[vtkusers] VTK Books

[Paul Tait - OPES]

> From: Alex Farber <alexf2062 at yahoo.com>
>

> Hi,
> I want to by VTK books. I am interesting both in algorithms
> description and user's guide. I am 100% sure that I want to buy  
> "The Visualization Toolkit An Object-Oriented Approach To 3D  
> Graphics" book. The question is: should I buy also "The  
> Visualization Toolkit User's Guide" book? Does it contain some  
> useful information which cannot be found in the first book, or one  
> book is enough?
>
> Thanks.

Hi, Alex:

A few months ago I posted exactly the same question to the list. Even  
now, that I have both books and that I am actively working with VTK,  
I cannot give you a definite answer.

I think you are right in wanting to buy the textbook. However, after  
reading it, I still used the user's guide to start actually  
programming. I implemented several examples that are explained in the  
user's guide (source code freely available), and that was very useful  
for absorbing all the info that was in the textbook. So, for me it  
was important to have both books.

Sliding to off topic:

I can't help to feel that, for the amount of info we are getting, the  
price ($132) is too expensive for both books. I think it would be  
more correct if:

* The most stuff from the user's guide would be included in the  
textbook, deleting duplicated entries.
* The developer chapters from the user's guide would be greatly  
expanded for a new book, the developer's guide.

That way, users would only need to buy one book, and those that want  
to develop VTK would have something more solid to start learning than  
the doxygen pages and the source. I use wxWidgets as an API, and I  
had to develop my own RenderWindow and RenderWindowInteractor for my  
VTK+wxWidgets project. It took me a few days only to start the
project, and I had a big help from wxVTKRenderWindowInteractor  
(wxvtk.sf.net). With a developer's guide on the subject, things would  
have been much easier.

Good luck,

Paulo

I agree that the content and organisation of the 2 books is wacky. I can
never decide which book I should pick up for various problems so I end
up using both. I paid for a VTK seminar last year which was great and
Bill explained that the books are one of the main income streams for VTK
so I guess VTK isn't "free as in beer" but for me is still great value

Don't forget that there will be new books for VTK 5.... but luckily for
me Bill promised me a free copy at the seminar

Paul Tait

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