You might be thinking that GDI and DirectDraw are things of the past because now we have GDI+ and Direct3D that wraps up DirectDraw. Even the .NET Framework encapsulates GDI+. I was thinking the same and questioned whether I should be really reading this book or not. But I was wrong. This is not just another Window Graphics books. It has much more to offer.

This book is not unique in that it explains the various GDI and DirectDraw concepts and APIs. It is unique in that sense that it uncovers what goes on behind those different graphics API calls.

When I started to look at the first chapter, I could not stop reading further. I found the insights provided by the book so helpful that I read upto chapter 4 in a day. Chapter 3 is about the different internal data structures in the GDI and DirectDraw systems and this is valuable for any Windows graphic programmer. Chapter 4 is labelled "Spying in the Windows Graphics System" and this is the real meat of the book. I think Chapter 4 alone along with the supporting code in the CD is worth the price of the the book.

The CD contains sample programs with source code together with reusable functions and classes. It has over 1300 KB of C++ source files, 400 KB of C++ header files. I find the source code to be most valuable. The spying executables are great (Win API spying, GDI spying, DirectDraw COM Interfaces spying, GDI system call syping). We can easily extend the source code to create our own spying applications.

The rest of the chapters i.e. from 4 to 18 contain different graphics topics like Coordinate spaces and transformations, Advanced bitmap graphics, Palettes, Fonts, Texts, Metafiles, Printing etc. This book is aimed at intermediate to advanced programmers using the Win32 API or class libraries based upon it.

In conclusion I recommend this book for every Windows graphic programmer and would like to thank Mr. Feng Yuan for writing such a wonderful book. Author's site http://www.fengyuan.com/