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This repository contains the DTWAIN Library, Version 5.x, from Dynarithmic Software. DTWAIN is an open source programmer's library that will allow applications to acquire images from TWAIN-enabled devices using a simple Application Programmer's Interface (API).
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The Dynarithmic TWAIN Library is open source and licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. Please read the LICENSE file for more information.
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The DTWAIN Library online help file can be found here.
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The current version is 5.4.4 (See Version History).
Please note that the source code and sample programs for the Dynarithmic TWAIN Library has moved to this repository.
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The Dynarithmic TWAIN Library (also known as DTWAIN) is an open source, powerful programmer's library that will allow you to easily integrate TWAIN image acquisition from any TWAIN scanner or digital camera into your applications.
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DTWAIN is implemented as a 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Dynamic Link Library (DLL), and to communicate with the DLL, exported
Cbased functions are provided. -
If you are not familiar with the TWAIN standard and image acquisition from TWAIN-enabled devices, please head to the official TWAIN website at http://www.twain.org for more information. If you've ever bought or used a scanner, and came across the words "TWAIN compliant" or "TWAIN driver", well you're on the right track. If you're interested in getting these devices to work in your C, C++, C#, Java, Visual Basic, Perl, Python (and other languages) application, you've come to the right place.
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The DTWAIN library relieves the programmer of having to get into the details of writing low-level code that follows the TWAIN specification to retrieve images from a TWAIN device -- just a few function calls to initialize and acquire images from the TWAIN device is all that's required.
(There is nothing wrong with understanding the TWAIN specification, as this will enhance your knowledge of how the DTWAIN library works internally. However the high-level of abstraction of the TWAIN protocol makes this library simple for even the novice programmer to use).
DTWAIN is supported under Windows 7 / Windows 8.x / Windows 10 / Windows 11 for both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems. Since the base libraries are built to support the Visual C++ runtime library, version 2015 and above, the minimum version of the Visual C++ runtime that is supported is Visual C++ 2015.
Since most Windows systems within the past 8 years has this runtime already installed by other applications, this may not be an issue, and DTWAIN will work right out-of-the-box.
However, if for some reason your system does not have the proper runtime components, you can get the Visual C++ runtime libraries here. When downloading, choose vc_redist.x86.exe for 32-bit applications, and/or vc_redist.x64.exe for 64-bit applications.
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The Dynarithmic® TWAIN Library has been developed over the course of 20 years, so this is a very mature software component. We have offered this library as a closed source, commercial product over those years, however we have decided to make this library open source under the Apache 2.0 license.
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Please note -- since DTWAIN prior to version 5.0 used source code in some modules that could not be released to the general public due to licensing issues, we had to revamp these portions of the codebase so as to allow DTWAIN to become an open source library. We have made all strives to make sure that these changes to DTWAIN will not cause issues, but as most of you know, bugs can exist. If bugs are found, we will be addressing them in a short manner.
This section deals with building a C or C++ based DTWAIN application. Later on in this document will be a discussion on using DTWAIN for other languages and environments.
Building the DTWAIN application
For 32-bit applications, use the binaries found in release_libraries.zip in this directory.
Checksum values are found here.
For 64-bit applications, use the binaries found in release_libraries.zip in this directory.
Checksum values are found here.
The release_libraries.zip contains all of the DLL's required to start using DTWAIN for 32-bit and 64-bit applications. Similarly, the Visual C++ compatible import libraries necessary to build your 32-bit or 64-bit application (the files with the *.lib extension) are available.
(If you do not use Visual C++, see the section on additional C++ compiler usage to alleviate the import library issues).
In addition, the release version of the Program Database (.PDB) files are available. This will aid in debugging any issues involving DTWAIN.
