1. Book outline
Based on my experience learning and teaching programming, I propose the
following outline for the introduction to Euphoria programming book
whatever form it may take (print, HTML, PDF, etc.).
i. Foreward & Credits
I. Introduction & installation
II. Hello, Hello, Hello
A. puts
B. for loops
C. explanation of literal strings and variables (as used in puts and
for)
D. Exercises
III. Numbers up
A. constants
B. atoms
C. simple expressions
D. print and printf
E. using sprintf with & (concat) and puts
F. printing to a file (open / close)
G. Exercises
IV. Need input....
A. sequences and includes
B. gets with puts and & (concat)
C. while, getc, and wait_key
D. object types and get
E. Exercises
V. Ifs, ands, and ors
A. simple if
B. building cases with elsif
C. A simple menu using getc, if/elsif, and find
D. The guess-a-number game
E. Exercises
VI. Getting fancy
A. Functions & procedures
B. Using text_color and position
C. Making sounds (mention sfx2.e & other DOS/Linux sound libraries)
D. File commands (chdir, rename, etc.)
E. A more complex (i.e., colorized / formatted) menu
F. Exercises
Unit review: Text-based battleship game (expanding on sequences and
indexing).
VII. Paint me a smile (graphics.e for DOS, euengine for Linux)
A. Using the mouse (mention gpm for Linux)
B. Graphics modes and metrics
C. Designing a font and using the existing DOS font libraries
D. A simple paint program
E. Exercises
VIII. A spritely step
A. Differences between BMP, GIF, and JPEG files
B. Saving and loading bitmaps (mention libraries for other file
types)
C. Displaying and moving bitmaps
D. The concept of double-buffering
E. Resizing techniques (based on the recent mailing list thread)
F. Exercises
IX. Other DOS-based graphics libraries
[I'm not an expert on these, so you all will have to fill in this
chapter]
Unit review: A shoot-the-aliens type game
X. Winding your way into Windows
A. Win32Lib (mention other libs, but this book will use Win32Lib)
B. Creating windows
C. Creating menus & menuitems
D. Creating pushbuttons
E. event handlers: onClick, onMenu -- introducing routine_id
F. Exercises
XI. A little dialog
A. Creating sub-windows, explain the difference between Modal and
Normal windows
B. Labels
C. EditText
D. MleText
E. getText and setText
F. Dropdownlists and Combo boxes
G. onOpen, onClose, and onChange
H. setEnable, setVisible
I. Exercises
XII. Ah, input!
A. introducing database.e (and associated libraries)
B. db_open, db_create
C. tables: opening and creating
D. Adding, deleting, and updating records & keys
E. Switching between tables and finding records
F. Exercises
Unit review: Making a Windows-based address book
Appendices of terms, other resources, libraries, commands, etc.
I post this primarily for discussion purposes, but if the ultimate
author of said book wishes to follow this outline, modified or intact, I
wish you the best.
Michael J. Sabal
