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 featured on the cover of Managing the Windows NT Registry is a female or juvenile orangutan. The word "orangutan" comes from the Malayan for "man of the woods." Ancient legend has it that orangutans have the ability to speak, but choose not to because they are afraid that if humans find out, they will put the orangutans to work.

Orangutans are native to the forests of Borneo and Sumatra. Male adults have long beards and mustaches, and highly developed cheek pads and throat pouches. The throat pouches are used as resonators for mating calls and calls to mark territory. Human males have a similar throat pouch, called the "Morgagnitic pouch," but it is very small in most men. It becomes well developed in trumpet players, bass singers, and Muslim prayer callers.

These great apes are almost completely arboreal. They move by swinging from one tree branch to the next, and descend to the ground only when there is no branch to swing to, and occasionally to gather branches for building sleeping nests. Because of their method of locomotion, orangutan arms are very strong and long, measuring up to 7.8 feet when outspread and reaching to the ankles when stranding upright. Their legs, in contrast, are relatively weak. They eat primarily fruit, but will also eat bark, leaves, flowers, and eggs. They get their water by scooping it out of holes in the trees.

Orangutans mate while swinging from tree branches. Infants weigh approximately 3.5 pounds at birth. For about the first year the infant is completely dependent on its mother, and clings to her by entwining its fingers in her fur. If orangutan babies are orphaned they need to be given a substitute to cling to, and they usually display great affection for their surrogate "mothers." Development in the first year is similar to that of human babies.

Other than humans, orangutans have no natural enemies. However, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction, they are in danger of becoming extinct. 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 3.3 using the ITC Garamond font. Whenever possible, our books use RepKover (tm), a durable and flexible lay-flat binding. If the page count exceeds RepKover's limit, perfect binding is used.

The inside layout was designed by Nancy Priest and implemented in FrameMaker by Mike Sierra. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book. The ilustrations that appear in the book were created in Macromedia Freehand 7.0 and the screen shots were created in Adobe Photoshop 4.0 by Robert Romano. This colophon was written by CLairemarie Fisher O'Leary.