A breakdown of the files contained in release_libraries.zip is as follows:
dtwain32.dll -- 32-bit ANSI (MBCS) Dynamic Link Library
dtwain32.lib -- 32-bit ANSI (MBCS) import library
dtwain32.pdb -- 32-bit PDB files for dtwain32.dll
dtwain32u.dll -- 32-bit Unicode Dynamic Link Library
dtwain32u.lib -- 32-bit Unicode import library
dtwain32u.pdb -- 32-bit PDB files for dtwain32u.dll
dtwain64.dll -- 64-bit ANSI (MBCS) Dynamic Link Library
dtwain64.lib -- 64-bit ANSI (MBCS) import library
dtwain64.pdb -- 64-bit PDB files for dtwain64.dll
dtwain64u.dll -- 64-bit Unicode Dynamic Link Library
dtwain64u.lib -- 64-bit Unicode import library
dtwain64u.pdb -- 64-bit PDB files for dtwain64u.dll
You will also need to include the header files found in the c_cpp_includes directory when building your application. Your build INCLUDE path should refer to these header files.
Basically, you just need to build your application and link it to one of the import libraries that matches the environment your application is targeted for. For example, if the application you're developing is a 32-bit, Unicode-based application, you would use the dtwain32u.lib file to allow your C/C++ application to link without errors.
If you are not using Visual C++ but another brand of C or C++ compiler, see the section on additional C++ compiler usage.
After building your application, for your application to run successfully, you must make sure the DTWAIN dynamic link library itself is located somewhere on the system path, or in your application directory (there are other places where the DLL can be located, but that is beyond the scope of this introduction -- please refer to the following link:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/dlls/dynamic-link-library-search-order.
In addition to the DLL files, the text resource files must also be available (by default, they should reside in the same directory as the DLL files above, however as of version 5.2.0.2, they can reside in the directory specified by DTWAIN_SetResourcePath).
The text resources files are as follows:
twaininfo.txt -- General TWAIN information -- this is required.
twainresourcestrings_english.txt English resources -- this is required.
The files above are required, since they contain all the information concerning the naming of the TWAIN capabilities, triplet information, etc. You do not need to know what these various aspects of TWAIN are -- just make sure these files reside in the same directory as the dtwain*.dll when your application is executed.
If these files are not found, you will receive the following error when running your application;
Note: If your application wants to suppress the above message box, but still receive an error return code, your application should issue a call to the API function DTWAIN_SysInitializeNoBlocking instead of DTWAIN_SysInitialize (see the examples below -- simply change DTWAIN_SysInitialize to DTWAIN_SysInitializeNoBlocking). The error return code will be -1051 if DTWAIN_SysInitializeNoBlocking detects an error initializing the library, and 0 if there is no error and the initialization was successful.
In addition, there are optional string resource files available. Here are a list of those files:
twainresourcestrings_dutch.txt Dutch resources
twainresourcestrings_french.txt French resources
twainresourcestrings_german.txt German resources
twainresourcestrings_italian.txt Italian resources
twainresourcestrings_spanish.txt Spanish resources
twainresourcestrings_portuguese_br.txt Portugeuse-Brazilian resources
If you want to use a different resource file or even add your own language resource, it is recommended you copy the file in question, rename the file, make the changes required, and then utilize the new file by calling the DTWAIN_LoadCustomStringResources API function.
More detailed instructions on adding your own resource file can be found here.
Important Note:
There has been an ongoing issue using WIA (Windows Image Acquisition) drivers and DTWAIN and TWAIN, especially in console-based applications. Therefore, if the manufacturer for your device has both a TWAIN driver and WIA driver, choose the TWAIN driver, and only choose the WIA/TWAIN driver as a secondary choice if the TWAIN driver is not available (you will know the driver is WIA/TWAIN if the name in the "Select Source" dialog box starts with "WIA-").
Measures have been made to allow WIA drivers to operate correctly within DTWAIN (the upcoming version 5.3.0.3 of DTWAIN addresses these issues with WIA as best as possible). In future versions of DTWAIN, WIA native support may be added that does not use TWAIN.
There are sample virtual TWAIN devices found here. Once installed, these devices will be available for selection for acquiring images, similar to an installed scanner.
