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Customizable Annotation Features:
Customizable annotation features include:
- Annotation Rotate Option
- Annotation Side Handles
- Annotation Multiselect
- XML Annotation Save Format
- XP Style Annotation Toolbar
- Calibrate Ruler Feature
- Annotation Cursors
- Alpha Background Fill Option
- Dot Dash Lines
- Text Annotation Options
- Rubber Stamp Display Style
Annotation Rotate Option
With the rotate option interface, two rotate handles are displayed on a selected object. One of the handles is the "gripper" handle, which rotates the object when dragged. The other handle is the "center" handle, which determines the center of rotation. The center of rotation can be moved by dragging. The gripper handle can be moved anywhere by dragging.
The following figure illustrates a rotate by dragging the "gripper" handle:
The following figure illustrates moving the "center" handle:
Annotation Side Handles
In previous versions of LEADTOOLS, rectangular annotation objects were displayed with four handles to manipulate the object. With this new feature, rectangular objects are displayed with four additional side handles. Dragging the side handles resizes the annotation object only in one dimension. Dragging the corner handles resizes the object in two dimensions, preserving the aspect ratio.
The following figure displays a sample of the original style and the new style:
Annotation Multiselect
In previous versions of LEADTOOLS, you could select multiple objects and manipulate the objects by dragging any handle of any object. With the new multiselect option, all selected objects are outlined with a multiselect border. The multiselect border has eight resize handles, and two rotate handles. Now, moving, resizing, and rotating multiply select objects is clear and easy to do.
The following figure displays a sample of the original style and the new style:
XML Annotation Save Format
This is a new text based format for storing LEAD annotations that follows the XML (Extensible Markup Language) format.
There are many advantages of using the ANNFMT_XML format:
- Unlike the ANNFMT_NATIVE, ANNFMT_XML is both forward and backward compatible.
- It is human readable
- File using the ANNFMT_XML format can be easily modified using a standard text editor (i.e. notepad.exe)
- It can be easily parsed using any standard XML parser
- It can be used with any of the growing number of utilities that work with XML
XP Style Annotation Toolbar
The annotation toolbar has been updated to have a Windows XP look and feel. As with previous versions of LEADTOOLS, the annotation toolbar can be customized with your own images.
The following figure displays a sample of the original style and the new style:
Calibrate Ruler Feature
With this feature, a user can automatically calibrate a ruler to the desired size. This is useful when a user wants to interactively measure something in an image. Note that there are four annotations objects used for measuring:
Any of the four ruler annotation objects can be calibrated using the Ruler Calibrate Automation Dialog:
- Annotation Ruler Object
- Annotation Poly-Ruler object
- Annotation Cross Product Object
- Annotation Protractor Object
Annotation Cursors
This feature displays different cursors for many tasks in automated annotation mode. This feature displays unique annotation cursors in the following situations:
- When hovering over a rotation gripper handle
- When hovering over a rotation center handle
- When hovering over any of the eight size handles—an appropriate arrow cursor is displayed depending on the handle and the rotation of the annotation object.
- When dragging a selection
- When using any of the 30 annotation tools.
All annotation cursors can be changed to your own custom
The following figure displays some of the new cursors:
Alpha Background Fill Option
Previous versions of LEADTOOLS supported annotations with translucent backgrounds. Now there is an alpha option that allows you to specify an alpha value from 0 (completely transparent background) to 255 (completely opaque background) inclusive.
The following figure displays rectangle annotation objects using different alpha values:
Dot Dash Lines
Most of the LEAD annotation objects have a Line Width and Line Style option. This can be used to draw the annotations with thick lines, and change the line style from solid to dashed or dotted. In previous versions of LEADTOOLS, drawing annotations with thick lines (line width more than 1 pixel) required that the line style be Solid. This is due to a limitation of Windows GDI. This limitation has been removed. Now annotation objects can be drawn with thick lines of any style.
The following example illustrates this:
Text Annotation Options
Most LEAD text annotations now have more options, including
- Hide or show border
- Hide or show text
- Text and border can have different colors
Rubber Stamp Display Style
In previous versions of LEADTOOLS, you could draw any of 26 predefined rubber stamp annotations. While any of these metafiles can be changed, users have asked for more contemporary-looking defaults. LEADTOOLS has responded and developed new default images.
The following figure displays a sample of the original style and the new style:
