>Something similar to this is actually my next personal project. My intention was to create a method of easily combining bitmaps so that they can be used by the PictureClip control. My biggest problem is coming up with an interface.
What do you mean by interface? I would have a single image viewer and some
sort of scollbar or spinner that lets you look at the images one at a time.
Click a button and boom it creates the combined bitmap. Simple ain't it? <g>...
>I do have a suggestion which utilizes my Obj2Bmp application. Drop and arrange the bitmaps on a form, then surround them with a shape (which should be the same overall size as the combined bitmaps). The shape's borderstyle and backstyle should be set to 0 - transparent. You could then select the shape as the object to be captured by Obj2Bmp.
Well, that's not a lot better than what I ended up doing in paint shop.
I pulled out the original bitmap of 42 icons and replaced my icons into
it. since my icons were already the right size this was fairly easy but
a PITA to get the images lined up right.
>Another possibility would work only if the bitmaps all used the same number of colors. You could use the BITMAPINFO structure from the first bitmap, and modify the height or width members. If you laid the result bitmap out verically, you'd simply concatenate the data after the BITMAPINFO structure into the new file. Laying it out horizontally would require that the individual bitmaps be re-arranged.
I don't really know how bitmaps work. The strip I need is horizontal.
As an aside, it turns out after all the hassle I went trhough you can't replace
the icons in an HTML help file easily even iwth the tab strip. Some moron
in the design of MS HTML Help Workshop decided to allow only hardcoded paths
which must be compiled into the HTML Help project to an external bitmap file.
I want to meet the genius that put that onto a spec sheet.
"Oh yeah, let's make it next to impossible to use custom icons by using a
left over from C reosurce programming 10 years ago. Visual? Nah that's for sissies. Then let's make the icon file external so the help file is no longer self contained. And finally we'll use a physical hardcoded path that gets compiled into the project - of course we can't allow a relative path - that would be too f***ing easy."
HTML Help Workshop (which happens to be the only way you can compile a help project today - is the official Win Help API now) is just such a lame tool that you have to ask who was in charge of it. Things have been broken and not fixed for two years! Unreal.
Well, maybe somebody will build a third party HTML Help compiler - someday, some year - never. It'll be XML Help Workshop next year <g>...
+++ Rick ---
