Appendix C Free Companion Books on Delphi

Overview

This is the seventh edition of Mastering Delphi, and I've also written other books, material for classes and conference presentations, and much more; so, in addition to the thousand or so pages this book can accommodate, I have a lot of other material about Delphi programming, particularly introductory material. Over the last few years, I've turned this information into electronic books (in HTML or PDF format) available for free on my website. This appendix outlines the titles and their contents, and provides references to the download pages (all hosted on www.marcocantu.com).

Essential Pascal

Essential Pascal is an introduction to the foundations of the language invented by Professor Nicklaus Wirth and spread by Borland with its world-famous Turbo Pascal compilers during the 1980s. The 100-page book doesn't cover the OOP extensions, but details many features Borland added to the core language over the years. The following is a list of this e-book's chapters, available at www.marcocantu.com/epascal:

Chapter 1: "Pascal History"

Chapter 2: "Coding in Pascal"

Chapter 3: "Types, Variables, and Constants"

Chapter 4: "User-Defined Data Types"

Chapter 5: "Statements"

Chapter 6: "Procedures and Functions"

Chapter 7: "Handling Strings"

Chapter 8: "Memory (and Dynamic Arrays)"

Chapter 9: "Windows Programming"

Chapter 10: "Variants"

Chapter 11: "Programs and Units"

Chapter 12: "Files in the Pascal Language"

Appendix A: "Glossary of Terms"

Appendix B: "Examples"

As you can see on the website, the book has been translated by volunteers into quite a few languages.

Essential Delphi

Mastering Delphi has changed from an introductory text to an intermediate one as I've tried to cover most of the features Borland has added to Delphi over the years. In the process, I had to cut some of the material aimed at programmers who've never used Delphi or a visual tool. This material is now contained in the Essential Delphi e-book, freely available in PDF format on my site at www.marcocantu.com/edelphi. Here is the table of contents (which is still under development):

Chapter 1: "A Form Is a Window"

Chapter 2: "Highlights of the Delphi Environment"

Chapter 3: "The Object Repository and the Delphi Wizards"

Chapter 4: "A Tour of the Basic Components"

Chapter 5: "Creating and Handing Menus"

Chapter 6: "Multimedia Fun"

Chapter 7: "Saving Settings: From INI Files to the Registry"

Chapter 8: "More on Forms"

Chapter 9: "Delphi Database 101 (with Paradox)"

Chapter 10: "Printing"

Appendix A: "Essential SQL"

Appendix B: "Common VCL Properties"

Delphi Power Book

Finally, I'm making available more material that covers advanced topics, in a collection called Delphi Power Book. At the time of this writing, only four chapters of this e-book are available:

"Graphics in Delphi", "Examples of Using Interfaces", "COM Shell Extensions", and "Debugging."

A lot more will come; stay tuned to the website www.marcocantu.com/delphipowerbook.