KDE 2.0 Development

Assuming you have some programming experience, KDE 2.0 Development provides a good introduction to developing for KDE. The book starts off with an introduction to KDE and then moves into examples of QT programming (the toolkit KDE uses). From there it takes you into developing actual KDE applications. The example code and topics covered provide a tour of the KDE codebase and functionality available.You will come away from this book understanding the general architecture of KDE, but there will still be long way to go before you really understand the internals of the system. The book is an overview at best. It isn't a reference and doesn't cover details of the KDE (or QT) libraries. After reading this you'll have enough information to start dabbling in KDE development but you'll probably find yourself sifting through lots of reference material.The major downside to the book are all of the errors and inconsistencies in the code samples. Many of the examples contain syntax errors or don't work because the libraries have changed. This can make going through the examples frustrating, but on the upside, if you're willing to work through the problems you'll probably learn quite a bit.It is clear that different authors worked on the book because language and code style different among chapters. I think this one could have used one more pass through editing.I will give the book credit though, it makes a very good attempt at hitting a moving target. Since KDE is rapidly advancing it is hard to expect a book to get every fact correct and ensure that all of the code will compile. This book makes up for that through its online version at Andamooka. Here you will find fixes and discussion around each part of the book. I have been very impressed with the devotion of David Sweet. Whenever I have posted a question to Andamooka it is answered quickly and he is usually the first to respond. Having this resource greatly increases the value of the book.

This book gives a nice tour of KDE 2 development. Even if you have programmed for KDE 1.x, you may be suprised to find how powerfull and extensive the new framework is.If you have programmed for other GUI frameworks, like for example MFC, you will be likely be pleased with how easy and elegant KDE/QT programming is. The book contains some basics about QT programming, but readers new to QT will probably have to spend some time with the QT online reference and examples (which are free and very good).My one complaint about the book is the lack of attention to detail in the source code examples. Some chapters present code as complete, compilable examples, but others seem to just show snippets. Also, in some chapters the headers and source are shown in two files, while in others they are shown as a single file. Furthermore, the naming convention for classes and so forth differs from chapter to chapter. This type of thing is surely the result of multiple authors contributing independent chapters, but it should have been cleaned up in the editing process.One nice thing about the book is that is uses a lot of real examples from the KDE source tree to illustrate its points. I recommend also delving into the KDE source itself, especially to fill gaps in the examples that are not presented as complete compilable code.

The information above is needs an update, so here goes:_KDE_2.0_Development_ covers components/embedding (KParts), interprocess communication (DCOP), multimedia (aRts), the XML GUI system, KDevelop (KDE's free integrated development environment), free/commerical software licensing issues, as well as introductory KDE programing and more.The contributing authors are a group of talented KDE developers writing, in many cases, about technology they designed and/or developed, and I'd like to credit them: Kurt Granroth, Cristian Tibirna, David Faure, Espen Sand, Stefan Westerfeld, Ralf Nolden, Daniel Marjama"ki, Charles Bar-Joseph. A forward by Matthias Ettrich (KDE project founder) is included.This book is published under the Open Publication License and will be available for online perusal and annotation on November 8...David Sweet (author, who shamelessly chose "5 Stars" from the listbox...)