OS/2 Warp version 3 is undoubtedly the best multitasking, 32-bit operating system now available for IBM 486 and Pentium computers. It has a good history and has been around long enough for the bugs to have been removed.

Experience has shown that all of the useful DOS and Windows programs that I normally use work perfectly under OS/2 native mode. These include publication-quality plotting programs, text editors, and DOS extended compilers such as WATCOM10.

For those who wish to write graphics programs in OS/2, useful information has been hard to come by, so this book is welcome. In essence, it seeks to explain by constructing a graphics editor similar to Paintbrush from scratch. All of the constructional planning, and the details of facilities available in the IBM Graphical Programming Interface (GPI), are described and explained. The result is a running graphics editor for which the code, and a compiled version, are available on an included floppy disk.

There are eight chapters and two appendices. The text gives an overview of the proposed graphics editor followed by a brief account of the OS/2 architecture. Considering that the book is for advanced programmers, the description of the editor is far too long: anyone who has used Windows or OS/2 will be familiar with the material. The same applies to the long chapter on fonts.

The appendices provide a listing of all the GPI functions and indicate how to install and use the programs on the floppy disk.

Prospective users should be aware that to compile and run the example programs, the IBM tools C/C++ version 2.01, ToolKit version 2.1, and WorkFrame version 1.1 or 2.1 and related handbooks must be available.

The book contains no references and no examples, so it is unsuitable as a course text, but it is unique in providing detailed OS/2 graphics programming information and will be of great utility to programmers working in this field.