The simplest example is probably one that opens the TWAIN "Select Source" dialog, allows the user to choose the TWAIN device. Once chosen, the device acquires an image and saves the image as a BMP file named "Test.bmp". Here is an entire C++ example that demonstrates this:
#include "dtwain.h"
#include <iostream>
int main()
{
// display DTWAIN version, just for fun
std::cout << "Hello to DTWAIN " << DTWAIN_VERINFO_FILEVERSION << "\n";
// initialize and acquire image and save to BMP file
DTWAIN_SysInitialize();
DTWAIN_SOURCE Source = DTWAIN_SelectSource();
if ( Source )
DTWAIN_AcquireFileA(Source, "Test.bmp", DTWAIN_BMP, DTWAIN_USENATIVE | DTWAIN_USENAME,
DTWAIN_PT_DEFAULT, DTWAIN_MAXACQUIRE, TRUE, TRUE, NULL);
DTWAIN_SysDestroy();
}
That's it.
If you desire to acquire to an image in memory instead of a file, that can be done also. By default, a Windows-based TWAIN driver always returns a Device Independent Bitmap (DIB) as the memory image.
#include "dtwain.h"
int main()
{
DTWAIN_SysInitialize();
DTWAIN_SOURCE Source = DTWAIN_SelectSource();
DTWAIN_ARRAY images;
if ( Source )
{
images = DTWAIN_AcquireNative(Source, DTWAIN_PT_DEFAULT, DTWAIN_MAXACQUIRE, TRUE, TRUE, NULL);
HANDLE hDib = DTWAIN_GetAcquiredImage(images, 0, 0); // handle to first DIB acquired is returned
GlobalLock(hDib); // lock image
/*Now our app has a DIB. We can do any function that needs a DIB
This time, we'll just delete it. Your app is responsible for deleting
the DIBs, since DTWAIN does not delete any DIBs generated
by the Source */
GlobalFree( hDib );
}
DTWAIN_SysDestroy();
}
The above assumes your application knows how to handle DIBs (they are basically BMP files). Also note that the DTWAIN_GetAcquiredImage function takes three arguments. The first is a "2 dimensional" array of images that were acquired, and the last two arguments denote the acquisition number and the image number in the acquisition (this technique is used to remember multipage acquisitions that occur without the user closing the device's user interface).
In addition, you can acquire images without showing a user interface by simply specifying the "show user-interface" parameter to either TRUE (1), or FALSE (0).
DTWAIN_AcquireFileA(Source, "Test.bmp", DTWAIN_BMP, DTWAIN_USENATIVE | DTWAIN_USENAME,
DTWAIN_PT_DEFAULT, DTWAIN_MAXACQUIRE, FALSE, TRUE, NULL);
or if it is the second example:
images = DTWAIN_AcquireNative(Source, DTWAIN_PT_DEFAULT,
DTWAIN_MAXACQUIRE, FALSE, TRUE, NULL);
Setting and getting device capabilities is an integral part of using a TWAIN-enabled device. This is easily done by using the generic capability functions such as DTWAIN_EnumCapabilities, DTWAIN_GetCapValues and DTWAIN_SetCapValues, or one of the functions that wrap the setting of a capability such as DTWAIN_SetResolution, DTWAIN_SetBrightness, etc.
#include "dtwain.h"
int main()
{
DTWAIN_SysInitialize();
DTWAIN_SOURCE Source = DTWAIN_SelectSource();
if ( Source )
{
// set the resolution level to 300 dots-per-inch
DTWAIN_SetResolution(Source, 300.0);
//...
}
DTWAIN_SysDestroy();
}
Of course, if the capability does not exist on the device, or if the values given to the capability are not supported (for example, if the device only supports 200 DPI and the function attempts to set the DPI to 300), the function returns FALSE and the error can be determined by calling DTWAIN_GetLastError.
In general, DTWAIN can set or get any capability, including custom capabilities that some manufacturers may support, and any future capabilities that may be added to the TWAIN specification.
What if I don't have Visual Studio as the compiler to use when building an application? I use Embarcadero/g++/clang/MingW/Dev++ (fill in with your favorite compiler or IDE). How do I use the library?
You can do one of two things:
- Attempt to convert the .lib files mentioned above to your compiler's version of an import library, or
- Forget about using libraries altogether, and use dynamic library loading using the Windows API LoadLibrary, GetProcAddress, and FreeLibrary calls.
For the first item, some compilers have external tools that allow you to use Visual Studio generated library files.
