Help in a book | O'Reilly Media

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Book:		.NET Windows Forms in a Nutshell
Subject:		Help in a book
Date:		2005-02-13 19:56:59
From:		MacKevin

Rating: This is an example of a book that is a poor version of the VS Help. It doesn't provide any greater detail to Forms programming than would a general introduction to C# or VB book would and no Form programming tricks and experience is shown in the book. Generally it has a cut and paste feel of the windows help. Sorry guys

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Help in a book, February 16 2005
Submitted by Anonymous Reader [Respond | View]

Could you show some examples of where you felt we 'cut and paste' from the VS help? Since we wrote the whole book from scratch, I'll be very surprised if you are able to find any.

I am perplexed, but also intrigued to know specifically what it was that made you think that the book is simply a rehash of the VS Help.

Of course when it comes to the reference section, we cover all the same classes as Microsoft - but since the goal is to be comprehensive, the subject headings are necessarily the same. But the approach we took was different. Because Microsoft's documentation already provides a perfectly good reference to the class libraries, we chose not to duplicate this effort. Instead, we provided tips and pointers which are (or at least were at time of going to press) absent from Microsoft's help.

As a concrete example of our approach, consider System.ComponentModel.Component. Microsoft's documentation doesn't mention the design-time environment - it talks about abstract container relationships without ever explaining what you use it for in practice. This is a bizarre omission because designer integration is the main reason you would use this class. Also, Microsoft's documentation mentions the Dispose method, but neglects to mention the fact that there are two of them, and why. To support resource cleanup correctly, you need to be aware of this and the reasons behind it. Resource cleanup is the other major function of this class besides designer integration, so again we felt this was a significant omission on Microsoft's part, so our book's entry for Component covers this distinction. In short, reading Microsoft's entry for this class, it looks like it was written by someone who has never shipped a designable component, and didn't fully understand the reasoning behind the Dispose methods. Our entry for this same class was written by someone who has more experience than most in shipping Windows Forms solutions and dealing with designer integration issues. (Matthew Adams wrote this particular topic by the way, not me.) I believe our entry provides a more useful explanation of the Component class than the one in the VS help.

This example is typical of the approach we took - whenever we felt that the VS help was deficient in some way or could usefully be augmented, we filled the gaps. (And of course for many of the classes, there wasn't much to add. For these we have fairly perfunctory entries.) This is why I'm very surprised at your summary of the book, and would like to know specifically what parts you felt were, as you put it 'cut and paste' rather than the complementary approach in the example I just gave.

Help in a book, December 05 2006
Submitted by Anonymous Reader [Respond | View]

hi,I have a q about your book. I agree that VS help is deficient in some ways, especially along VC++ lines. Does your book cover Windows Forms programming in Visual C++? I assume it does, since the cover does not mention any specific language.
But I thought I would ask before ordering it.
thanks