Preface to the First Edition

Preface to the First Edition

'Please will you teach me something about Wimp programming?' asked my son Christopher.

I realised that if I sat down with him at the computer and started to tell him how to write programs using windows and menus, he would quickly become bored, so I decided to write a series of articles which he could study at his own pace and read when I was not there. Perhaps, I thought, there might be a chance of getting them published in one of the Acorn magazines.

As the writing progressed, it became clear that, in monthly instalments, the series would run for a year or more. I was not sure that any magazine would want to accept a series of that length but my wife pointed out that there was probably enough material for a book.

She suffered the consequences - putting up with me spending many long hours at the computer (nothing new there!), developing software, writing and re-writing the text, reformatting it to the correct page size and talking about nothing else.

The result, of course, is what you are reading now. I hope you get as much enjoyment as I did from experiencing the thrill of seeing a window of your own creation appear on the screen for the first time and discovering that its scroll bars and other control icons actually work!

Thanks are due to my wife Christine for reasons outlined above, my brother Bob for arranging the printout of the manuscript and camera-ready copy and to Pam Turnbull at Acorn Computing (formerly The Micro User) for putting me in touch with Sigma Press.

And to you, I hope, for reading this book.

Martyn Fox