chuq@plaid.UUCP (02/08/87)
The Magic of Macintosh: Programming Graphics and Sound by William Twitty (Scott, Foresman & Company, $19.95) is a book aimed at a beginning to intermediate Mac programmer interested in learning how to use the special capabilities of the Mac. No specific experience in Graphics or Sounds Generation is assumed. The book is written for MacPascal, but the code is clear and should be easily converted to any Pascal, and with a little knowledge to other languages as well. The book is split into three sections. The first half of the book is an introduction to general concepts of graphic programming, starting with drawing a line and building to drawing smooth curves, splines, and eventually tying everything together into an object oriented drawing program -- similar to a very stripped down MacDraw. The second section talks about fractals and implements a couple of fractal drawing programs. The final section, about a third of the book, discusses using the sound generator, from a simple beep to a four voice sound generator. As an introduction, this book is pretty good, but I found it to be too general for my tastes -- a case of a lot of sizzle and very little steak. The first section crams in a LOT of material, including a fair amount of theoretical background on some operations. At the same time, shoving all of that in to a relatively small space means that lots of other things were either glossed over or ignored. By the end of the section you can draw lines and curves, build simple objects and rotate them, but I never felt it was all tied together. There are many other aspects of graphics that weren't covered (a major one for me, for instance, was scaling) that I felt I was barely getting started in the subject when it was done. The second section on fractals was very general, and I don't think Twitty ever really explained satisfactorally what fractals are good for, besides pretty pictures. Also, the examples are pretty specific, and there was no theoretical background or any attempt to tie it together into a general picture -- this was the weakest part of the book for me. The final section was interesting. He covered all of the sound generation capabilities: beeps, square wave, free form and four voice. There are example programs that access each. While he doesn't go into depth on any one part, there is enough information to get you started and enough code to get you over the programming hump so you can experiment on your own. If you're interested in sound and have no clue, this is worth the price of the book. In general, I liked the book but was disappointed because there wasn't more. The sound section should have been a book of its own and greatly expanded. The fractal section has lots of possibility, but it feels like it was just thrown in as a filler. The initial section can probably be expanded infinitely, but serves as a good introduction to Mac Graphic capabilities. It really could be helped by a second, advanced volume, though. I STILL haven;t found the perfect graphic book, but this one isn't bad. What I'd like to see, though, is someone implement a major standard graphics interface like CORE and annotate the code. major work, but think of the possibilities... chuq Chuq Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM It's only a model...