Comments about oreilly Programming Web Graphics with Perl and GNU Softwar:

well, being used to the otherwise high standards of o'reilly publications, I was somewhat disappointed with this one.

some parts just read like a printed version of the manpages. and I definitely don't need to buy a book that saves me typing "man x".

especially the chapter about ImageMagick was a major bummer. the functions are covered at a most basic level. severely lacking examples, and the description is far from complete. as a beginner, you might get a nive overview, but no more. and thats something I NEVER EVER bought a ora book for before: to get an _overview_. in-depth hardcore information is what I'm looking for.

this book left a sour taste in my mouth. so if you are searching for toroughly researched information, forget this one. read the man-pages, and be happy with online resources which will offer better information than this book.

Comments about oreilly Programming Web Graphics with Perl and GNU Softwar:

This is not an art book. There are not even any color illustrations. Rather, there is uniquely definitive and comprehensive coverage of the most important freeware graphics tools useful for web development. There is a strong bias toward programmatic tools, those which can be controlled from server-parsed HTML or CGI using Perl, which allow drawing graphics interactively with the user on the fly. One example with source code is a Perl "biorhythm" calculator, where the user enters a birthdate and the web page draws a customized GIF bar chart with a sinusoidal envelope, emulating the coin-operated "biorhythm" machine at the Vince Lombardi Rest Area on I-95 in New Jersey.

This basic technique can be used for charts of stock performance, server activity, and any other on-demand drawing. The ImageMagick tool, which can be run from a command line to do batch processing (such as thumbnailing) or through a Perl API, is also well covered, showing how to draw text labels onto images and do other tasks essential to good web practice. The GIMP, aweb-friendly freeware clone of Adobe Photoshop, is covered primarily from the point of view of its relatively unknown Perl API, but this is not a book about the GIMP and there are better choices of books (especially those with color) if interactive use of the GIMP is your main concern. However, use of the GIMP to create basic web elements such as flaming marbles or imploding cats is covered.

This book stands in a class by itself on its subject matter, and is destined to become one of the classic O'Reilly references. While it does have copious pointers to web information via URLs, the book's most serious deficiency is certainly that it is heavily tied to the current snapshot of availabletools, and the freeware tool development pace will doubtlessly necessitate frequent revisions of this book, possibly as often as annually. The author is also to be commended for not flinching from discussions of technical issues where appropriate, such as image compression, interlacing, and the internals of GIF, JPEG, and PNG file formats, but these discussions are not essential to the book if the reader has little interest in technical issues and wants to get right to the cookbook graphics recipes.

Comments about oreilly Programming Web Graphics with Perl and GNU Softwar:

A prety good book but needs to be updated because Perl 5.6.0 just came along. Otherwise great because most systems have older versions of perl.

Comments about oreilly Programming Web Graphics with Perl and GNU Softwar:

Good book. Somewhat outdated now. GIF output is not supported by many of the modules reviewed in this book.

I can't believe there is no source code available for the script examples in the book.

That's a Major pain.

Pete