This book is not part of "The Minimum You Need to Know"
book series. I wrote it a long time ago for John Gordon
Burke Publisher, Inc. It is the first book I ever had
published. Recently I've had cause to dig some copies out
of storage because the OpenZinc
project has sparked renewed interest in Zinc.
Zinc Application Framework was the first serious attempt
at a cross platform application framework. Granted it
focused mostly on the GUI leaving database, networks and
devices to the imagination of the developer, but this was
the first toolkit which actually worked. Unlike Qt and
most of today's frameworks, Zinc was unique in its
approach. It provided the mouse and graphics for DOS, but,
on every other platform it was a wrapper class, bundling
up the infrastructure each OS provided. This meant your
Windows app looked like a Windows app and when it compiled
for OS/2 it looked like an OS/2 app and same for Mac.
While there was lots of documentation for Zinc itself,
there was next to nothing about creating a real
application with it. In particular, you needed some kind
of database or at least an indexed file system to store
data. I also played with serial communications which
provided the architectural framework for everything else
you needed to do when a real or semi-real-time device
needed to be service from within the Zinc event loop.
Doesn't matter what kind of device you are trying to use,
you needed to make that event loop service your device in
an efficient manner.
Few of these books have the CD-ROM in the back. The few
boxes I have are the overruns which never went through
that part of the assembly process. You can download the
source from the link on this page. I just don't want
someone complaining that the cover says a CD-ROM is
included.