Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Coverage, Poorly Written
Review: After spending several weeks going over the contents of this book, I do not recommend it to the beginning or intermediate readers. Feng Yuan insight into the Visual C++ environment is excellent; however, he does a very poor job with organizing and explaining the topic to the average reader.I had a hard time following his technical jargon; it was no different than reading the MSDN help manual, which was really cut and dry. If it was his intent to write this book as a reference manual to demonstrate the features of GDI or for the advance developer (who probably doesn't need it to begin with), then he did a very good job. However, developers, like myself, who is just getting into GDI it just left me chasing the bandwagon. The sample code had little or no comments; it was difficult trying to match his explanation to the code sample because he would write the explanation in its entirety and then provide the code sample at the end. Feng, if your reading this, please provide the code explanation in the context that it is being referenced. I had a hard time referring back to your code sample while following your explanations. If you are a developer of C++, I recommend Kris Jamsa who does a very good job of organizing and structuring his books. If only Kris wrote a book on GDI, I would have opted for it than this one.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Coverage, Poorly Written
Review: After spending several weeks going over the contents of this book, I do not recommend it to the beginning or intermediate readers. Feng Yuan insight into the Visual C++ environment is excellent; however, he does a very poor job with organizing and explaining the topic to the average reader. I had a hard time following his technical jargon; it was no different than reading the MSDN help manual, which was really cut and dry. If it was his intent to write this book as a reference manual to demonstrate the features of GDI or for the advance developer (who probably doesn't need it to begin with), then he did a very good job. However, developers, like myself, who is just getting into GDI it just left me chasing the bandwagon. The sample code had little or no comments; it was difficult trying to match his explanation to the code sample because he would write the explanation in its entirety and then provide the code sample at the end. Feng, if your reading this, please provide the code explanation in the context that it is being referenced. I had a hard time referring back to your code sample while following your explanations. If you are a developer of C++, I recommend Kris Jamsa who does a very good job of organizing and structuring his books. If only Kris wrote a book on GDI, I would have opted for it than this one.
Rating:
Summary: A programming book should have 100% working examples.
Review: As early as page 6 an example is presented which does not work. Will not compile. It has not one, but two errors. If I change from debug to release (less strict), it will compile but will not run. The compiled exe is also included on the CD, and it too will not run. I bought the book because I am an experianced programmer, but new to Win32 graphics. At this point I'm not impressed. Also the font/paper selection is unfortunate. The book is hard to read. Over the years, I've bought and read over a dozen programming books. This one is the hardest to read. For the record, the system it fails on is Windows ME with Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 with service pack 5 installed. This is the compiler the book reccommends , and the most recent version. The error message: Deleting intermediate files and output files for project 'gui - Win32 Debug'. --------------------Configuration: gui - Win32 Debug-------------------- Compiling... Hello2.cpp Linking... LIBCD.lib(crt0.obj) : error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol _main Debug/gui.exe : fatal error LNK1120: 1 unresolved externals Error executing link.exe. gui.exe - 2 error(s), 0 warning(s)
Rating: 
Summary: Great addition to your windows programming library
Review: Given Feng's history with writing printing drivers for HP it is pretty clear that the information in this book covers his experience with GDI internals. The code examples are all in C++ and the sample code and utilities would add nicely to a programmers sandbox. The book covers the basics of GDI and graphics programming and then delves into more advanced image processing (affine transformations, alpha blending, mask blitting, filtering, etc.) There is even more stuff here, but I don't have enough room to type it in. This is definitely a book to have if you are writing shrink wrapped UI intensive applications.
Rating:
Summary: Best description of GDI fonts I've seen
Review: I can't speak to the strengths and weaknesses of the entire book as cited by other reviewers, but it's clear that text rendering was the author's primary motivation to explore the depths of GDI. Chapters 14 ("Fonts") and 15 ("Text") deserve to be expanded into a volume of their own. If you're a developer seeking a thorough understanding of the way Windows deals with text, from the low-level details of the TrueType font file format to the undocumented quirks of the higher-level GDI APIs, you simply can't do any better than Yuan's book.
Rating:
Summary: Best description of GDI fonts I've seen
Review: I can't speak to the strengths and weaknesses of the entire book as cited by other reviewers, but it's clear that text rendering was the author's primary motivation to explore the depths of GDI. Chapters 14 ("Fonts") and 15 ("Text") deserve to be expanded into a volume of their own. If you're a developer seeking a thorough understanding of the way Windows deals with text, from the low-level details of the TrueType font file format to the undocumented quirks of the higher-level GDI APIs, you simply can't do any better than Yuan's book.
Rating: 
Summary: Useful, but Too many Mistales
Review: I tested many code and contents of this book and discovered many misunderstandings and erros. While reading and testing, I'd got doubtful of the reliability of this book. This book provides many useful information, but don't swallow whatever this book says.
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Book
Review: I've been looking for a book with this kind of practical information and depth for a long time. Unlike many books or references for Windows GDI, this one offers practical wisdom and useful examples. Mr. Yuan does a good job describing the background and architecture of Windows graphics systems. Buy this book if the MS docs leave you wanting, or you want to learn the how and why behind the APIs. I'm an experienced Windows programmer since the early days, and I find this book very valuable.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book
Review: I've been looking for a book with this kind of practical information and depth for a long time. Unlike many books or references for Windows GDI, this one offers practical wisdom and useful examples. Mr. Yuan does a good job describing the background and architecture of Windows graphics systems. Buy this book if the MS docs leave you wanting, or you want to learn the how and why behind the APIs. I'm an experienced Windows programmer since the early days, and I find this book very valuable.
Rating:
Summary: Superbly rich and rewarding
Review: Many interesting and useful things related to Windows graphics programming are discussed and explained in a deep and satisfying way. Just do not approach this huge (1200+ page) book casually, but rather dig it for beautiful and valuable nuggets of information (e.g. Mandelbrot set or Bezier curves). Included source code is a goldmine also. Way too many computer related books nowdays are trivial and boring - this book is something entirely different. The book could benefit from addtional editing, but the editing glitches are pretty minor, esp. compared to the actual substance.
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