Production

The authors wrote this text using jEdit and Gnu-Emacs. They typeset and indexed the text themselves, marking it up with a modified DocBook/XML syntax that they converted into pure DocBook/XML using a custom XML processor called Slacker's DocBook, written in Python. The emoticons (pictures used next to certain notes) are BobCo glyphs used by permission, with copyrights owned by the Subgenius Foundation (www.subgenius.com). Callout images are by Stephen Langer. Most diagrams were produced with Umbrello or Dia, and a couple of diagrams were produced with Doxygen and Dot. The authors have no idea what fonts are going to be used for the text; the content is completely independent of the presentation. We generate many different versions (overhead slides, textbooks, labs and solutions) of this text for our own uses, some in HTML, some in PostScript, and some in PDF.

The XML and image processors we used were: Gnu xsltproc, ReportLab pyRXP, ImageMagick, doxygen, Apache Ant, Xerces, and XEP. The authors did most of the editing and processing on GNU/Linux systems under KDE. The example programs all compile and run under Linux, Windows, and MacOS.

About the cover .  In the world of C++ libraries, Qt is quite a beautiful well-designed one. In the real-world of libraries, the most beautiful one I can think of is the Vancouver Public Library, featured on the cover of this book.