Books on Mma graphics
- To: mathgroup at christensen.cybernetics.net
- Subject: [mg1134] Books on Mma graphics
- From: Xah Y Lee <xyl10060 at fhda.edu>
- Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 03:09:16 -0400
Just want to share my views on two books. I've read Cameron Smith & Nancy Blachman's The Mathematica Graphics Guidebook. It's absolutely an excellent book. I'd say it is the definitive manual on mma graphics, not just a guide book. I just bought Tom Wickham-Jone's Mma Graphics yesterday, looks like it's an excellent book too. The difference between the two books is conveyed by their title. Cameron&Nancy's more like a manual covering/reporting mma graphics engine in detail. The contents of the book are: 1: The Design of Mma graphics commands, 2: (mma graphic) Data types, 3: Graphics Primitives and Directives. 4: Commands for Producing Graphics. 5: Graphics Packages. 6: Coordinate systems (used in graphics) 7: Options. The exposition is extremely clear. If you program with mma graphics, you should have this book. Tom's book I think have the flavor of a tutorial. It is structured much like Wolfram's The Mma book. Part one is for beginners on how to use built-in graphic functions. Part II is the fundamentals of grphics programming. Part III is more for advanced readers, on how to exploit mma graphic capability. Including codes and explainations on how to extend mma graphic capabilities. For examples, labering contour heights, doing geometry with mma. Many of us semi-experts would find this part extremely enlightening. Part IV is a reference to mma Graphics. Overall, Tom's book contain many programming examples with explainations on how they work. I recommend it as well. (The two books overlab little. It's worth to get both) Xah Lee permament email: 74631.731 at compuserve.com Quote of the day: Top spies all, inside override. NothingGP none, empty braces fine. If conflic arise, latter take place. --mnemonic for how graphic primitives/directives behave inside Show[] (Copyright 1995 by Xah Lee) (no kidding!)