DrawText Method (AForm)

Draws text on an object.

Syntax

Object.DrawText ( sText [,enDrawText] [,fLeft] [,fTop] [,fWidth] [,fHeight] )

The DrawText method syntax has the following parts:

Name	Type	Description
Object	AForm	AForm object
sText	BSTR	The text to be drawn.
enDrawText	Val enumAFormDrawText	An integer specifying the method of formatting the text. It can be any combination of the values of enumAFormDrawText (combined using the bitwise OR operator).
fLeft	Val Variant	The left-most position to start drawing the text relative to the top left position on the object.
fTop	Val Variant	The top-most position to start drawing the text relative to the top left position on the object.
fWidth	Var Variant	The width of the text area.
fHeight	Var Variant	The height of the text area.

Where

enumAFormDrawText can be one of the following:

Name	Value	Description
aformDrawTextTop	0	Top. Specifies top-justified text (single line only).
aformDrawTextLeft	0	Left. Aligns the text flush-left.
aformDrawTextCenter	1	Center. Centers the text horizontally.
aformDrawTextRight	2	Right. Aligns the text flush-right.
aformDrawTextVCenter	4	Vertical Center. Specifies vertically centered text (single line only).
aformDrawTextBottom	8	Bottom. Specifies bottom-justified text. This value must be combined with aformDrawTextSingleLine.
aformDrawTextWordBreak	16	Word break. Specifies word-breaking. Lines are automatically broken between words if a word would extend past the edge of the rectangle specified by fWidth and fHeight. A carriage return–linefeed sequence will also break the line.
aformDrawTextSingleLine	32	Single line. Specifies single line only. Carriage returns and linefeeds do not break the line.
aformDrawTextExpandTabs	64	Expand tabs. Expands tab characters. The default number of characters per tab is eight.
aformDrawTextTabStop	128	Tab stop. Sets tab stops. The high-order byte of enumAFormDrawText is the number of characters for each tab. The default number of characters per tab is eight.
aformDrawTextNoClip	256	No clip. Draws without clipping. DrawText is somewhat faster when aformDrawTextNoClip is used.
aformDrawTextExternalLeading	512	External leading. Includes the font’s external leading in the line height. Normally, external leading is not included in the height of a line of text.
aformDrawTextCalcRect	1024	Calculate the rectangle. Determines the width and height of the rectangle. If there are multiple lines of text, DrawText will use the width of the rectangle indicated by fWidth and extend the base of the rectangle to bound the last line of text. If there is only one line of text, DrawText will modify the right side of the rectangle so that it bounds the last character in the line. In either case, DrawText returns the height of the formatted text, but does not draw the text.
aformDrawTextNoPrefix	2048	No prefix. Turns off processing of prefix characters. Normally, DrawText interprets the ampersand (&) mnemonic-prefix character as a directive to underscore the character that follows, and the two-ampersand (&&) mnemonic-prefix characters as a directive to print a single ampersand. By specifying aformDrawTextNoPrefix, this processing is turned off.

Comments

DrawText formats text in the given rectangle by expanding tabs into appropriate spaces, aligning text to the left, right, or center of the given rectangle, and breaking text into lines that fit within the given rectangle. The type of formatting is specified by enumAFormDrawText. The enumAFormDrawText can be created by a bitwise OR operation, for example, (aformDrawTextLeft OR aformDrawTextVCenter) to combine two types of formatting.

DrawText uses the device context’s selected font, text color, and background color to draw the text. These can be set using the form's Font, ForeColor, BackColor and the FontTransparent properties. Unless the aformDrawTextNoClip format is used, DrawText clips the text so that the text does not appear outside the given rectangle. All formatting is assumed to have multiple lines unless the aformDrawTextSingleLine format is given.

If the selected font is too large for the specified rectangle, DrawText does not attempt to substitute a smaller font.

If the aformDrawTextCalcRect flag is specified, the rectangle specified by fWidth and fHeight will be updated to reflect the width and height needed to draw the text.

The values aformDrawTextdCalcRect, aformDrawTextExternalLeading, aformDrawTextNoclip, and aformDrawTextNoPrefix cannot be used with the aformDrawTextTabStop value.

If fWidth and fTop are not specified, DrawText will use the current position for drawing the text.

The method is not applicable for MDI Form type since drawing functions are not supported for MDI Forms.

Example

The following statement draws the text string "Hello World" on the AForm starting relative to the top left corner of the object, at left = 50 units and top = 60 units, in a rectangle of width = 70 units and height = 80:

DrawText("Hello World", (aformDrawTextLeft OR aformDrawTextVCenter),50,60,100,80)

Applies to

AForm