Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. The animal on the cover of Python Programming on Win32 is a caiman (caiman crocodilus). One of 23 species of crocodiles, the caiman lives primarily in the wetlands, flood plains, and river areas of Mexico and South America. They prefer less-traveled, low waters. Their diet consists of insects, fish, and small mammals.

A female builds a nest in the ground or in covered vegetation, and lays around 20 to 25 eggs in the late summer. Several females may share a nest, to help their young survive. After 90 days' gestation, the young hatch. They reach full maturity at around four to seven years of age. A caiman grows to be about four to six feet long.

Caiman young are yellow in color, while adults have a more olive-green color. In the past, caimans have been in danger due to habitat destruction, hunting, and pet trade, but some conservation efforts have helped bring their numbers up in recent years. Mary Anne Weeks Mayo was the production editor for Python Programming on Win32. Colleen Gorman copyedited the book, and Jeff Holcomb and Jane Ellin provided quality control. Judy Hoer provided production assistance. Robert Romano and Rhon Porter created the illustrations using Adobe Photoshop 4 and Macromedia FreeHand 7. Brenda Miller wrote the index.

Edie Freedman designed the cover of this book, using a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover layout was produced with Quark XPress 3.32 using the ITC Garamond font. Whenever possible, our books use RepKover, a durable and flexible lay-flat binding. If the page count exceeds RepKover's limit, perfect binding is used.

Kathleen Wilson produced the cover layout with Quark XPress 3.3 using Adobe's ITC Garamond font. The interior layouts were designed by Edie Freedman and Nancy Priest, with modifications by Alicia Cech, and implemented in FrameMaker 5.5 by Mike Sierra. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book. The colophon was written by Nicole Arigo.