Essential Pascal CoverMy online book Essential Pascal is available in its 4th edition, the first also on paper. The first printed edition of Essential Pascal is available on Lulu.com for only Eur 16.50 (apparently only about 21 US dollars for Lulu!) At the same link (www.lulu.com/content/2398448), you can also buy the  electronic version (a PDF) for a mere Eur 6.50 (about 8 US dollars).

The book has 140 pages and is focused on the core Pascal language (and not its OOP extensions) as found in Delphi, with some references to differences or similarities in Delphi for .Net, in Chrome, and in Free Pascal. From the page "Essential Pascal is an introduction to the basic features of the Pascal language, as found in Delphi and other modern development tools, from the best selling author of Mastering Delphi."

Compared to past online edition I've reworked all of the examples to be console-based, so they can be focused on core features and be (potentially) cross-platform. The book has had extensive editing and dozen of relevant corrections and improvements. I've kept the price very low on purpose, as the book is already used in Universities around the world, and some of its users might want to buy the printed edition.

Although the book is focused on new users of the Pascal language, it is not only an introductory book. By covering dynamic arrays, pointers, functions overloading, open array parameters, and variants (to name a few rather advanced topics) the book delves into many areas that not all Delphi developers are fluent with. An twin book introducing OOP and VCL foundations (Essential Delphi) might be turned into a printed volume depending on the success of Essential Pascal.

Finally notice that I intend to update the free HTML version of the book (I'll add quite some advertising to it, though... let me know if you are interested in promoting your tools in it) and will also published the source code. These two further steps might take a couple of weeks, because next week we have a very long weekend (4 days) and I'm taking a few days off with my family.

Overall, anyway, the book will be available as advertise-based one-page-per-section HTML (free), PDF file (paid), and printed version (paid). After that I'll retire the previous edition...