EZGUI Turtle (vector) graphics control - Special at half price!

[Chris Boss]

Special sale on the standalone version of the EZGUI Turtle Graphics control 4.0 !

Until February 15, 2008 you can get the Turtle Graphics control for half price for just $12.45 (US).

Do not underestimate what you can do with this control. It has a very powerful macro language and it is easy to use. You can even use it to draw onto a PB Graphic control or a Printer (the Turtle Graphic engine can draw to any provided DC).

The control is a real window control class and you can have as many of them as you like in an app.

Use it with DDT or even with other visual designers (ie. FireFly).

The control is "lean and mean" at only 41 KB in size (DLL).

To read more see:

http://www.powerbasic.com/support/pbforums/showthread.php?t=36182

[Chris Boss]

Note: The price change will be noted on the actual order page.

[Elias Montoya]

Hello Chris, i am interested in your vector control,
i think im going to buy it.

But I would like to ask you some questions, for example:
I would like to use the vector control kind of like
in a hybrid way, i want to have a little raster picture as
a background and use several small vector images, this is
in a map, then i want to be able to draw some circles and
squares to show locations of various places. Can i do this
or can i tweak it to do it?

Can i do the drawing in the trurtle control with a mouse,
and then retrieve the string representing the drawing?
or i have to hard code it?

Once the drawing is done, can i get the DC of the drawing
so i can rotate it externally?

I have other questions...

[Chris Boss]

Elias,

The Turtle Graphic control also provides a mechanism to use an provided function (without creating an actual control) to draw a Turtle Macro on any window DC. You simply provide a rectangle to draw into and the vector image is scaled to that size in the DC.

This means you can combine using the turtle with the PB graphic control or any other drawing DC.

Also remember, the Turtle macros draw in the order they are processed, so you can draw the background first and then objects on top of it later in the macro.

The help file explains all the messages and events the control has.

For example, the following messages can be sent to the control:

EZTG_GETBITMAP ' gets bitmap handle of current image
EZTG_CLEAR ' clears image
EZTG_GETLASTXPOS ' gets x coordinate of last mouse click
EZTG_GETLASTYPOS ' gets y coordinate of last mouse click

The following notification messages are sent through WM_COMMAND:

EZTGN_CLICKED ' mouse clicked
EZTGN_DBLCLK ' mouse double clicked
EZTGN_FOCUS ' got focus
EZTGN_NOFOCUS ' lost focus
EZTGN_ERROR ' error occurred when drawing macro

The EZTGN_CLICKED notification event occurs when the mouse goes down (not up) so you can track a position of where the mouse is pressed down so you can write your own drawing code (you would have to provide the rubberbanding code though).

EZTG_GETLASTXPOS and EZTG_GETLASTYPOS also have the ability to request the mouse coordinate according to a viewport and not just pixels. This means the control converts the position into one based on the viewport values you define.

The Bitmap buffer is only selected into a DC, during drawing of the control (WM_PAINT or WM_SETTEXT when the turtle is defined). Once the image is drawn, the bitmap buffer is static and the control only redraws the image if it is resized or you send a new turtle macro using WM_SETTEXT (or DDT's CONTROL SET TEXT). This means you can access the bitmap (gets its handle) and do whatever you want with it (ie. get it, select it into a memory DC, modify the image and the unselect it).

The control does not redraw itself every WM_PAINT. It simply BitBlts the current Bitmap into the windows DC.