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Rating: 
Summary: overly tedious with no real target audience
Review: First off, I'd like to explain why I'm judging this book so negatively. I gauge all computer texts against one of the best instructional books I've come across in my 12 years of programming; "C Programming: A Modern Approach" -- by K. N. King. This book explains the c language with out using too much jargon...."GTK+ programming C" on the other hand is so jargon laden, it becomes tiresome before the first chapter is even complete, and what's worse, no "target audience" is ever addressed. This book is not for a novice in any way shape or form (though the back cover would lead you to believe otherwise). I'm not a novice, but I'd rather spend my time reading an instructional book with a little personality rather than one that seems straight from a man page, but enough of my opinion laden book bashing let me back up some of my accusations: --Jargon (this is straight from the book BTW)--
"Gtk+ (via Glib) allows applications to load shared library code at runtime and execute routines that the shared library exports." say that three times fast. Again I'm being a little more critical of writing such as this because no target audience is ever specified. A novice programmer might find a sentence such as this a little confusing. Another point of contention I have is the lack of GOOD example code. The book is seeded with function definitions, and code snippets throughout, but has very few actual examples to drive the new information home. As an example lets look at chapter 3 (Signals, events, objects and types). This chapter is about 50 pages long and is devoted to the functions that allow a Gtk+ program to interact with the OS, but this entire chapter (Very important subject matter) only included 2 (that's right TWO) working examples. Oh, the example code isn't commented either!!! A) That is a poor programming technique in general, and
B) Comments in the code help those trying to learn the language to understand the what's, and why's, as they read the code (or type it in) Anyway, I could go on like this for some time, but I think I've made my point. Novices and maybe Intermediate programmers stay away. Strong intermediate programmers, or better, looking for a REFERENCE, not an instructional manual, this book might be for you.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Reference for "Real World" Programming
Review: My first impression after I purchased this book was that it would have limited usefulness. However, after about two weeks on my first GTK+ project it became clear that it was actually the most useful of three books I had purchased. After having this book for more than a year, it is what I turn to about 85% of the time when I have a GTK+ question. If this book has a weakness it would be that it doesn't mention much about the GNOME desktop. However, for "real world" programming on a GTK+ based project that will last more than a couple of weeks or go beyond the basics, this book is a timesaver. I also have the book by Peter Wright that covers GNOME and is a fairly useful supplement to this book.
Rating:
Summary: Good Reference for "Real World" Programming
Review: My first impression after I purchased this book was that it would have limited usefulness. However, after about two weeks on my first GTK+ project it became clear that it was actually the most useful of three books I had purchased. After having this book for more than a year, it is what I turn to about 85% of the time when I have a GTK+ question. If this book has a weakness it would be that it doesn't mention much about the GNOME desktop. However, for "real world" programming on a GTK+ based project that will last more than a couple of weeks or go beyond the basics, this book is a timesaver. I also have the book by Peter Wright that covers GNOME and is a fairly useful supplement to this book.
Rating:
Summary: Sensible Reference for Gtk+-1.2 outside of GNOME
Review: This book has a fairly clean layout. The index is a bit tepid, but Ok. So far, for content, the book is slightly better than the other two books I have seen. Donna Martin's doorstop for SAMs is pretty good, but a bit winded. Eric Harlow's book is also good, but too lean. I see a Jack Sprat pattern there.
I consider this book a good reference, not a tutorial. I like a book that does not waste too much time on the ubiquitous 'Hello World', crawling its way up to an excruciating sample application. I do not have an affinity to that style; Even for tutorials. Usually open source is replete with examples anyway. I often judge a book by seeing if it can quickly answer a specific question, which did not immediately leap to my attention, from the standard Web docs. How do I change the text label on a button? What do the arguments really look like? Having figured it out already, I noticed this book answers the question right out of the contents page and on page 179, with an example of the proper object property arg "GtkButton::label". It is more pleasant to learn from brief working examples, than syntax diagrams and source code. Another feature that jumped out was the "API Synopsis" sections. Fast, single sentence descriptions followed by the API call, on a class by class basis. Nice touch. An IMPORTANT note on ergonomics, which you cannot possibly experience by clicking 'What's inside': This book is fabricated with the same lightweight, semi-gloss, low-acid paper that another one of my favorite books, Stroustrup's C++ opus, is published with. This means the book is thinner, taking up less shelve space. More importantly, the pages turn easily, indexed by finger, and when browsing the inner meat of the book, it stays open without coaxing. This means I don't have to constantly interrupt my browsing both machine and book to crack the binding. This kind of babysitting quickly vectors toward the intolerable, in particular, with the big, cheap doorstops. Good reference books need to be browseable in random fashion, right out of the shrink wrap. A note to Logan: Nice job. On the second edition, put a bigger index in the book. It might be nice to see your "Synopsis" block style description of the most popular signals for widgets (table 4.2)and containers (table 10.1) in the signal chapter, as well as the classes. It saves flipping.
Rating: 
Summary: Great GTK reference
Review: When it came time for me to make the transition from the nice and cozy world of Windows/MFC to X Windows, I started to scrounge for an X toolkit to develop applications on. As a result, I searched for decent documentation. This book tries to be a primer and a reference, but it really only succeeds as a reference. This book covers the straight GTK code from a C perspective, and documents most of the basic widgets. With only this book, you will find it difficult and tedious to produce usable applications. However, armed with glade, a glade tutorial, and this book, you can be as productive in designing X GUIs as a Visual Basic programmer. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Great GTK reference
Review: When it came time for me to make the transition from the nice and cozy world of Windows/MFC to X Windows, I started to scrounge for an X toolkit to develop applications on. As a result, I searched for decent documentation. This book tries to be a primer and a reference, but it really only succeeds as a reference. This book covers the straight GTK code from a C perspective, and documents most of the basic widgets. With only this book, you will find it difficult and tedious to produce usable applications. However, armed with glade, a glade tutorial, and this book, you can be as productive in designing X GUIs as a Visual Basic programmer. Highly recommended.
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