PROFESSIONAL GEM by Richard Karsmakers

Before  you read on this article,  I must tell you that  I  don't 
know  anything  about C,  and that this book is  actually  a  GEM 
course  written for C users,  so I don't know anything  for  sure 
with  regard to the level on which this book is written,  and  if 
it's  easy  to  use or not.  I will just try to  give  a  general 
opinion. I hope you don't mind.

The whole course is written by Tim Oren and published by Antic as 
a PD program.  On the large usermeeting on September 20th 1986 in 
Utrecht,  the "Stichting ST" sold printed copies of it,  which  I 
have  hereby reviewed.  If you want to obtain the  PD  disk,  you 
should  read the magazine of "stichting ST" or have a look for  a 
club  that  sells the HCC Public Domain  library  (e.g.  userclub 
Eindhoven).  We don't have this offering in our own Public Domain 
Libary!

It looks like Tim Oren did a great job;  although he  immediately 
starts  with programming examples and although he seems to  think 
the reader reads C like his native language,  he sets  everything 
up  like  a  regular teacher.  He  talks  about  windows,  window 
scrolling, dirty tricks (like using the GEM screen buffer to save 
the  parts  of a screen under Alert Boxes  and  file  selectors), 
dialog handlers,  resource structures,  graphic modes, menus, VDI 
graphics,  GEM events & program structures,  user interfaces, and 
10 appendices with sample - C - programs to individual chapters.
When  I glanced through "Professional GEM",  I notices  that  Tim 
writes in clear,  crisp English with a touch of humour. The whole 
is setup a bit informal which can work positively.
I think that this course can't be omitted if you're a dedicated C 
programmer,  since  it  offers  you  very  much  information  and 
programming  hints & tips when using GEM in your C  programs.  It 
seems,  however,  that  you ahve to be in the possession  of  the 
Digital Research C-Compiler do be able to work with this book.

Again,  I am sorry for the lack of knowledge on my side,  so I am 
not able to write a proper review.  But this articles (as well as 
several others) had to written in quite a hurry,  just before the 
launch of ST NEWS (also because I went away the last week  before 
the  launch  - just imagine the hurry of making it  all  work  on 
Friday evening, Jaunari 2nd!).


