* VB-CODE (3)
Tip 69: Forcing a Picture Control to Use Only a Specific Font

May 1, 1995

Abstract
When developing an application in Visual Basic® that may be run on
many different computer systems, you may want to ensure that a
control such as a Picture Box is formatted correctly with regard to
the size and type of font used. This article explains how you can use
the Windows® application programming interface (API) SendMessage and
GetStockObject functions to force a control to use a specific font
when displaying text.

Using the GetStockObject Function to Select a Font
Many controls such as Picture Box and Text Box controls have a Font
property. The Font property is usually set by the programmer at
design time to a specific font. However, in some situations, you may
want to force Windows® to use a different font at a specific time in
your program for that control. In such cases, you can use the Windows
application programming interface (API) SendMessage and GetStockObject
functions to tell Windows that a control's Font property is to be set
to a different font.

To change a control's Font property to another font, you use the
GetStockObject function. The Declare statement for this function is
as follows:

Declare Function GetStockObject Lib "GDI" (ByVal nIndex As Integer)
   As Integer

GetStockObject requires only one argumentan integer value containing
the type of stock object you want to use. In our case, we want to use
the ANSI_FIXED_FONT stock object, which has a value of 11. After you
call the GetStockObject function, it returns an integer value. This
value is set to NULL if the function was not successful, or to a
handle that identifies the logical object itself.

In the example program below, we want to force the Picture Box
control to use a fixed font instead of Bookman Old Style, which is
set to a point size of 24, at design time. To set the font to a fixed
font while the program is being executed, we issue the following
statement:

X = SendMessage(Picture1.hWnd, WM_SETFONT, GetStockObject(ANSI_FIXED_FONT), 1)

After issuing this command, anytime we use the Print method to print
text on the Picture Box control, the fixed font is used.

Example Program
The example program below displays a Picture Box control on Form1. The
Print method is used to display the text "This is a test" in the
Picture Box control. Note that the default Font property value is
ignored and the ANSI fixed font is used when the text is displayed in
the control.

 1. Create a new project in Visual Basic. Form1 is created by default.
 2. Add the following Constant and Declare statements to the General
    Declarations section of Form1 (note that each Declare statement
    should be typed as a single line of code):

Declare Function SendMessage Lib "User" (ByVal hWnd As Integer,
   ByVal wMsg As Integer, ByVal wParam As Integer, lParam As Any)
   As Long
Declare Function GetStockObject Lib "GDI" (ByVal nIndex As Integer)
   As Integer
Const ANSI_FIXED_FONT = 11
Const WM_SETFONT = &H30

 3. Add the following code to the Form_Load event for Form1:

Sub Form_Load()
    Dim X As Long

    X = SendMessage(Picture1.hWnd, WM_SETFONT, GetStockObject(ANSI_FIXED_FONT), 1)
    Picture1.Print "This is a test"
End Sub

 4. Add a Picture Box control to Form1. Set its Font property to
    Bookman Old Style, point size: 24.

Additional References
Knowledge Base Q75857. "How to Print the ASCII Character Set in
Visual Basic."


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