Over the years, I have received any number of letters, emails, and tweets asking if I were going to update my iOS Drawing book. I first wrote a version for Addison Wesley/Pearson as a kind of fun side project between major iOS releases and it was warmly received. Readers liked the practical solutions for low-level drawing and fancy effects.
Since then iOS evolved and Swift arrived. With new types like UIGraphicsImageRenderer and type extensions for structs like CGRect, drawing has a lot of updated power tools on hand and ready to deploy. Using C-based APIs with Swift can be a bit tricky, so it might be nice to have some guidance and examples. Plus, playgrounds now make the perfect sample code platform.
So would you be a potential purchaser if I wrote this? I updated about 25% already, just to get a feel for the changes (and I think they’re quite cool), and am looking at using Leanpub to roll out the book a bit at a time. I’m hoping there’s enough traction out there in potential reader-land to make this worth building. I’d anticipate finishing just before WWDC.
Thoughts? Interest? Please let me know. Thanks!
28 Comments
I would!
I`ve tried some drawings from an other site and find out that is really fun and I`ve learnt a lot of that.
I have a ton of interest in CG and would buy this book. My one hesitancy is I want to do it all with macOS not iOS. Most things transfer, but inevitably example projects are iOS focused. I know that’s the bigger market right now so I understand why iOS is the focus. Anyway, my 2 cents. 🙂
The book was originally directed to iOS because that’s where sales are. There’s a lot of crossover but there’d still be a lot more work validating code on two systems vs one. Let me look into this. Do you think that additional sample code for macOS (even if it’s not 100% coverage) would fix the problem?
Yes I would buy!
Very VERY interested. When can I sign up?
I’d definitely buy, for precisely the reasons that you mention (and also because of your excellent writing style!).
Apple’s documentation is great when you need to grasp every subtlety and nuance, but I much prefer to start from something that’s focused, practical, and task-oriented. That’s a much quicker path to getting real work done, at least for me.
You had me at “by Erica”. 🙂
I would buy it if it includes sample code for macOS too.
I certainly would!
I’ve written a lot of graphics programs for my research and for the classroom. Graphics and animation are still major interests of mine. I’d buy any well-written book on graphics.
I would! I’ve always been interested in drawing and I happen to really love design as well, so this would be a great skill to have to bring some of those design ideas to life. 🙂
I would buy it if it included macOS drawing too when there are differences between the two operating systems
If it goes deep enough, I would most likely buy it.
Looks great!! I would buy!
Yes, please. 🙂
At this point I am spending lots of time trying to figure out how to use more sophisticated font manipulation, like making monospaced numbers, alternate glyphs, ligatures, small caps , tracking etc. and I am trying to figure out which alterations are available, on which fonts, etc. So a book going to some depth in this area would be a big plus.
Another area I would like to see succinctly described in a book is the use of a lower level vs higher level drawing functions, which use CPU, which use GPU, what is desirable in different situations, what is the low hanging fruit when it comes to performance.
Photography would be another area of interest. Image i/o, access to image bytes, rescaling algorithms (performance vs quality vs different image types), color management.
Yep, I’d buy it (I’ve got the original, but I only work in Swift these days, so I’d love something Swifty-y). I’d be happy to be pre-purchase if that helps.
Regards,
Rob
Of course 🙂 First version is great.
I will buy every book from You !
Hi. Yes. This is a great proposal. (Focusing on iOS would be legitimate.)
Definitely would.
Yeah. Especially anything involving animating/messing with CGPaths/CGMutablePaths
Huh YES! I literally was just looking on Amazon for a book of this nature, saw your 2013 book, thought “oh dizamn an Erica Sadun book,” saw the date, and googled my way here. Can’t you just write all the books?
I should note that I am fully cognizant of the fact that iOS books inherently age like supermarket wine. And here we are nigh on the next WWDC. Godspeed, in any case.
Also, I love your Playgrounds books, and I would further note that I pretty much do 98% of my swifting on iPad Playgrounds. Maybe I’m a niche case, and it’s not generally too hard to see my way through the interface builder parts of all the books, but it would be good if authors started allowing for that, to whatever extent it’s feasible. For what it’s worth, drawing seems like a perfect use case for the Playgrounds app.
Last comment today.
Yes.
Yes^3. So very relevant.
Yes. Do iOS first and do a kickstarter for the mac version. If there’s enough pre-sales then do it. I’d like macOs support, so I’d pay premium for that.