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Those books where widely published from the start from Microsoft and Developers. There was aspects of the API were not released to the general public but it didn't stop a developer from knowing about them.

You also has the MSDN subscription that did cover a lot about the development.

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Yes the MSDN subscription which seemed like kind of a racket at several hundred dollars ( it was up to $1000+ by 2001 depending upon support level/media ). Also they would frequently have documentation about something in one year, then drop it from the CD's/DVD's and if you got lucky you had those or someone was really nice and posted it on the internet. I remember having to figure out the IME's for Far East/etc input circa 2000 from a usenet post then handing that information down to a someone else on usenet so they could implement it as well.

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