upFront Book Reviews

by Ralph Grabowski
Listing of Books Reviewed
Click on a book title to jump to the book review:

The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and the Technical Wizards behind the Supercomputer by Charles Murray

Dictionary of Acronyms and Technical Abbreviations by Jakob Vlietstra

AutoCAD Programming in C/C++ by Owen Ransen

3D Modeling with the ACIS Kernel and Toolkit by Johnathan Corney

Glossary of Information Technology Acronyms and Terms by the Gartner Group

AutoCAD Release 14 in Serbian by Slobodan Lazic

MicroStation 3D By Example (2nd Ed) by Noel Addison

Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to Web Development by William Martiner

HTML Stylesheet Sourcebook by Ian Graham


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Book Reviews

The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and the Technical Wizards behind the Supercomputer

by Charles Murray

I have a fascination for history, especially history in the 20th Century. So it was with some eagerness that I sat down to read The Supermen. This was the story of  the men -- primarily Seymour Cray -- and women who were always creating the world's fastest computer.

At a mere 220 pages, the book became a short read for me. And it felt kinda like eating one of those fast food "ice cream" deserts. While the book records 35 years of history, there was hard data missing. I would have liked more technical detail on how these supercomputers work. This is ironic for the author records that Cray despised the press, who wanted to oversimplify his work. Yes, the author is so shallow in his technical description that at one point he refers to the supercomputer's CPU as the "special chip."

In the end, I never felt like I ever got to know the remarkable Seymour Cray -- or his overwhelming computers -- very well. Priced at US$24.95, this book becomes worthwhile picking up once it hits the delete bins.

Dictionary of Acronyms and Technical Abbreviations

by Jakob Vlietstra

Subtitled for IT, Industrial, and Scientific Applications, this 4cm-thick (1-1/2") book lists 32,000 abbreviations. The abbreviations are listed alphabetically but I like the layout of the book: the top of every right-hand page lists -- in large, 22pt type -- the range of abbreviations listed on the two facing pages. Thus, page 369
ranges from MIP (Manual Improvement Process) to mksa (meter, kilometer, second, ampere).

Author Vlietstra's task of collecting 32,000 acronyms is astounding. I know, because seven year ago I collected 400 acronyms for an appendix in my The AutoCAD Technical Reference book -- and I thought that was a pretty long list!  From this book, I found out that Univac is short for "universal automatic computer" (if only I could own one of those!<g>) and that YODA is short for "young opinionated directionless artists". When an abbreviation is specific to a country, the two-letter country code follows. Naturally, those country codes are listed in the book, too. The only thing missing is a diskette that would let me load those
32,000 abbreviations into my word processor's spell checker.

AutoCAD Programming in C/C++

by Owen Ransen

Books about AutoCAD are a dime a dozen. I know: I've written 30 of them myself. Books on AutoLISP are less common; books on AutoCAD's C-language interface are a rare bird indeed. Thus I was pleased to see Ransen's book. I am not familiar with the author, nor is there a bio, though his email address places him in Italy.

Ransen uses nearly 500 pages to explain the C-based APIs found in Release 12 and 13: ADS, ARx, and that temporary hybrid, RxADS. Much of his book is applicable to Release 14, just that ARx is now given the more trendy name of ObjectARx. Note that Autodesk is now de-emphasizing ADS in favor of ARx. With that in mind, here are some of the chapter headings:

All source code is on the diskette included with the book. Don't let the many typos in the Table of Contents throw you off. I was pleased to see my CAD++ Newsletter (now defunct) mentioned in his resource listing.

3D Modeling with the ACIS Kernel and Toolkit

by Johnathan Corney

This book is a practical book: it shows you how to use the ACIS libraries. Using 90 examples, author Corney shows how to create 3D solid model shapes using the C++ and Schema programming languages. The sample code is not included on a disk with the book; instead, you need to go to ftp://ftp.wiley.com/pub/corney/

The examples are clear and straight-forward. I particularly appreciate the clear before-and-after diagrams, showing the effect of the code on the solid model. Every so often, author Corney includes a sidebar describing the mathematical background, the theory on which the ACIS is based on. For example, About Booleans states: "As well as being some of the most useful modeling procedures, Boolean operations are amongst the hardest to implement. Problems stem both from the vast number of cases which have to be considered  and fundamental problems of numerical accuracy."

