The Picture Strip editor is an unsupported, but useful, namespace written and copyrighted by Richard Smith. It allows easy editing and manipulation of bitmap artwork suitable for any Imagelist (used in the ListView and TreeView controls) and for the new-style tool controls.

It is best suited to strips of quite small bitmaps (16 by 16 are ideal) but will work acceptably on any size up to around 40 by 40. There is no limit on the number of bitmaps in the strip.

It also allows you to make use of the standard Windows images from COMCTL.DLL or to import existing bitmaps from file.

It is shipped with the CPROQA workspace, but has no dependencies on Causeway, so you might like to run it from ŒSE, or from a separate workspace.

Starting the Picture Editor
If you start the picture editor with an undefined name, it defaults to creating a plain grey 16 by 16 artwork for you:

Strip.Design'new'

To begin with a different size, simply pre-assign a suitable array:

pix„19 38½8
Strip.Design'pix'

Below is a 3-frame bitmap strip, where two frames have been copied from the standard tools, and the one in picture (image index=2) has been drawn using the editor:

Drawing on the current frame
Experiment with the drawing palette – you should find that it works more or less as you expect. You can choose colours for either mouse button, then clicking or dragging the mouse over the frame paints the appropriate pixels. To fill an enclosed region with the selected colour, hold <Ctrl> and click either button. If you intend to use the picture strip in a ListView or TreeView you should choose a suitable colour to indicate transparency – light grey is the default and is usually adequate. This colour may be set as the ‘SeeThru’ property of the ImageList; many people choose 13 (bright pink) here, as it is not often required in the artwork itself.

Moving between pictures

This bank of 5 buttons scrolls through the pictures – the one in the middle is always the frame you are working on. The neighbouring pictures are always shown on the buttons to left and right so you can see how the overall image strip will appear in your toolbar.

Adding, removing and shuffling pictures

This bank of 3 buttons allows you to add a new blank picture or make a copy of the current frame (Insert will put it in front of the current picture, Append and Replicate put it after).

You can use <Del> to take the picture out of the strip and <Clear> to wipe it (to light grey) so you can start again.

These buttons move the current picture along the strip in either direction. In general it is best to have the pictures in the strip in the same sequence as the buttons on the toolbar. You can use the ImageIndex property of the Toolbutton to override this if you like, but it is very easy to get extremely confused if you do this.

Exiting from the picture editor
Press <Save> to save your changes and exit, or <Cancel> to leave the bits array as it was.