OpenEuphoria

Re: [WIN32LIB] Transparent Labels

• Posted by Travis Beaty <t_beaty at mchsi.com> Mar 10, 2003
• 595 views

Hello Greg!

Thanks for the response.  I looked in the archive for the code that you 
mentioned, but the only thing I could find by PatRat that  might be 
close to what I need is his "Alpha Blending" library, which uses Windows 
2000's alpha blending feature.  That sticks me out a little, because I'm 
still (for the time being) using Windows ME.  Even if I were using XP or 
Windows 2000, using this library could limit my users to those two 
particular versions.

Perhaps I should explain a little better what I am doing.  There are two 
problem elements to this main form.  First of all, there is a time and 
date label, which sits above the background image (which fills the 
entire window).  The time label in particular needs to be updated once 
per second to properly update the seconds display.   (I can easy get out 
of updating the date display by simply checking when hour = 0, and 
updating the date then.)

Secondly, along the left side of the window, there are seven labels 
which display characters, sort of the "Matrix" style.  These characters 
start off at a font size of 5,  and are increased by 5 points every 
1/8th of a second, until it reaches a size of 20.  This presents the 
illusion of the character growing inside the label.  This is the control 
that I am most worried about flashing and choking, but I think I can get 
away with it in win32lib.ew given abundant calls to doEvents().

If I *do* end up having to manually draw these characters on the window 
using wPuts(), perhaps I can find a way to just repaint the effected 
areas as opposed to the entire window.

Thanks,

Travis Beaty
Mason City, Iowa.



Greg Haberek wrote:

>
>Create your OWN label! Look into PatRat's Transparent Window Library, I believe
>it's in the
>Archive. Use this to create a small transparent window, then use wPuts() to put
>the text on the
>label only during an onPaint event, to minimize flickering. I believe this
>should work, although
>I've never tried it.
>