No published 'Free Pascal' Books

**WILL** · 25-05-2007, 06:44 PM

I could have sworn that there was at least 1 book published on the Free Pascal compiler. Or even Lazarus, but nope, not a single one could I find.

So here is what I propose... Someone write a book!

Seriously there are a number of topics that could be found useful out there. Here a few sample titles for thought:

Homebrew GameBoy Advanced Programming with Free Pascal
Homebrew Nintendo DS Programming with Free Pascal
The Definitive Guide to GP2X Development with Free Pascal
Lazarus in a Nutshell
Free Pascal for Dumbies
Object Pascal Game Programming for Beginners
Game Physics in Object Pascal
Learn Object Pascal in 24 Hours
XNA & Chrome: Your Way to the XBox360!

I'm sure that one of those would be picked up and bought somewhere.

Would anyone be seriously considering writing a book in the next year or so?

**dmantione** · 25-05-2007, 06:49 PM

Two books have appeared until now:

http://www.computerbooks.hu/FreePascal/ (Study book in Hungarian, FPC 2.0)
http://www.cul.de/freepascal.html (German translation of manuals, FPC 1.0)

**WILL** · 25-05-2007, 07:00 PM

Ah excellent!

Though I'd love an English language book to add to my collection. What are the odds that we could get these from Amazon.somthing?

EDIT: Darn, I just tried adding 'Free Pascal' to the Books DB and it doesn't work because it's for Amazon.de not Amazon.com. :? Looks like I'd have to make some major changes to the new script get it displaying. That or you guys can write one in English.

**dmantione** · 25-05-2007, 07:55 PM

Both publishers allow you to order on-line, so my guess is you can get them:

Hungarian book:
http://www.computerbooks.hu/kiadvany/

German book:
http://www.cul.de/bestellfrm.html#freepascal

I own both of them; for the Hungarian one Karoly Balogh ordered a few copies, then sent them to the other members of the team. Since he lives in Hungary this made things easy. The publisher of the German book knows Michael van Canneyt very well, and they sent him & Florian a few copies for free.

**Almindor** · 26-05-2007, 08:18 AM

I started writing a "booklette" of free pascal. A sort of advance usage and language features tutorial with example code, but didn't get that far. Perhaps I'll finish it one day when the time permits, but I doubt anyone would publish that (still I think it'd be useful especially since the advanced OOP stuff is missing in pascal tutorials)

**WILL** · 27-05-2007, 01:15 AM

Well you could always publish it as a small companion book. Those are quite handy from time to time.

Have you talked to a publisher yet?

**Almindor** · 03-07-2007, 01:45 PM

No. Even if I manage to finish it I'll just put it where it's most useful... online

I don't like real books much myself. Too much of a hassle and cost and no search function to boot.

**WILL** · 03-07-2007, 02:36 PM

Originally Posted by Almindor

and no search function to boot.

[size=9px]*psst* TOC & Index...[/size]

Seriously though, thats fair. Free = good, right? However my only beef with pdf books --and found bonus with book in print-- is that when I have a book open on my screen, I don't have my IDE there. Until I get rich and get myself a couple of nice big flatscreens to rig up as a dual screen setup.

Personally I'd love to see a published series for the PGD community. It would be a real boon. Maybe one day, I or someone else will organize a 'Gems' or 'Guru' book.

**cairnswm** · 03-07-2007, 06:34 PM

It would be just as nice to see a PGD magazine - much like the DevMag.

Or just start throwing LOTS if stuff DevMags way. The PGD site is the first non South African site to have regular input into the devmag