Shapes Editor 1.7b - Small Basic Featured Program

Iron Contributor

Feb 12, 2019

First published on MSDN on Oct 13, 2014

Authored by Nonki Takahashi

I published Shapes 1.7b ( XFZ657-16 ) yesterday. This program is a shapes (picture) editor. I'd like to talk about this new version.

New Features

There are two new points in 1.7b.

Added grid feature - [Grid] toggles grid display

Changed window size to 598 x 428 pixels

The grid step is 10 pixels. This will allow users to adjust shapes sizes. Change about window size is for future support in remote (in a browser with Silverlight on Small Basic program listing server). 598 x 428 is the best size for both in local and in remote. ^[*1]

Publish Error

Version 1.5b was compact so there was no error when it published. But 1.7b is too large for publish to the server. So, I separated [Open] subroutines into an other source GTV460-1 . These subroutines treat local file. So they don't run in remote anyway. I had an another choice to upload 1.7b full source to TechNet Gallery. But for following two reasons, I decided to separate this program and publish them. One is for running this program in remote. The other reason is to confirm a bug fix described below.

Minor Bug Fix

1.5b and older version has a minor bug that the position of scissors in menu was wrong. For long time, I couldn't find this reason of the bug. But recently, I found a timing issue about shapes image rotation. ^[*2] Though the scissors are not image but triangles and ellipses, I tried to insert Program.Delay() just after shapes added before their rotation. This works well. So, I will write about this issue as a TechNet Wiki article.

Known Issues

There are still known issues when this program runs in remote. I'd like to fix these issues and make Shapes available in remote.

Rotated Triangle and Line become wrong places.

Grid sometimes becomes pale color.

[Open] is not supported.

[Save] creates only main and Shapes_Init subroutine. Other subroutines are not created.

For the Future

Shapes object is useful to write animation program. So, I tried to make this Shapes editor. But if there are many shapes to move, the program will become complex and slow. So I started to try conversion from Shapes picture to .png file with PowerPoint VBA. ^[*3] And I'm very interested in sharing Shapes data with other program languages.

[*1] Small Basic Known Issue: 22108 - Viewport of GraphicsWindow is Narrower and Sometimes Resized in Remote (TechNet Wiki)

[*2] Small Basic Known Issue: 24270 - Shape Image is Not Zoomed from Center in Remote (TechNet Wiki)

[*3] Small Basic: Duck Shoot Images: PowerPoint Macro-Enabled Presentation (TechNet Gallery)

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