fry@walsh.harvard.edu (David Fry) (10/10/88)
I recently posted some information about PicComments that was misleading, and I'd like to set the record straight. I said that Apple's LaserWriter drivers were no longer supporting the MacDraw PicComments that draw polygons, splines, and rotated text. My statements were based on some remarks from Tech Support, and by the fact that if you set a Clip Region while drawing on a LaserWriter, the PicComments ignore the clipping and draw on the whole page anyway. It turns out that the drivers all expand the clip region to the size of the entire page before processing any PicComment, and then resets it after the PicComment is completed. This includes PicComment which include PostScript code, so it's impossible to avoid this effect even with PS. MacDraw does no clipping when drawing its structures; you can't drag something off the end of the page and objects don't clip each other if they overlap. The problems develop when other applications get MacDraw PicComment-ed objects via cut-and-paste. Then the objects ignore the clipping region and you get the distasteful results I mentioned earlier. Developers using these PicComments should be aware of the situations that can develop when they are pasted into other applications. It may be the case that you can develop a workaround that will suffice, even if you must sacrifice some niceties. For instance, you could translate the PicComment calls into QuickDraw equivalents before exporting them to the clipboard. Rotated text could be replaced with CopyBits calls of the bitmap containing the rotated image (which is already passed with the PicComment), although it could not be edited in MacDraw and it will look bad when printed. This may or may not be the best solution for your application. I hope this clears up any confusion I may have caused. David Fry fry@huma1.harvard.EDU Department of Mathematics fry@huma1.bitnet Harvard University ...!harvard!huma1!fry Cambridge, MA 02138