Three (3) books about programming? – Nope, there’s only one!

The first book is about C. It starts with a description of a classical “Hello, world”-program, and briefly describes how such a program can be compiled, linked, and run. It proceeds with a description of variables and values, how values can be assigned to variables, and how variables and can be combined into expressions and computations, executed in sequence. Then, the concepts of alternative and iteration are discussed, and illustrated using if-statements, for-statements, and while statements. The combination of actions into larger pieces, called functions, is then discussed. Then, structured datatypes are treated, starting with arrays and lists, followed by the use of struct for creating data structures. The book concludes with an overview of the functionality available in C for performing mathematical and logical computations, and how the C standard library can be used for this purpose.

The second book is about Java. It starts with a description of a classical “Hello, world”-program, and briefly describes how such a program can be compiled and run. It proceeds with a description of variables and values, how values can be assigned to variables, and how variables and can be combined into expressions and computations, executed in sequence. Then, the concepts of alternative and iteration are discussed, and illustrated using if-statements, for-statements, and while-statements. The combination of actions into larger pieces, called methods, is then discussed. Then, structured datatypes are treated, starting with arrays and lists, followed by the use of objects for creating inheritable data structures with associated behavior. The book concludes with an overview of the functionality available in Java for performing mathematical and logical computations, and how the Java class library can be used for this purpose.

The third book is about Python. It starts with a description of a classical “Hello, world”-program, and briefly describes how such a program can be run. It proceeds with a description of variables and values, how values can be assigned to variables, and how variables and can be combined into expressions and computations, executed in sequence. Then, the concepts of alternative and iteration are discussed, and illustrated using if-statements, for-statements, and while statements. The combination of actions into larger pieces, called functions, is then discussed. Then, structured datatypes are treated, starting with arrays and lists, followed by the use of objects for creating inheritable data structures with associated behavior. The book concludes with an overview of the functionality available in Python for performing mathematical and logical computations, and how the Python library can be used for this purpose.

“But”, you might ask, “did you really have to write three books?”

“No, actually not”, I might answer, indicating with a little smile that I might know something you are not yet aware of.

“In fact, I only create one book.”

“???”, you might think, wondering what I am talking about.

“You see”, I would say, “I use this system called Books with Views, making it possible for me to write only one book, but it is a book containing more than one topic”.

“Hmm, that sounds interesting. Tell me more!”, you might say.

“I write the common parts for all books, and then I write the specific parts separately for each view”

“Aha. But how can I read such a thing? – it seems to have more than one dimension!”

“It is easy, you can read it on the web, using links inside the book for changing view. And you can also read it in your e-book reader, as epub (e.g. for iBooks) or as mobi (for the Kindle)”

“I will try it right now!”, you now say, “and don’t forget to inform me about the release date”. Then you start your favourite browser or your favourite e-book reader, eager to see what this is all about.

After a while, you might say to yourself: “Interesting, and whatever the price it certainly looks like a bargain. I get three books for the price of one!”

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Connecting the views

In the drafts of books created so far, there are links inside the books between the views. The links are placed inside the book, at the end of each section. There are also links between the views in the about pages, e.g. on the about page showing the URLs used in a book. In the web versions of the books, there are also links in the sidebar of each page.

Recently I added links between the views directly after figures showing code. As an example of this later feature, you can take a look at Figure 1 in Into Programming, where you can see the links to the other views.

The links works as illustrated in this figure (click the figure to get a larger version), where some text and some code from a program, written in C in one view and written in Java in another view, is shown.

As you can see in the above figure, parts of the text are common for both programs, and other parts of the text are different. The code of course is different, since that is the whole point of having these views, with one view for each programming language!

The connections between the views are shown in the figure as dashed red arrows, corresponding to the hyperlinks you will find inside the book.

Into Embedded – another book with views

I started a new book. It is called Into Embedded, and it is about embedded systems. It has two views (to start with), representing two processor architectures – 32-bit Intel-x86 is one view and ARM is another view.

I wanted to test the concept of making books with views with one more book, and I also wanted to get started on the work of replacing an old book called Realtidsprogrammering – written in Swedish and not available in print anymore – with a newer version. And of course it gave me a chance to procrastinate (I recently read Turning Pro, so there is hope for a better situation), and finding excuses for not creating more content for Into Programming.

You can also have a look at the book (draft with respect to contents but rather ok with respect to form) in epub-format and mobi-format, using these links:

• Into Embedded (epub)
• Into Embedded (mobi)

Doing the Math

Sometimes it is interesting to have equations in an e-book. Of course if it is a book on mathematics, but also in other books. I made an attempt to include equations in the book Into Programming, like this.

For the web version of the book, I used MathJax, a Javascript libary that allows you to write the equations using LaTex notation. As an example, the following html code

$$
a_n = a \prod_{i = 1}^n \left (1 + \frac{p_i}{100} \right )
\quad \quad \quad (5)
$$

can be used (together with the appropriate script tag to include MathJax) to create an equation. You can see the equation as equation number 5 on the About page for equations in the book Into Programming.

For the epub- and mobi-versions of the book I used images. I did not expect the typical e-book reader software of today to handle MathJax yet. The images are created from LaTeX, using a similar notation as for the MathJax, and each equation is put into its own LaTeX file, e.g like this

\documentclass[b5paper, 9pt]{memoir}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
\begin{displaymath}
a_n = a \prod_{i = 1}^n \left (1 + \frac{p_i}{100} \right )
\quad (5)
\end{displaymath}
\end{document}

Then, images can be created, one for each equation, using LaTex and the tool dvipng.

You can see the result, in the e-books, in the Chapter called Again and Again. The books are found, as epub and mobi, on the Books page.

Books with Views

This is the first post on the Books with Views blog.

Here I will document the development of a system for creating books with views. These are books whose content can be viewed from different perspectives.

As a first project, there will be some books in the areas of software and embedded systems. These books are called The Intobooks.