Programming sophisticated graphics can be surpisingly easy!Graphics -- presenting data in understandable ways and providing a visual interface (GUI) for users -- should be a central part of most computer applications. In most programming languages, however, coding graphics is so difficult that roughly 99% of all programmers avoid it.
Icon solves this problem by providing high-level, easy-to-use graphics facilities that are fully integrated with the rest of the language; this integration makes graphics programming with Icon dramatically different from programming graphics with lower-level languages like C and C++ that require add-on graphics libraries (and demand complex, voluminous code to address many tedious details).
The result: graphics code that is short and easy to write. You don't need years of experience with arcane techniques; you can get impressive results with just a few lines of Icon code. Using Icon you can draw, use colors and fonts, create images, do simple animations, and build powerful applications with vis! ual interfaces (GUIs).
The book is self-contained. It has all you need to understand and use graphics in your programming, including how to program in Icon. Many carefully explained program examples guide you through the exciting world of graphics. Before long, you can be creating your own computer graphics. (Other, non-graphics aspects of Icon are covered in *The Icon Programming Language*, 3rd Edition. ISBN 1-57398-001-3; $34.95)
Key features of the book: graphics concepts and programming models of interaction building visual interfaces ready-to-use procedures example applications over 200 illustrations, 8 full-color plates (!!), 17 appendixes, 520 pages.
*Graphics Programming in Icon* thoroughly discusses Icon's advanced facilities for: windows, drawing, colors, fonts, images, event handling, dialogs, custom user interfaces.
Accompanying the book is a multi-platform CD-ROM containing:
executable Icon binaries for Microsoft Windows and most of the popular UNIX plat! forms; IBM AIX, Digital UNIX (OSF), Silicon Graphics IRIX, ! Intel Linux, Sun Solaris 2.x (SunOS 5.x), Sun SunOS 4.x (Solaris 1.x). program code and images from the book a huge library of additional Icon program material, the complete public-domain source code for Icon, and the complete Icon Project Web site from The University of Arizona
The CD-ROM is designed to be used with a Web browser such as Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer. Open the top-level Web page with your browser and you're ready to explore hundreds of megabytes of original, fascinating material.
