Customer Reviews

Windows Telephony Programming: A Developer's Guide to TAPI

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

OK, I'll be generous. This book might contain some useful information. I think the main benefit is that it's written in a more relaxed style than the Microsoft Platform SDK, and the author fills in the details a little better than Microsoft. Still, he misses a lot of important points, like (for instance) how to actually get something useful like a serial port file handle out of a telephone connection once it's established. But I give him an extra star for at least trying to write something helpful.

Having said that, I think this is a horrible book for learning anything useful about TAPI. The author, for whatever obscure reason, decided to "wrap" the TAPI in his own proprietary C++ wrapper classes, which, according to him, are modeled on MFC. Oops! How are we going to learn to use TAPI from this book when all the examples use the author's pet TAPI classes? It isn't going to happen; at best we'll learn to use the author's version of TAPI, which "of course" (being sample code from a book and all) isn't nearly as powerful as the real thing. This brings me to my next point, which is that all the functions in this book that use realloc() have memory leaks, because the author and technical editor(s) apparently didn't realize that this function won't release a pre-existing memory block if it runs out of memory while it's expanding the block. This kind of sloppy coding irritates me to no end when it's in "sample code" that is likely to be unthinkingly copied by developers!

So, in summary, what we have here is a book that theoretically shows developers how to use TAPI, but actually tries to show off Chris Sells' programming skillz. And since his class libraries are basically useless, what we have here is a book that shows developers nothing that the (free) Platform SDK could have shown us. Save your money for something useful!

The book starts by giving some background information on TAPI, then explains how TAPI works. The examples are for MFC, but can be adapted to plain C++, mostly not to difficult. For me, experienced in C++ (not MFC but Borland's OWL) but never done any telephony work, this book was exactly what I was looking for. C++ experience is mandatory, Visual Basic will not do with this book.

The "Developers Guide to TAPI" provides an introduction and selected advanced topics for the windows developer who is a TAPI novice. As a dyed in the wool "C" hacker, I found Mr. Sells C++ class library somewhat confusing, but this shortcoming is mine and not Mr. Sells.

I believe that the technical material, examples and the method of presentation is a great deal more user friendly than much of the content of the MSDN library series to which I have been a subscriber and user.

if you are c++ programmer who want to learn in short time the basics of tapi, by waliking via good samples, downloaded from the web, with no need to understand what happen behind the scene, this is your book !!! with extra bonus of good framework, to make the developer's life, much more easy.

simple - for all people (but good enough for advanced programming). buy it !!!

A well written introduction to TAPI. Explains how to get started and the considerations you must make when designing TAPI applications. My only complaint is that too much time was spent describing the author's excellent TFX class library and not enough describing the underlying TAPI API's. This is great if you want to use his class, not so great if you want to develop your own.

I recently recieved Chris's new book and it's chock full on the kind of information that any "serious" TAPI developer needs to know. He gets right to the point with good clear examples. This one is a must have for anyone wishing to learn the ins and outs of TAPI development. And there's even some good info. for the VB developer as well.

Chris has done a wonderful job of providing an introduction into TAPI programming. Most books that discuss TAPI only provide a chapter or two of information mixed in with other topics, but this book provides over 250 pages of nothing but TAPI. Along with a full chapter on writing TAPI Service Providers (TSP's) the book also provides source code to a high level TAPI framework that Chris developed. This is a definate must-have for anybody who is getting started in Windows telephony programming.

With VC6, the sample code doesn't build out of the box and the author isn't forthcoming with addressing the problems. Some header files are missing and yet all you can get from the author is that the code was built with VC5 and needs re-writing for VC6 (which is not true, btw.) The guy didn't bother to include any build comments in the book and doesn't want to be bothered now.

Well done on the author Chris Sells.

A tiny simple book with huge complexity of coding on it. Great efforts in simplifiying many of the mysterious coding in TAPI- where Microsoft had missed. It's a gateway for further TAPI development for Pros. Good source of supports as well.

Looking forwards for the author's next "TAPI 3.0 book" comming...

I've been working with and responding to questions on news groups about TAPI for over four years. As a result I've seen every book as well as reviewed all of the Microsoft information about TAPI.

IF YOU ARE GOING TO WORK IN TAPI YOU HAVE TO BUY SELL'S BOOK!

There is very little written about TAPI and most of what is written is just rehashed Microsoft information. Sell's does a good job reviewing TAPI versions and history but this book is strongest in terms of having lots of good examples worked through and developed in the course of the book. He does a excellent job at explaining how to use multimedia APIs in conjunction with TAPI APIs. His is the ONLY TAPI book that covers Service provider development (a personal favorite of mine.) In addition he has a very good and detailed discussion of what is to come in TAPI 3.0.