Microsoft KB Archive/154517

= How To Use the DrawText API Call from Visual Basic =

Article ID: 154517

Article Last Modified on 7/13/2004

-

APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Visual Basic 4.0 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 4.0 Professional Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 4.0 32-Bit Enterprise Edition

-



This article was previously published under Q154517



SUMMARY
The DrawText API gives users the ability to write text to a Device context giving various alignment and word-wrapping features. This article provides a code sample showing how to achieve these effects under the 32-bit Edition of Visual Basic 4.0.



MORE INFORMATION
 Start a new project in Visual Basic. Form1 is created by default. Add a Command button to Form1.  Place the following code in the General Declarations section of Form1: Option Explicit

Private Declare Function DrawText Lib "user32" Alias "DrawTextA" _ (ByVal hdc As Long, ByVal lpStr As String, ByVal nCount As Long, _       lpRect As RECT, ByVal wFormat As Long) As Long

Private Const DT_BOTTOM = &H8 Private Const DT_CENTER = &H1 Private Const DT_LEFT = &H0 Private Const DT_RIGHT = &H2 Private Const DT_TOP = &H0 Private Const DT_VCENTER = &H4 Private Const DT_WORDBREAK = &H10

Private Type RECT Left As Long Top As Long Right As Long Bottom As Long End Type

Private Sub Command1_Click Dim lSuccess As Long Dim sPrintText As String Dim MyRect As RECT Form1.Font.Size = 12 Form1.ScaleMode = vbPixels MyRect.Left = 0 MyRect.Right = Form1.ScaleWidth MyRect.Top = 20 MyRect.Bottom = 60 sPrintText = "Print this text" lSuccess = DrawText(Form1.hdc, sPrintText, Len(sPrintText), _       MyRect, DT_CENTER or DT_WORDBREAK) End Sub  Press the F5 key to run the project, and press the Command button. Text should appear in the middle of the form and be word-wrapped. If you Resize the form and run the project again, you will note that the text still appears in the middle of the form on the horizontal axis.

Following is a list of all the constants that can be used with the DrawText API to give the various effects documented in the Win32 SDK: Global Const DT_TOP = &H00000000 Global Const DT_LEFT = &H00000000 Global Const DT_CENTER = &H00000001 Global Const DT_RIGHT = &H00000002 Global Const DT_VCENTER = &H00000004 Global Const DT_BOTTOM = &H00000008 Global Const DT_WORDBREAK = &H00000010 Global Const DT_SINGLELINE = &H00000020 Global Const DT_EXPANDTABS = &H00000040 Global Const DT_TABSTOP = &H00000080 Global Const DT_NOCLIP = &H00000100 Global Const DT_EXTERNALLEADING = &H00000200 Global Const DT_CALCRECT = &H00000400 Global Const DT_NOPREFIX = &H00000800 Global Const DT_INTERNAL = &H00001000 Global Const DT_EDITCONTROL = &H00002000 Global Const DT_PATH_ELLIPSIS = &H00004000 Global Const DT_END_ELLIPSIS = &H00008000 Global Const DT_MODIFYSTRING = &H00010000 Global Const DT_RTLREADING = &H00020000 Global Const DT_WORD_ELLIPSIS = &H00040000

