---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Florida SunFlash Third Party Product Announcements SunFLASH Vol 49 #6 January 1993 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- New Book: LEX & YACC New Book: MH & xmh New Book: PHIGS Reference Manual New Book: X Sys. Admin Guide -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: New Book: LEX & YACC Newsgroups: comp.newprod From: brian@ora.com (Brian Erwin) O'REILLY PUBLISHES COMPLETELY REVISED GUIDE TO LEX AND YACC LEX & YACC by John R. Levine, Tony Mason, and Doug Brown 400 pages ISBN 1-56592-00-7 Price: $29.95 SEBASTOPOL, CA -- O'Reilly & Associates announces the release of a completely revised guide to two important UNIX programming tools, lex and yacc. For the second edition of LEX & YACC, authors Tony Mason and Doug Brown are joined by John Levine, moderator of the comp.compilers newsgroup on the Internet. Nearly twice the size of the original, the second edition contains new and revised tutorial and reference sections. The new materials should provide more help for new users in learning lex and yacc as well as for seasoned programmers who need to understand some of the complexities of these programming tools. "I've finished reading the second edition of lex & yacc... [T]he book is much stronger than the first edition, well- written and thorough. I had the pleasant surprise numerous times of reading some passage, thinking to myself, 'Oh, they've missed this perhaps subtle point, make a note,' and then the next sentence or paragraph would cover exactly that point... I'm glad I'll finally have a good book to recommend to folks." --Vern Paxson Developer of flex When LEX & YACC was first published in May 1990, CommUNIXations magazine noted that it covered topics, "usually left out of introductory and intermediate UNIX or C courses but [which] can enhance the productivity of any programmer who needs to talk to CRT screens or write applications programs that are user friendly." In the new edition, the authors have provided new, extended examples that show the variety of applications for lex and yacc. Major changes include: * Lex and yacc each have a chapter devoted to understanding basic usage and simple, stand-alone applications; * A new chapter with full SQL grammar; * Greatly expanded reference chapters; * Coverage of the new POSIX 1003.2 standard versions of lex and yacc; * Full coverage of all major MS-DOS and UNIX versions of lex and yacc, including AT&T lex and yacc, Berkeley yacc, Berkeley/Gnu flex, Gnu bison, MKS Lex and Yacc, and Abraxas PCYACC. LEX & YACC, 2nd edition, continues to be the only book exclusively devoted to these two important UNIX programming tools. Every chapter from the first edition has been wholly revised, with new, expanded examples replacing old ones. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: New Book: MH & xmh Newsgroups: comp.newprod From: brian@ora.com (Brian Erwin) MH & xmh: E-mail for Users & Programmers ISBN 1-56592-027-9 728 pages Price: $29.95 O'REILLY PUBLISHES UPDATED GUIDE TO E-MAIL FOR USERS AND PROGRAMMERS SEBASTOPOL, CA -- O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. has released an updated edition of its basic guide to electronic mail for users and programmers. MH & xmh: E-mail for Users & Programmers, by Jerry Peek, explains how to use, customize, and program with the MH electronic mail commands and with xmh, the X client graphical interface for MH. It has been updated for MH 6.7.2 and X Release 5. The book makes learning and using MH and xmh easy. A reader can learn to use MH by reading only about 15 pages in Chapter 4. Chapter 14 covers xmh in about 20 pages. All the rest of the book helps programmers and users do things at which the standard documentation only hints. WHAT'S NEW IN THIS EDITION MH & xmh has been revised extensively. These revisions include: * Edge tabs and a "road map" emphasizing the two quick-start tutorials, have been added to make the book easier to use; * A new chapter, with 45 pages on the "mhook" utilities for handling new mail automatically, de-mystifies these, shows examples of ways to customize them and explains techniques for debugging; * There's a new xmh Reference Guide in the purple pages at the back; * The chapter with shell programs has three new scripts: -- mysend is an MH sendproc that edits messages as they are sent. It's configured to add a "signature" to the ends of messages, but you can adapt it to do almost anything else. -- edprofile lets R5 xmh users change how some commands work, just by clicking a button. -- autoinc handles incoming mail automatically. It's nice for people who can't use mhook utilities, also for handling mail in a batch. The rmmer message-removing script is more efficient; it can also prompt for confirmation before removing messages from certain folders; * Many programs from the first edition have been improved and the index expanded; * The .xmhcheck file, for incorporating mail from many mailboxes is covered; * Chapter 10 has more examples of MH formatting (for the commands scan, repl, mhl, etc.). It also covers the new mh-format features introduced in MH 6.7.2; * The Release 5 xmh is more flexible--especially the XmhShellCommand for running any UNIX shell command on selected mail messages; * New sections tell how to handle packed mail files with packf and use the MH-like "mail shell" msh; * There are even more tips for using MH and xmh in real applications, including new time-saving aliases, buttons, and command versions. Several new sections show how to use UNIX links to organize mail; * Appendix B, "Early History of MH," written by Bruce Borden and Stockton Gaines, provides insight into why MH is the way it is. