148 lines
5.4 KiB
XML
148 lines
5.4 KiB
XML
<!DOCTYPE chapter PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.2//EN"
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"http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbookx.dtd" [
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<!ENTITY appurl "http://www.clutter-project.org">
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<!ENTITY docurl "http://docs.clutter-project.org/docs/clutter-cookbook">
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]>
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<chapter id="introduction">
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<title>Preface</title>
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<epigraph>
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<attribution>The Perl Cookbook</attribution>
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<para>Let me show you that easy way, so others may easily follow.</para>
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</epigraph>
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<para>There is a wonderful simile in the preface of the <emphasis>Perl
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Cookbook</emphasis>: approaching a programming problem is oftentimes
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similar to balancing Columbus's egg. The initial difficulties of dealing
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with, and more importantly solving, problems in the software engineering
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field sometimes can only be overcome if somebody shows you how to use a
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new tool. This is true for programming languages but also for programming
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libraries.</para>
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<para>This book has been written to try and give you a reference on
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how to solve common issues that you might have to face when using
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the Clutter toolkit.</para>
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<para>This book is not meant to be a replacement for the Clutter API
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reference, even though there will be descriptions of how Clutter works
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and how its API looks like. We will require knowledge of the Clutter API,
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but we will also point out where to find more information on the API that
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examples have used.</para>
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<para>Indeed, this book should be used as a companion to the API reference,
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expanding its examples and showing how to achieve a specific result.</para>
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<para>This is not a book for learning Clutter. This is also not a book
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for learning C, or GObject or even GUI development.</para>
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<para>Above all, this is a book for learning <emphasis>more</emphasis>
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about Clutter, and about how to use it in the most efficient and easiest
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way. It is meant to help you move past the basic usage of Clutter.</para>
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<para>This book is divided into chapters. Each chapter is dedicated to
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a specific class, like ClutterTexture, or a specific area, like animations.
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Each chapter starts with a short introduction, followed by different
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<emphasis>recipes</emphasis>. Each recipe starts with a problem, or a short
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statement describing what we want to achieve; a solution, containing the
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source code; and a discussion section, where the code is explained, where
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alternative approaches might be useful, and where caveats and references to
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the Clutter API for further studying can be found.</para>
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<para>This book, in the cookbook spirit, can be accessed mostly at
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random.</para>
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<section>
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<title>About Clutter</title>
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<para>Clutter is an free and open source software library for creating
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portable, dynamic, compelling and fast graphical user interfaces.</para>
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<para>Clutter uses OpenGL (and, optionally, OpenGL ES on mobile and
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embedded platforms) for rendering the user interface elements, but
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at the same time it exposes an application program interface that hides
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the underlying complexity of the OpenGL state machine from the
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developer.</para>
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<para>The program interface of Clutter is intended to be easy to use,
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efficient, flexible and as self-documenting as possible.</para>
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</section>
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<section>
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<title>About this document</title>
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<para>This document is available in various formats like HTML, and
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PDF.</para>
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<para>The latest version is always available at
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<ulink url="&docurl;">&docurl;</ulink>.</para>
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<para>To contribute to this document, see the
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<link linkend="contributing">Contributing</link> appendix.</para>
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<section>
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<title>Compiling the examples</title>
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<para>This document comes with full examples, usually stored
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on disk in <filename><emphasis>datadir</emphasis>/clutter-1.0/cookbook/examples</filename>
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directory.</para>
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<para>Each example can be compiled using:</para>
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<informalexample>
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<programlisting>
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cc \
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`pkg-config --cflags clutter-1.0` \
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-o <emphasis>example</emphasis> <emphasis>example</emphasis>.c \
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`pkg-config --libs clutter-1.0`
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</programlisting>
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</informalexample>
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<para>substituting the <emphasis>example</emphasis> with in the
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line above with the name of the example.</para>
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</section>
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</section>
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<section>
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<title>Acknowledgments</title>
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<para>This book has been written taking the inspiration from the Perl
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Cookbook, authored by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington.</para>
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<para>This book would not have been possible without the existence of
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the Clutter library itself, and without the help and contributions of
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all the people that have been working on it every day.</para>
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<section>
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<title>Acknowledgments from Emmanuele</title>
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<para>To Matthew, for starting the flame. To Robert and Neil, for
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keeping it ablaze.</para>
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<para>To Marta, for her love and patience.</para>
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</section>
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<section>
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<title>Acknowledgements from Elliot</title>
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</section>
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</section>
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<section>
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<title>Where to get Clutter</title>
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<para>You can obtain the Clutter source code ready for compilation
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from <ulink url="&appurl;">&appurl;</ulink>.</para>
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<para>Clutter is also available on all major GNU/Linux distributions,
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in various package formats.</para>
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<para>On OSX, Clutter is available with both Fink and MacPorts.</para>
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<para>Binaries for Microsoft Windows are also available.</para>
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</section>
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</chapter>
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