After a grounding in the basic concepts of ACIS (such as entity lists and coordinate systems), topics include intersections and booleans, rendering and faceting, spline surfaces, and attributes. Advanced topics include customizing ACIS and optional HUSKS. Appendix B provides a clear summary of the ACIS data structure.

Glossary of Information Technology Acronyms and Terms

by the Gartner Group

This book contains a description of 2,500 acronyms and terms that we face working in today's info-glutted world. Listed alphabetically, from AA (automated attendant) to ZAK (zero administration kit), each acronym has a one-paragraph explanation. But don't expect CAD-related acronyms. A quick look showed me that DXF, DWG, DGN, and plenty more are missing, although the generic terms CAD and CAE are there.

 In fact, the slant of the book tends towards telecommunications and mainframe computers systems. Hence, there are entries for 3880, 3990, CADAM, and RJE. Some definitions are more detailed ("...invented by IBM in 1986...") and others lack detail: TIFF is defined as "Tag Image File Format: A de facto standard format for image files.") The occasional illustration pops up.

AutoCAD Release 14 in Serbian

by Slobodan Lazic

Slobodan Lazic <slazic@sezampro.yu> has a new 1,186-page AutoCAD R14 book in the Serbian language. With the book you get a CD-ROM with: The book can be bought in quality bookstores or directly from the publisher or it can be ordered and paid COD. "NI VINCA"  tel: +381 (11) 682 486, 683 390

MicroStation 3D By Example, 2nd Ed.

by Noel Addison

This 528-page book uses practical examples of 3D modeling to teach the efficient application of MicroStation 95 to design projects. Topics covered include: free-forms, modifying surfaces, blending surfaces, composite surfaces, B-splines surfaces, drawing composition, and introduction to lighting. All exercises are performed using AccuDraw.

Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to Web Development

by William Martiner

If you like the Microsoft approach to programming, here is an excellent book for creating a dynamic Web site using Visual Basic 5 and Visual InterDev. The book covers the following topics: Martiner's style is easy to read. Here's a sample: "You see, if you simply define properties for ActiveX controls through Property Get and Let procedures, you might find yourself in the unpleasant situation of having a control with 'magic disappearing properties.'" Although the book does not contain the now-mandatory CD-ROM, you can get all the sample codes and demos from http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/martiner

HTML Stylesheet Sourcebook

by Ian Graham

Ian Graham is sort of like the Rusty Gesner of the Web world: when there's a new version of HTML, Graham has a new book out on it. This title covers the world of  "cascading style sheets" (aka CSS). Stylesheets in HTML are a lot like styles in desktop publishing. When you design a Web page with styles, you can change the
look of the page by simply applying a new style -- rather than manually changing all of the HTML elements. Similarly, by applying a stylesheet to all your Web page,
you achieve a consistent look.

Styles are easy to catch on to. For example, the <P> tag in HTML indicate the start (and end) of a paragraph. Using CSS, you redefine the meaning of P to include
the font name, color, size, etc. Now each time you use <P>, the Web browser substitutes in the style. As you can see, this is more efficient than applying the font
name, color, etc, tags for each and every paragraph.

If styles are so simple, why buy a book? As Graham warns, "The !important parameter is just one part of the cascading mechanism, and may seem a bit vague without a concrete example illustrating its role. Indeed, this book has yet to go into the details of the cascading mechanism, which is the way, within CSS, that the browser
determines which declarations to apply when actually formatting a given element." Superficially simple, but complex when you get into many linked stylesheets. In
addition, Graham warns that even though all new browsers claim to support CSS, all do so imperfectly. His books points out the bugs and their workarounds.

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