This book has been sitting waiting for a reviewer for some time. In the end I decided that if no one else would volunteer I would do a quick review myself.

The book has a very restricted target readership: those who are developing for some version of MS Windows from 3.1 to 98 + Windows NT who need to know how to handle any and all varieties of printing devices including special devices such as barcode printers etc. I think that makes the potential readership fairly small. The code examples are usually provided in both C and Visual Basic. I am not sure which version of VB is used, so some code may need modification if you are developing in VB. For a book as specific as this I think that will not be a problem because if you need to read this book you should be well familiar with such problems.

In my opinion the material covers aspects of programming that most programmers would wish they did not need to know. However it is for that very reason that this book could prove particularly useful. If you are working on application that needs to communicate to a printer then having the relevant information packaged in one place could save you many hours of research. If you are such a person and feel you could find the time to do a complete review of this book based on its effectiveness at meeting your needs please get in touch with me.

The book comes with a CD that contains all the source code as well as the material needed for the final chapter where the author provides a final example - which includes an animated status bar.

I think the most important reason for providing even the skimpiest of reviews for this book is that knowing that the book exists may be enough even if this reviewer cannot give an adequate assessment of its quality. Certainly for potential readers it will be much better than having to start from scratch.