Last year’s survey brought two new titles (Canvas and Beginning Web) to the community, and the third book (Sockets and Networking) is currently being built. It has been suggested that another survey be completed for 2015 to find out what you would like. Please take the time to complete this one-question survey and feel free to suggest titles not on the list.
The survey will be available until Sunday the 11th of January 2015 and I will post the results here when it is complete. You can choose multiple answers.
Feel free to send me a personal message if you have other questions.
I’m betting that I’m the only one in the crowd who chose “Powerpoint” as one of my selections … you just gotta let me know when it’s over if I flew solo on that one, Eugene! ^^
That was probably the other entry I made under an alias ^^ … Just Kidding!
But thanks a bunch, Eugene for sharing that … nice to know that I have at least one ‘soulmate’ out there in XojoLand.
On a serious note, I do both Xojo desktop business applications and all of the executive level Powerpoint presentations for my largest customer. There’s a natural synergy there where communication between the two would provide some options I currently don’t have. If you ever get to writing anything on Powerpoint/Xojo, you’ve got your first customer here.
Thanks for the additional information about using PowerPoint. I wasn’t exactly sure where this would be applied, and you helped me understand it better.
I do not know if this still counts but I also like a book about using “Declares” and “Libs” on the Windows side. I think a lot of people will be interested because in my opinion, there is very little information available on this subject.
Hopefully it will be written with beginner to expert in mind.
[quote=158707:@Chris Verberne]I do not know if this still counts but I also like a book about using “Declares” and “Libs” on the Windows side. I think a lot of people will be interested because in my opinion, there is very little information available on this subject.
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Declares are much the same cross platform since you’re usually declaring into a dynamic library.
Where it gets odd on OS X is declaring into Objective C since it uses a very different syntax.
There’s a ton of useful information here https://www.declaresub.com/ideclare/
Regardless of what the winning topic of your new book will be, Eugene, the Xojo Community will end up the real winner. You have a gift for creating well-structured, easy-to-understand learning tools. I purchased two of your gems … “I Wish I Knew How to Program the Canvas Control with Xojo” and “I Wish I Knew How to Program Excel with Xojo”. Matter of fact, your work on the Canvas Control ought to be mandatory reading for all Xojo programmers who want to exploit the full power of the canvas control and broaden their coding horizons by doing things they never knew were possible.
You have a magic way of taking a rather complex subject and exposing the simplicity in a step-by-step fashion. The way you sequentially build the learning points by “connecting the dots” and allowing the student to digest the concepts with small, bite-sized chunks of knowledge (with relevant examples sprinkled throughout) avoids the usual “gaps” I find in many other training materials that have me racing for Google and crying “WTF, how in hell’s bells did he get from here to there!!!”
What a shame that all my college textbooks were not done in a similar fashion … I might have actually enjoyed that 7-year stretch a whole lot more. Thanks for your efforts, Eugene … I’m here to tell you that they DO make a difference with many of us!
[quote=158726:@Norman Palardy]Where it gets odd on OS X is declaring into Objective C since it uses a very different syntax.
There’s a ton of useful information here https://www.declaresub.com/ideclare/
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Given Charles wrote that many years ago when we were Carbon only (IIRC), is there much useful there with respect to Cocoa declares?
PS I try to avoid writing declares on my own like the plague because it SO time consuming if you don’t know the low level platform API’s … and I don’t!
Thanks for your kind comments Don! Creating this material is enjoyable and handy. LOL, there are many times when I need to go through my own reference material to figure out how I did it. Maybe its just from aging gracefully
Thanks again, as it is nice to hear your thoughts.
Hello Everyone,
Thank for your feedback! As promised here are the results of the survey.
Here is the list of the topics from highest to lowest rank:
Declares (Would be OS dependent)
Object Oriented Programming
Javascript/JSON
Intermediate Web Programming
Component Object Model
Arduino Automation
SQLite for Web
Libre Office
MqSQL for Web
Open Office
Postgres SQL for Web
Windows Installer
Power Point (Windows Only)
Outlook (Windows Only)
There were 14 possible topics and there were optional titles that could be suggested, and there is a good assortment!
Other suggestions that were submitted are the following:
a) Sub Classing This would be a good topic, as there is much that can be performed with sub classing.
b) Third Party Controls and Classes (Monkeybreak, Einhugur, etc.) Although this would be a good topic, I think this would be better handled by the manufacturers at the moment.
c) File I/O beyond text: Serializing Objects Structure encoding, storage, and transmission this is a topic that is interesting.
d) Recipe Book (Intermediate-advanced) What a good idea! There are many times when bits-and-pieces of code are reused, and a recipe book would have these reusable parts.
e) Beautiful GUI design with Xojo using native controls (Cross-Platform) This would be the ultimate book, as everything programmers do is to make a good GUI design.
f) iOS applications (Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced 3 books) With iOS just released, this topic may need a little more time before a book can be written. There seem to be frequent changes and next year may be a better time to consider this topic.
g) Creating Plugins (C/C++) There is a book (although its a little thin) on C/C++ Windows Plugin. I am sure there was something on OS X plugins and I cant seem to find it at the moment.
h) Advanced Reporting There are some third party items which seem to be quite solid products. Might need to explore this a little more.
i) Xojo Script Another important topic that needs attention a good suggestion.
j) SQLite for Desktop - SQLite for Desktop - I am working on completing the updates for this book and I hope to have them ready by around March 2015.
k) Sockets Currently working on this one, and this will be an intermediate-advanced topic.
The book I Wish I Knew How To Program Xojo Sockets is currently being written and it looks like Declares is a topic that fellow programmers would like to see more. The second most favorite topic is Object Oriented Programming. Once the book on Sockets is complete, then it looks like Declares is going to have some attention.
Books on all of those subjects would be great, they would form a great tool to go side-by-side with the Xojo documentation, making a very complete reference for Xojo.
Yes, this information would help support the Xojo information.
LOL, yes this will take quite some time. I have built 13 books so far, and Xojo is always increasing their capability … Lets just say that this is looking like a good hobby in my retirement years