For the second item, there are bindings that we have built that facilitate the usage of LoadLibrary/GetProcAddress/FreeLibrary, without you having to tediously write the interface. It can be found here.
/* Include this header */
#include "dtwainx2.h"
/* declare the API instance and the handle to the loaded library */
DYNDTWAIN_API API;
HMODULE h;
int main()
{
/* Load the library dynamically, and hook up the external functions */
h = LoadLibraryA("dtwain32.dll");
InitDTWAINInterface(&API, h);
/* Use the API hook code */
API.DTWAIN_SysInitialize();
DTWAIN_SOURCE Source = API.DTWAIN_SelectSource();
if ( Source )
API.DTWAIN_AcquireFileA(Source, "Test.bmp", DTWAIN_BMP,
DTWAIN_USENATIVE | DTWAIN_USENAME, DTWAIN_PT_DEFAULT,
DTWAIN_MAXACQUIRE, TRUE, TRUE, NULL);
API.DTWAIN_SysDestroy();
}
Note: To utilize other computer languages, it still requires that one of the DTWAIN dynamic link libraries (DLL) is available at runtime that matches the environment (32-bit or 64-bit), and character set (ANSI, Unicode). In addition the section on running your application also applies.
DTWAIN includes computer language bindings for the following computer languages and utilities found in the language_bindings_and_examples folder:
C/C++ header and source files for dynamic loading using the Windows API LoadLibrary() and GetProcAddress() functions.
C#
Delphi
Perl
Python
Visual Basic .NET
XBase++ (Alaska Software)
There is also a Java interface that is found in the twain_library-java repository.
Here is a bare-bones C# language example of acquiring a BMP image from a TWAIN device installed on your system. The only additional requirement is to add one of the dtwain*.cs files to the project, depending on the type of application (32-bit / 64-bit, ANSI / Unicode):
using System;
// The additional dtwain*.cs file needs to be added to your project for these definitions.
using Dynarithmic;
namespace Test
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
// Initialize DTWAIN
var TwainHandle = TwainAPI.DTWAIN_SysInitialize();
if (TwainHandle == IntPtr.Zero)
Console.WriteLine("TWAIN Failed to be initialized. Exiting...");
else
{
// Select a TWAIN Source from the TWAIN Dialog
var SelectedSource = TwainAPI.DTWAIN_SelectSource();
// We test against IntPtr.Zero, since the SelectedSource maybe 32-bit or 64-bit
// depending on the application type.
if (SelectedSource != IntPtr.Zero)
{
int status = 0;
// Acquire the BMP file named Test.bmp
TwainAPI.DTWAIN_AcquireFile(SelectedSource,
"Test.bmp",
TwainAPI.DTWAIN_BMP,
TwainAPI.DTWAIN_USENATIVE | TwainAPI.DTWAIN_USENAME,
TwainAPI.DTWAIN_PT_DEFAULT,
1,
1,
1,
ref status);
}
TwainAPI.DTWAIN_SysDestroy();
}
}
}
}Here is a python example using the ctypes module and using the dtwain.py file that defines the DTWAIN constants. The program gives an example of acquiring a BMP image from a TWAIN device installed on your system:
from ctypes import *
import dtwain
import ctypes as ct
def test_dtwain():
# Load the DTWAIN library (make sure "dtwain32u.dll" is accessible)
# You can use a full pathname here also, to ensure python finds the dll
dtwain_dll = windll.LoadLibrary("dtwain32u.dll")
# Initialize DTWAIN
dtwain_dll.DTWAIN_SysInitialize()
# Select a TWAIN source
TwainSource = dtwain_dll.DTWAIN_SelectSource()
if TwainSource:
# Display the product name of the Source
mystrbuf = ct.create_string_buffer(100)
dtwain_dll.DTWAIN_GetSourceProductNameA(TwainSource,mystrbuf,len(mystrbuf))
print (mystrbuf.value)
# Acquire to a BMP file
dtwain_dll.DTWAIN_AcquireFile(TwainSource, "TEST.BMP", dtwain.DTWAIN_BMP, dtwain.DTWAIN_USELONGNAME,
dtwain.DTWAIN_PT_DEFAULT, 1, 1, 1, 0)
# Close down DTWAIN
dtwain_dll.DTWAIN_SysDestroy()
if __name__ == '__main__':
test_dtwain()Other languages can be supported, as long as the language is capable of calling exported DLL functions (all exported functions are stdcall and have a C compatible interface, similar to the Windows API functions). The ones listed above just have proper interfaces to the exported functions already set up.