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: New Book: PHIGS Reference Manual Newsgroups: comp.newprod From: brian@ora.com (Brian Erwin) O'REILLY RELEASES REFERENCE GUIDE TO PHIGS 3D PROGRAMMING IN X PHIGS REFERENCE MANUAL edited by Linda Kosko 1116 pages ISBN 0-937175-91-9 Price: $39.95 SEBASTOPOL, CA -- O'Reilly & Associates announces the release of the PHIGS REFERENCE MANUAL: 3D PROGRAMMING IN X, the reference companion to the recently released PHIGS PROGRAMMING MANUAL (O'Reilly & Associates). This 1116-page resource is the reference documentation for the PHIGS/PEX Sample Implementation. Edited by technical writer Linda Kosko, it contains all of the reference pages from the MIT X Consortium release, but in upgraded form. Together with the PHIGS PROGRAMMING MANUAL, it constitutes complete and accessible documentation for both the PEX-SI and the PHIGS and PHIGS PLUS standards. "The PHIGS REFERENCE MANUAL will be useful to the person programming with a version of PHIGS that is not running in the X environment since it documents the PHIGS and PHIGS PLUS graphics standards," said the book's editor, Steve Talbott. "It also provides full guidance regarding the use of PHIGS within the X environment, including the interspersing of Xlib calls with PHIGS calls." The book can be used by everyone who will be programming with the PHIGS (including PHIGS PLUS) 3D graphics standard, which was incorporated into X in X11 Release 5 along with the PEX protocol extension to the X server and a PHIGS API library. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: New Book: X Sys. Admin Guide Newsgroups: comp.newprod From: brian@ora.com (Brian Erwin) X WINDOW SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR'S GUIDE by Linda Mui and Eric Pearce 372 pages ISBN 0-937175-83-8 Price: $29.95 O'REILLY & ASSOCIATES RELEASES FIRST X WINDOW SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR'S GUIDE SEBASTOPOL, CA -- As X moves out of the hacker's domain and into the "real world," system administrators will increasingly be asked to assist users who can't master all the ins and outs of setting up and administering their own X software. To assist them, or any but the most naive users running X on their own machines, O'Reilly & Associates announces the publication of THE X WINDOW SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR'S GUIDE, the first and only book devoted to the issues of system administration for X and X-based networks. It is Volume 8 in O'Reilly's renowned X Window System series. According to publisher Tim O'Reilly, THE X WINDOW SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR'S GUIDE fills a unique need. "This is probably the area of X that's showing the most demand right now. X administration seminars are mobbed because people are desperate for information. A book like this is especially important now that X is becoming widespread on non-UNIX platforms." "X Window System Administrator's Guide by Linda Mui and Eric Pearce describes how to deal with all those pesky configuration files and includes tips on building the MIT X source code. The book replaces gobs of poorly organized and inaccurate man pages." --Open Systems Today Written by Linda Mui and Eric Pearce, Volume 8 provides authoritative support that clarifies the issues raised by X, including the subtle changes in the standard UNIX way of doing things and the blurriness caused by X crossing boundaries between different platforms. Under X, users can run applications across the network, on systems with different servers than the applications were designed for originally. Many of these issues are poorly understood and the technology for dealing with them is in rapid flux. The X WINDOW SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR'S GUIDE helps overcome these difficult or poorly understood issues by presenting: * an overview of X that focuses on issues that affect the system administrator's job, be they UNIX system administrators or anyone faced with the job of administering X (including those running X on stand-alone workstations); * Information on obtaining, compiling, and installing X software, including a discussion of the trade-offs between vendor-supplied and the free MIT versions of X; * how to use PC and Mac X servers to maximize reuse of existing hardware and convert outdated hardware into X terminals; * how to set up xdm, the X display manager, which takes the place of the login program under X and can be used to create a customized turnkey X session for each user; * issues involved in making X more secure. X's security features aren't strong, but an understanding of what features are available can be very important, since X makes it possible for users to intrude on each other in new and sometimes unexpected ways; * how fonts are used by X, including a description of the font server; * how to obtain and install additional public domain software and patches for X; * covers features new in R5, including the font server and Xcms. Linda Mui is a specialist in UNIX text processing tools. She is co-author of two other O'Reilly books, termcap and terminfo and Pick BASIC. Eric Pearce is an author and technical resource for O'Reilly & Associates. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This and other O'Reilly Books are available through bookstores or directly from the publisher. For a list of our overseas distributors or US bookstores, FAX (707/829-0104), phone (707/829-0515 or 800/998-9938 in US or Canada) or write O'Reilly & Assoicates, 103 Morris St., Sebastopol, CA, 95472, USA. Brian Erwin, brian@ora.com Public Relations, O'Reilly & Associates 103A Morris Street, Sebastopol CA 95472 707-829-0515, Fax 707-829-0104 TRACE: To: sunflash@suntri Errors-to: owner-sunflash@suntri.east.sun.com