RE: Replacement for old PictureBox

[Dr Greg Low]

To summarise, I did get the new standard picturebox, etc. working as I needed. 
Thanks to all who tried to help.

Hats off to anyone who finds that current doco useful though. Seems a complete 
mess.

As an example from today, I was super-impressed with the quality of the 
TreeView documentation.

[cid:image001.png@01D95921.AE4412F0]

That’s pretty but pretty much completely useless.

I did click on the ContextMenuStrip link in the middle of the text, and it has 
a bit more but again, it has an auto-generated description, one example that’s 
not great (under a heading of “Examples” – that’s funny), then auto-generated 
lists of properties, methods, and events.

I mean, how could anyone not find that useful? There continues to be a basic 
misconception about the purpose of this documentation. Somewhere it really 
needs to actually be helpful.

What’s concerning is that it’s still at the level that it was in the early 
2000’s.

It’s lucky we have Google and YouTube and helpful souls who describe what 
they’ve learned the hard way.

Regards,

Greg

Dr Greg Low

1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile
SQL Down Under | Web: https://sqldownunder.com<https://sqldownunder.com/> | 
About Greg:  https://about.me/greg.low

From: Tony McGee via ozdotnet 
Sent: Thursday, 16 March 2023 12:32 PM
To: ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com
Cc: Tony McGee 
Subject: Re: Replacement for old PictureBox

Hi Greg,

The WinForms PictureBox control is pretty basic, it's mostly designed for 
displaying images, not really for drawing.
In the distant past I've used Leadtools Imaging Pro for a WinForms document 
management project that required annotation, but that can get expensive if your 
needs are basic and looking towards the future I can't quite tell what their 
.NET 7+ story is anymore.
These days it might be worth looking into SkiaSharp canvas drawing, and there 
are also some PDF export samples in the github repository.

cheers,
Tony


On 16/03/2023 09:45, Dr Greg Low via ozdotnet wrote:
Hi Everyone,

I’m migrating an old VB6 app to .NET. It used a PictureBox control and of 
course that had all sorts of options for drawing all over it.

In the end, it was used to generate JPG images that were printed.

I’d really prefer to use PDF as output anyway.

Does anyone have a favourite control that presents a drawable surface that you 
can output as a PDF? (Or ideally as a JPG as well?)

I get the impression that the .NET version of the PictureBox is way different, 
although it does seem to expose a Graphics object that you can then draw on. Is 
it better to stick with the standard .NET control and work out how to migrate 
the code?

Regards,

Greg

Dr Greg Low

1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile
SQL Down Under | Web: https://sqldownunder.com<https://sqldownunder.com/> | 
About Greg:  https://about.me/greg.low

RE: Replacement for old PictureBox

[Dr Greg Low]

Thanks Greg.

I do wonder how I’ll push it into a PDF later but I’m trying the drawing part 
first.

Not sure what I did in a past life to end up doing this at present 😊

Regards,

Greg

Dr Greg Low

1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile
SQL Down Under | Web: https://sqldownunder.com<https://sqldownunder.com/> | 
About Greg:  https://about.me/greg.low

From: Greg Keogh via ozdotnet 
Sent: Thursday, 16 March 2023 1:17 PM
To: ozDotNet 
Cc: Greg Keogh 
Subject: Re: Replacement for old PictureBox

Dr L,

About 15 years ago I recall drawing to Windows Forms Bitmap then drawing 
(blt-ing) it into a PictureBox. A timer would draw many times per second to 
create a primitive but acceptable animation. I can't find the code now.

I'd construct a Bitmap, then g = bmp.CreateGraphics() and use the various 
Graphics methods to set pixels, draw rectangles, etc. Then g.DrawImageUnscaled 
into the PictureBox.

The C# classes are clearly thin wrappers over GDI+ and the C# code looks a bit 
like C++ code from the 1990s. If you have VB6 code that "draws", then maybe a 
translation to GDI calls would be easy (?!).

I haven't used Skia, but some friends like it in Xamarin apps.

Greg K

Re: Replacement for old PictureBox

[Greg Keogh]

Dr L,

About 15 years ago I recall drawing to Windows Forms Bitmap then
drawing (blt-ing) it into a PictureBox. A timer would draw many times per
second to create a primitive but acceptable animation. I can't find the
code now.