A full C# demo can be found here.
A full Visual Basic .NET demo can be found here.
For Java, it is recommended to look through the numerous demo programs in the Java interface to DTWAIN repository.
Since TWAIN is an event-driven system, it is advantageous for whatever language you use to be able to support "callback" functions, i.e. functions that can be called during the TWAIN acquisition / scanning process. There are a lot of events that occur during the acquisition process that you may want to take advantage of (for example, page about to be scanned, page scanned successfully, immediate access to the acquired image, etc.), and having the ability to capture these events will give your application the most flexibility.
For example, please see the DTWDEMO.exe example program when acquiring to a PDF file, as a page number is added to the page for each page that is acquired by the device. This is only possible (using DTWAIN) by using callbacks.
The DTWAIN_SetCallback and DTWAIN_SetCallback64 sets up your callback function to intercept these events and act accordingly.
Here is an example C++ program that puts a page number on the acquired image files, saved as a PDF document.
#include "dtwain.h"
#include <iostream>
#include <cstring>
DTWAIN_SOURCE current_source;
// Demonstrate callback mechanism
LRESULT CALLBACK TwainCallbackProc(WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam, LONG_PTR UserData)
{
// Page count
static int pdf_page_count = 1;
// detect if the notification is due to the page about to be saved
if ( wParam == DTWAIN_TN_FILEPAGESAVING )
{
// write text to the bottom left of the PDF page
char text[50]; // create the text string
sprintf(text, "Page %d", pdf_page_count);
++pdf_page_count;
// add the text to the page
DTWAIN_AddPDFTextA(current_source,
text, // text to write on the page
100, 100, // (x, y) postion
"Helvetica", // font to use
14, // font height, in PDF points
DTWAIN_MakeRGB(255, 0, 0), // Red text
0, 100.0, 0, 0.0, 0, // scaling, lead, etc.
DTWAIN_PDFTEXT_CURRENTPAGE); // flags denoting when to write this text
}
return 1;
}
int main()
{
// initialize and acquire image and save to BMP file
if ( !DTWAIN_SysInitialize() )
return 0; // TWAIN could not be initialized
current_source = DTWAIN_SelectSource();
if ( current_source )
{
// Enable the callback notification/mechanism
DTWAIN_EnableMsgNotify(TRUE);
DTWAIN_SetCallback(TwainCallbackProc, 0);
// Acquire to a multipage PDF file
DTWAIN_AcquireFileA(current_source, "test.pdf", DTWAIN_PDFMULTI, DTWAIN_USENATIVE | DTWAIN_USENAME,
DTWAIN_PT_DEFAULT, DTWAIN_MAXACQUIRE, TRUE, TRUE, NULL);
}
DTWAIN_SysDestroy();
}
Languages such as C, C++, C#, can use callbacks (sometimes referred to as delegates in the .NET world) to allow such functionality. Other languages also have the capability to set callbacks. Please refer to the documentation for the language you use to see if callback functionality exists (if you can get the DTWAIN_SetCallback or DTWAIN_SetCallback64 to work for you, then you're not going to have any issues).
I am ambitious and would like to build the libraries, debug the internals, etc. How do I get started?
The source code and instructions for building DTWAIN are found here.
Currently, there is no official support for Linux, but things are changing rapidly.
As some may be aware, the TWAIN standard itself is implemented for Linux, but my opinion is that the support is poor. There is little in terms of actual TWAIN sources to run tests against, and only certain Linux distributions are "supported" (I put this in quotes, since it is still difficult to find TWAIN drivers to run tests against).
The Linux distribution must have the Data Source Manager (DSM) installed (usr/local/lib/libtwaindsm.so) before proceeding. The current distributions that we are aware of that have a working TWAIN Data Source Manager (DSM) is Ubuntu. We were able to rebuild the DSM (/usr/local/lib/libtwaindsm.so) for Fedora 29 (but Fedora is not officially supported, according to the build scripts available for the building of the DSM).
