I'm also not able to determine in the abstract if it will have any affect on your example problem?

I don't think it does. It seems to me to be explaining how to get your dll's to export symbols. You can:
1) Use -export-all-symbols which is apparently the default, and will export all symbols;
2) Use a def file - which turns off -export-all-symbols and exports only those symbols specified in the def file;
3)Mark the symbols to be exported with __declspec(dllexport) - which turns off -export-all-symbols and exports only those symbols marked as __declspec(dllexport).

I'm already using the second method to successfully export all symbols. I can't see that there would be anything to be achieved by using the first method instead. The symbols are already being exported - the problem (though I regard it more as a *puzzle* than a problem) seems to be something else.

Thanks for the link - it's a rather straghtforward and informative explanation.

Cheers,
Rob