GNOME developer’s library.
“We’re very happy that No Starch Press is publishing this book,” said Timothy Ney, GNOME Foundation executive director. “GNOME deployment and development has been growing rapidly around the globe. This book will be useful to developers who are new to GNOME, as well as those who have experience with the development platform.”
The GNOME community has been very involved with the creation of this book. Miguel de Icaza, GNOME Project founder, contributed the foreword to the book, and Michael Meeks, a respected GNOME developer, technically reviewed the book for accuracy. Moreover, No Starch Press will be donating a portion of the proceeds from sales of the book to the GNOME Foundation. “We’re pleased to have the support of the GNOME Foundation on this project,” explains No Starch Press publisher William Pollock, “and to be able to offer them our support in return.”
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Matthias Warkus has been using Linux since the age of sixteen. He has worked with the GNOME Foundation to produce the German localization of GNOME, published articles and lectured on GNOME, and spent considerable time working on the GNOME source code.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Brian Ward translated The Official GNOME 2 Developer’s Guide from the original German, updating and adding to the book in the process. Ward has been working with Linux since 1993 and has a Ph.D. in computer science from The University of Chicago. He is author of the Linux Kernel-HOWTO, How Linux Works (No Starch Press), The Book of VMware (No Starch Press), and The Linux Problem Solver (No Starch Press).
ABOUT NO STARCH PRESS
Since 1994, No Starch Press has published unique books on computing, with a focus on Open Source, security, hacking, web development, programming, gaming, and alternative operating systems. Our titles have personality, our authors are passionate, and our books tackle topics that people care about.
ABOUT THE GNOME FOUNDATION
The GNOME Project is an effort to create a complete, free and easy-to-use desktop environment for users, as well as a powerful application development framework for software developers. GNOME is part of the GNU Project, and is Free Software. The GNOME Foundation works to further the goal of the GNOME Project: to create a computing platform for use by the general public that is completely free software.