Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Although the subject matter is great, it lacks a lot when it comes to substance. It is very sad when you have to trouble shoot the example source code from a book that was written to teach you. I am only halfway through the book and the two of example scripts failed do to coding problems with the modules.
The Biorhythm example fails even when you copy it from the author's web site. If you are going to write a book proof your code.
Rating: 
Summary: If you want server-side graphics, this is the book
Review: Amazing, you really dont even need to know Perl, (though it helps:) Definitly buy it if you want to generate PNG, JPEG, and GIFs ON THE SEVER. A MUST HAVE!
Rating:
Summary: Fun stuff in Perl...
Review: Creating graphics, charts and diagrams on the fly with your real-time data --- you got it.
This book covered some really exciting topics and add some favor to your data-driven websites. I highly recommend it to anybody interested in using PERL to script GRAPHICS!
Rating:
Summary: Most amazing book on PERL
Review: Creating graphics, charts and diagrams on the fly with your real-time data --- you got it.
This book covered some really exciting topics and add some favor to your data-driven websites. I highly recommend it to anybody interested in using PERL to script GRAPHICS!
Rating:
Summary: Well done! Great coverage of a powerful use of Perl
Review: For those of you who know just about all there is to know about CGI using Perl, buy this book! This book introduced me to a side of Perl I had never thought of before.I just began writing custom system monitoring applications using Perl and the knowledge of the GIFgraph and GD modules gained from this book. It's well written and has relatively few technical errors (what O'Reilly book has many errors?). If you know Perl, you know the O'Reilly name is synonymous with excellence. This book is no exception.
Rating: 
Summary: A great introduction - readable and not overwhelming
Review: Freeware graphics tools for web development are abundant, if you know where to look. This book provides detailed examples of thier use with perl - and excellent text parsing language and defacto standard for cgi programming. With the proper extensions (all available free via GNU Software download) perl can provide "on the fly" rendering of web graphics.
Beginning with a proper understanding of graphics formats (gif, png, jpeg) commonly used on the web and detailing the differences between them, the reader quickly becomes an expert in thier differences and the advantages of each.
The meat of this book includes chapters on popular extensions to perl for graphics, GD, PerlMagick, GIFgraph, and the GIMP. I have always been amazed at the features in GIMP, but until this book did not realize that such features could be scripted in perl. The book list all the methods available through GD with a discussion of each.
Although the included web graphics cookbook is a bit short on recipes, the section on postscript makes up for the loss. If you have ever wanted to generate publisher quality postscript files from your web data the "Everything I Needed to Know About PostScript I learned Here" section is for you.
O'Reilly has a knack for generating 'must have' perl books that stand the test of time. This one is a must for the bookshelf of anyone who parses text with perl. Although a full treatise on this subject would encompasse thousands of pages, this book provides the essentials in an easy to use format. It should be considered an introductory text that will serve as an excellent starting point for the advanced web graphics user.
Rating:
Summary: Eenie, meenie, minie, mo, catch that Gimp thing by the toe
Review: I can only use an example to show how inspirational I've found this book. A Sys Admin and I were sipping cold beer in early Spring sunshine, on a Monday lunchtime. As we're both old gits, we got to talking about Veritas disk mappings and how difficult they can be to visualise (yes, I know just how sad this is). How about a web page? he asked. I was at a loose end, so I agreed to take a look. With this book's enthusiastic help and superb encouragement, by Friday in the Pub, we had a fully working intranet site which could deliver complete dynamic charted disk mappings of every machine on our entire network. Easily printed from Netscape, this single CGI/GIFgraph web tool now delivers clear condensed disk map charts in full "browser-safe" colour onto standard printer paper, displaying both mirrored volumes and all the other gubbins a tortured soul could require. This will save our Sys Admin teams hundreds of hours of tedium in the next few months, as we rebuild all of our machines. And that was only Chapter 6. This week I'll be reading Chapter 7 on the Gimp, and already I've realised whatever Adobe may like to quote me in the future for a Photoshop licence, I'm never going to have to pay it. Another brick in the wall of the propriertary monolith comes tumbling down. Rejoice.
Rating:
Summary: Fun stuff in Perl...
Review: I don't know about the rest of you, but I can only stand to grab data out of a text file so many times... I have never done graphics programming before and found this book to be a nice introduction. I did notice that there wasn't a lot of troubleshooting information in the book so if you are experienced programming graphics, this book is probably a waste of your time and $$$, you would be better off busting out your lazerjet and printing the man pages...Anyway, I really enjoyed this book and plan on using ImageMagick in my next project! If you want something thats a slight change of pace, give this a try!
Rating:
Summary: Not an "O Really!" reaction by O'Reilly
Review: I have no other option but accepting most of the negative reviews submitted to this book ( Graphics Programming with Perl and GNU software ). The book is definitely one of the horrible books that O'reilly was ever unfortunate enough to publish. I believe a similar title by "Manning" publication does a better job than this one. If you need the facts, read on. If you want to purchase this book to learn how to program web graphics with Perl, stop right here and go to CPAN.org. Search for GD, GD::Graph and ImageMagick and read their manuals. That's all this book does any ways. The only chapter I enjoyed was chapter one, "Image File Formats", which at least taught me something I hadn't known before. Outlines of the chapters follow. Chapter one - "Image File Formats" covers most of the basics you need to know to understand the anatomy of graphics, their compression algorithms and different formats available for the web, as well as their pros and cons. This is the chapter I enjoyed most. The chapter lasts over 30 pages. Chapter two - "Serving graphics on the Web" talks a bit about serving images from within Perl. Talks how the browser loads the images, image load time and image caching. Shows the ![]() tag, and its attributes. Lasts another 30 pages. Chapter 3 - "A Litany of Libraries" lists references to some of the graphics libraries available on the web. I would expect to see this chapter as an appendix. Starting chapter 4 - "On-the-Fly graphics with GD" is the start of all the disappointment, and to some extent, annoyance. After a clumsy introduction to GD and some of its classes and methods, starts coding a chess board. The application itself is not so useful, but the code is worth consideration. The chapter also lists all the methods available through GD classes with some description of each. Chapter 5, 6 and 7 are written in the same style as the above sibling. They concentrate on Image::Magic (also known as PerlMagick), GD::Graph (previously known as GIFgraph ) and Gimp respectively. Chapter 7 teaches how to write Gimp Plug-ins. You might consider this chapter if you're a Gimp user/fan.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice, could have been better though....
Review: It's a reasonable start if you want to work with GD, ImageMagick and others, but it's too much a printed version of the manpages. With examples and some tips though. It also adresses GIMP but fails to provide indept info on scripting GIMP.
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