>SET GRATITUDE...
>George:
>
>That's exactly what I was doing.
>
>But I switched my approach and used the imaging tools (ocx) provided by wang, and basically placed annotations in the image based on calculated coordinates. This seems to work fairly well.
>
>What I am doing is taking a physical diagram - bitmap - of a building layout, taken by a handheld device, and placing text comments over designated areas of the image. I started out using form objects for this, as it was easier to do so and provide a controlled edit interface for this.
>
>
>Anyways, thanks for the Foxtools link

Hi Elliot,

You're welcome. I think it'd be only fair to tell you (and everyone else) what I've done.

One thing that eats a lot of my time, and I'm sure other's as well, is documentation. More and more, the user has come to expect documentation containing images. It helps enhance their understanding of how to use the application. While you and I know what a command button is, and how it's different from an option button, the average user probably would not. So providing graphical help can be beneficial to both the developer and the user. However, the copy into the clipboard, paste into Paint or some other image editor, edit the image gets real old in a hurry. More often than not, you make a mistake and end up having to do the whole thing over again. Even tools that allow you to "grab" a section of the screen can be time consuming to use, since often you don't get the degree of accuracy you're after.

Feed up with the whole deal, I decided to delve into the mysteries of the API (is anyone surpised< bg >?) and see if I couldn't use that to help me speed things up a bit. That's what I've done. I've created an application called Obj2Bmp. What it does is allow you to run a form, select it or any object on it and produce a bitmap in 16, 256, or 24 bit color. As a result, I can now produce the necessary bitmaps in a fraction of the time it used to take me.

This has been in beta testing for awhile. I'll be adding it to the UT files (and elsewheres) in the near future. There's one more feature to be added, and the documentation has to be written. As soon as that's done, it'll be available.