Since there are no pre-built DSM binaries, you can find the DSM source code here on Github and attempt to build the binaries yourself. However, you may need to change the build scripts, since some of them are hard-coded for certain Ubuntu versions.
Once the DSM is built and installed, the build of DTWAIN can be done using the files in the source directory. We used the CodeBlocks IDE (using g++ 6.x or higher) to organize the project (we don't currently have a CMake for DTWAIN, but one is in the works). We also used a custom FreeImage script to do the FreeImage build. Once done, we found no issues communicating with the Linux DSM with a small test program:
#include "dtwain.h"
int main()
{
DTWAIN_SysInitialize(); /* basic setup */
DTWAIN_StartTwainSession(); /* communicate with libtwaindsm.so */
DTWAIN_SysDestroy();
}
This is more or less a proof-of-concept. We will keep you posted on any further progress.
We have language bindings (pinvoke's) for C# and Visual Basic. However we currently lack a true .NET component (just did not have the time to create one). If anyone out there is willing to create such a .NET component, we are willing to add the component to this repository once vetted and well-tested (and of course, give full credit to the author(s)).
If you're a C++ programmer, and want a wrapper around the DTWAIN libarary, we do have a C++ wrapper for DTWAIN located in the demos\cpp_wrapper_lib directory. For more information, see the README.md in the demos directory.
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Other than the interface to the TWAIN libraries to allow image acquisition, The Dynarithmic TWAIN Library makes use of the following third-party libraries to process image data.
- crypto++ - Public domain cryptography library by Wei Dei
- FreeImage - Open source Imaging library. Note: We use the FreeImage Public License terms found here.
- SimpleINI - Open source (MIT License) INI file parsing library
- nlohmann/JSON library - Open source C++ JSON library
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In addition, an interface to the TOCR OCR library. This allows image files to be translated to text files for functions such as DTWAIN_AcquireFile with the type to acquire being DTWAIN_TXT. To use TOCR requires you to purchase a separate license from Transym (we do not provide the DLL or the libraries, just the function calls to allow usage of the TOCR library).
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All other raw image processing (plus the TWAIN acquisition) is done without third-party libraries. The image formats that are not implemented using third-party libraries are PDF, Windows Meta File (WMF) and Enhanced Meta File (EMF).
We expect DTWAIN to work flawlessly with almost every TWAIN-enabled device. However, there can be issues that may happen with devices that either do not behave properly, or exercise DTWAIN in a way that's unexpected (for example, we came acrosss a SamSung TWAIN driver for their phone that didn't follow TWAIN compliance, and thus caused issue with DTWAIN).
Given this, the secondary goal of making DTWAIN open source is for you to contribute your fixes to the current DTWAIN code if you come across a device that doesn't work properly with DTWAIN. There are literally thousands of TWAIN enabled devices out there, old and new, some manufacturers may have discontinued the device model, or maybe even the device manufacturer has gone out-of-business.
Thus, the nature of "fixing" DTWAIN to work with a device that has issues is not possible to be done from a distance without having the device on-hand. Since there are thousands of devices out there, and more than just a few have TWAIN compliance issues, we rely on our contributors who have the faulty TWAIN device ready and on-hand to debug the issue.
You can download the source code here, follow the directions, and thus debug a very simple program that utilizes the device you have in-house. Note that you should be familiar with C++, as the base library is written in this language.
The Dynarithmic TWAIN Library's principal developer is Paul McKenzie, and can be reached at paulm@dynarithmic.com.
My background is mostly in C and C++ programming, third-party library creation on Windows-based systems (some Linux also).
In addition to 30+ years in the industry, I have made extensive contributions to the CodeGuru C++ and Visual C++ forums, being one of the top contributors for over 15 years starting in 1999, and since 2014, moved on to StackOverflow, where hopefully I am making an impact with other passionate programmers. Also, I have had the distinction of being a Microsoft MVP for 10 years running in the Visual C++ category.
I am available for contracting work and code reviews (mostly using the C and C++ languages). If you're interested in my services, please email me for further information on my availability.