There are already many textbooks on Graph Theory. In them a wide range of topics are covered. This writing does not cover so many topics. Instead, a smaller range is given and in more detail, appealing often to intuition to motivate the introduction of more abstract material. This is an attempt to present material early, even to motivated high school students. But college students and other adults may find the following chapters serving as an introduction to the subject, before going on to regular textbooks on Graph Theory.
Another difference - the material is not presented in the familar bound textbook with the usual paper pages. Interlinked web pages contain ewverything. Popular browsers, especially the Internet Explorer, can be used to read these pages.. After the fequency of revisions and additions decreases signifiicantly, some of the pages will be placed on some internet web site for free usage. Later they will be stored on a CD or DVD that can be distributed later. All the pages should be close enough to being in printer friendly form so that they can be copied completelyonto paper to make a hard copy if desired.
The layout of this book
The material is divided up and placed into HTML and jpg files. Although mostly transparent to the reader these HTML files are not called themselves chapters, but text.htm. These texts contain the material that is the main focus of the reader. Each text is stored in a folder called chapterxy where xy is a two digit number. Also in each chapter folder are all the pictorial jpg files that allow drawings to appear when reading text.htm with a browser. Most of these drawings were created in Windows Paint, and then were converted to jpg format by a third party program. A few drawings were scanned in.
In addition to the text.htm and jpg files each chapter folder contains four folders. The folder addmat contains additional material to the main text file. It contains information relalted to discussions in the main text.file, but perhaps does not merit inclusion in the main text.htm. Another folder facts contains facts and statements in the form of theorems, some proofs and other formal statements. A third folder probs contains problems and exercises to reinforce understanding of the material in text.htm. The last folder progs contains computer programs that do computation that would be too tedious to do by hand.
In each of these four folders (sub-folders) is a single HTML file. It is named after the folder in which it is stored. Clicking on the appropriate link in the text.htm file will send the reader to this HTML file. All of the jpg files for drawings in that HTML file are included in the sub-folder. Clicking on a link will return the reader from the sub-folder to the main text file (text.htm).
This "electronic book" uses a somewhat novel approach to the presentation of the material. Its success or failure relates directly to the competence of its author to use the electronic apparatus effectively to display the material in a accessable and understandable way.