I'd construct a Bitmap, then g = bmp.CreateGraphics() and use the various
Graphics methods to set pixels, draw rectangles, etc. Then
g.DrawImageUnscaled into the PictureBox.

The C# classes are clearly thin wrappers over GDI+ and the C# code looks a
bit like C++ code from the 1990s. If you have VB6 code that "draws", then
maybe a translation to GDI calls would be easy (?!).

I haven't used Skia, but some friends like it in Xamarin apps.

*Greg K*

RE: Replacement for old PictureBox

[Dr Greg Low]

Hi Tony,

Thanks so much for the pointer to SkiaSharp. That certainly looks interesting.

Regards,

Greg

Dr Greg Low

1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile
SQL Down Under | Web: https://sqldownunder.com<https://sqldownunder.com/> | 
About Greg:  https://about.me/greg.low

From: Tony McGee via ozdotnet 
Sent: Thursday, 16 March 2023 12:32 PM
To: ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com
Cc: Tony McGee 
Subject: Re: Replacement for old PictureBox

Hi Greg,

The WinForms PictureBox control is pretty basic, it's mostly designed for 
displaying images, not really for drawing.
In the distant past I've used Leadtools Imaging Pro for a WinForms document 
management project that required annotation, but that can get expensive if your 
needs are basic and looking towards the future I can't quite tell what their 
.NET 7+ story is anymore.
These days it might be worth looking into SkiaSharp canvas drawing, and there 
are also some PDF export samples in the github repository.

cheers,
Tony


On 16/03/2023 09:45, Dr Greg Low via ozdotnet wrote:
Hi Everyone,

I’m migrating an old VB6 app to .NET. It used a PictureBox control and of 
course that had all sorts of options for drawing all over it.

In the end, it was used to generate JPG images that were printed.

I’d really prefer to use PDF as output anyway.

Does anyone have a favourite control that presents a drawable surface that you 
can output as a PDF? (Or ideally as a JPG as well?)

I get the impression that the .NET version of the PictureBox is way different, 
although it does seem to expose a Graphics object that you can then draw on. Is 
it better to stick with the standard .NET control and work out how to migrate 
the code?

Regards,

Greg

Dr Greg Low

1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile
SQL Down Under | Web: https://sqldownunder.com<https://sqldownunder.com/> | 
About Greg:  https://about.me/greg.low

Re: Replacement for old PictureBox

[Tony McGee]

Hi Greg,

The WinForms PictureBox control is pretty basic, it's mostly designed 
for displaying images, not really for drawing.
In the distant past I've used Leadtools Imaging Pro for a WinForms 
document management project that required annotation, but that can get 
expensive if your needs are basic and looking towards the future I can't 
quite tell what their .NET 7+ story is anymore.
These days it might be worth looking into SkiaSharp canvas drawing, and 
there are also some PDF export samples in the github repository.


cheers,
Tony


On 16/03/2023 09:45, Dr Greg Low via ozdotnet wrote:


Hi Everyone,

I’m migrating an old VB6 app to .NET. It used a PictureBox control and 
of course that had all sorts of options for drawing all over it.


In the end, it was used to generate JPG images that were printed.

I’d really prefer to use PDF as output anyway.

Does anyone have a favourite control that presents a drawable surface 
that you can output as a PDF? (Or ideally as a JPG as well?)


I get the impression that the .NET version of the PictureBox is way 
different, although it does seem to expose a Graphics object that you 
can then draw on. Is it better to stick with the standard .NET control 
and work out how to migrate the code?


Regards,

Greg

Dr Greg Low

1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile

SQL Down Under| Web: https://sqldownunder.com 
| About Greg:https://about.me/greg.low 

Replacement for old PictureBox

[Dr Greg Low]

Hi Everyone,

I'm migrating an old VB6 app to .NET. It used a PictureBox control and of 
course that had all sorts of options for drawing all over it.

In the end, it was used to generate JPG images that were printed.

I'd really prefer to use PDF as output anyway.

Does anyone have a favourite control that presents a drawable surface that you 
can output as a PDF? (Or ideally as a JPG as well?)

I get the impression that the .NET version of the PictureBox is way different, 
although it does seem to expose a Graphics object that you can then draw on. Is 
it better to stick with the standard .NET control and work out how to migrate 
the code?

Regards,

Greg

Dr Greg Low

1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile
SQL Down Under | Web: https://sqldownunder.com | 
About Greg:  https://about.me/greg.low