I think this is brilliant, and I thank you on behalf of all the beginners who will become great members of the FPC/Lazarus community ! This is how we can build that community folks !
Hope you don't mind if make a couple of constructive suggestions ?
Firstly, you use the word 'tool' when referring to visual components, I'm not sure thats a good idea. Possibility of confusing your 'tool' with the ones provided as part of FPC/Lazarus. People tend to think of tools as something you use here to help make the software rather than actually part of the software.
Secondly, installing. I think it would be a good idea to point people to the newly released install kits that ship 1.8. The Linux package maintainers can be quite slow in pushing out new versions, especially for people on long term release OS.
Another thing you probably have not come across is how hard Mac makes things for non Mac developers. So someone attracted to Lazarus's cross platform nature may find themselves looking at a Mac for the first time. On Mac's, to use the app outside of the IDE you need to make an "application Bundle" (press the button in Project Options) and then run (from memory) ~/MyApp.app/Contents/Mac/MyApp and to move the app elsewhere you need to delete the symlink down in that location and replace it with the actual binary.
I'll try and document this process and how to make a distributed dmg file on the wiki when I get some free time. This script does it (but I don't think it would be a good idea to link directly to it) -
https://github.com/tomboy-notes/tomboy-ng/blob/master/package/mk_dmg.bash Perhaps all you need do in your book is mention that Mac's need that application bundle to be made and refer people to wiki ?