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Java Graphics Programming Library: Concepts to Source Code is the finest volume of its type that I have encountered to date. It strikes nearly a perfect balance between completeness and concision. It is as meticulously produced as a computer science textbook. Font usage and formatting of example code is tidy and standard. Shovelware -- that is the insertion of superfluous or stock information into the body of text to swell the page count -- is utterly missing.
Java Graphics Programming Library categorizes graphic objects and associated concepts and assigns chapters to these categories:
Each chapter begins with a textual overview, then concepts are presented with source code and remarks. The concept entries are economical, readable, broad in ideas, and brief and essential in its source presentations. There are also appendices on essential math and essential Java, along with a tidy index.
The graphics themselves -- rendered in animated, colorful applets -- are, like, hey, nicely done, dude! The source code is as simple and straightforward as you could wish. Campesato is good at this stuff, no joke.
In defense of my independent judgment, I can gripe about some textual editing. For example, Campesato intends "to provide a library of drawing code that can be easily tailored to fit specified needs" [by which I am sure he means that the code can be easily customized to fit specific needs]. However, it's not just editors in the hi-tech publishing field for whom formal English is these days a classical language rather than a living one.
The CD is about 26 MB of Java source code (and the compiled classes) and HTML, since the examples are cast as applets for convenience of browsing. Also included are illustrations, just so that you have everything essential from the book except the textual exposition.
Java Graphics Programming Library is a mature volume, a nearly encyclopedic compendium of technique. Looking back and comparing this volume with 1999's Graphics Programming with JFC (reviewed at http://www.ercb.com/brief/brief.0133.html ) is a means of impressing upon yourself how much the Java programming environment has changed. I don't mean the APIs; I mean the work environment of the Java programmer. We're no longer computer nerds delving into an exciting new environment. We're now corporate technicians who need to be briefed on the Way Things Are. Java programming has become part of the establishment.
If you're economizing on your book purchases (and who isn't these days?) Java Graphics Programming Library appears to be the one book on the fundamentals of Java graphic programming that you will need on your shelf.
| -- Jack Woehr (http://www.softwoehr.com) | From Byte On-Line, July 29, 2002 |