PRB: Setting FontTransparent Has No Effect on Windows 95/98

• Microsoft Visual Basic Control Creation, Learning, Professional, and Enterprise Editions for Windows, versions 5.0, 6.0
• Microsoft Visual Basic Standard, Professional, and Enterprise Editions, 16-bit and 32-bit, for Windows, version 4.0

SYMPTOMS

When printing under Windows 95 and Windows 98, the FontTransparent property of the Printer object fails to change the way that the text is printed on the background. The FontTransparent property determines whether background text and graphics are displayed in the spaces around and within characters. The Visual Basic default for this property is True, meaning that the background will display in the spaces around the text. Under Windows 95 and Windows 98 the text will print as if FontTransparent is set to False, even though it is set to True.

Additionally, whenever a NewPage method is issued, all text on the new page will print as if FontTransparent is set to False even if it was printing correctly on the previous page.

CAUSE

The background mix mode, which directly relates to the Visual Basic FontTransparent property, and several other attributes of the printer device context, are modified at the start of a page by Windows 95 and Windows 98. This is a change in behavior from Windows NT and previous versions of Windows that is not addressed properly by the Visual Basic Printer Object. The problem should only affect the 32-bit version of Visual Basic, although some cases of the 16-bit version exhibiting this behavior have been reported. For more information on the cause, please see the following article in the Microsoft Windows SDK Knowledge Base:

Q125696 : StartPage/EndPage Resets Printer DC Attributes in Windows 95

RESOLUTION

To work around the problem, call the SetBKMode Windows API function to set the background mix mode. An example is shown in the More Information section below.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article. We are researching this problem and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.

MORE INFORMATION

The code to duplicate the problem is as follows:

1. Start Visual Basic. From the File menu, choose New Project (ALT, F, N). Form1 is created by default.



2. In the click event of the form, add the following code:

   
      Private Sub Form_Click()
   
         Printer.Line (0,0)-(10000, 2000), &HC0C0C0, BF
         Printer.CurrentX = 0
         Printer.CurrentY = 0
         Printer.FontTransparent = True
         Printer.Print "Printer.FontTransparent = " & Printer.FontTransparent
         Printer.FontTransparent = False
         Printer.Print "Printer.FontTransparent = " & Printer.FontTransparent
         Printer.EndDoc
   
      End Sub
    




3. From the Run menu, choose start (ALT, R, S), or press the F5 key to run the program.



4. Click the form. The result should be a gray page with one line of black text in the upper left corner and another line of black text in a white box beneath the first. On Windows 95 and Windows 98, this will yield a gray page with a white box and black text for both lines.

1. Add the following declarations to the General section of the form:

   
      #If Win32 Then
   
         Private Declare Function SetBkMode Lib "gdi32"  _
         (ByVal hdc As Long, ByVal nBkMode As Long) As Long
   
         Private iBKMode as Long
   
      #Else
   
         Private Declare Function SetBkMode Lib "GDI" (ByVal hDC As Integer _
          , ByVal nBkMode As Integer) As Integer
   
         Private iBKMode as Integer
   
      #End If
   
         Private Const TRANSPARENT = 1
         Private Const OPAQUE = 2
    




2. Correct the code in the click event of the form as such:

   
       Private Sub Form_Click()
   
          Printer.Print ""
          Printer.Line (0,0)-(10000, 2000), &HC0C0C0, BF
          Printer.CurrentX = 0
          Printer.CurrentY = 0
          Printer.FontTransparent = True
          'Correctly sets the background mix mode to transparent
          iBKMode = SetBKMode(Printer.Hdc, TRANSPARENT)
          Printer.Print "Printer.FontTransparent = " & Printer.FontTransparent
          Printer.FontTransparent = False
          'Correctly sets the background mix mode to opaque
          iBKMode = SetBKMode(Printer.Hdc, OPAQUE)
          Printer.Print "Printer.FontTransparent = " & Printer.FontTransparent
          Printer.EndDoc
   
       End Sub
    




3. From the Run menu, choose start (ALT, R, S), or press the F5 key to run the program.



4. Click the form. The text should now print as expected.

Additional query words: kbVBp500 kbVBp400 kbVBp kbprint kbDSupport kbdsd kbVBp600 kbPrinting

Keywords          : 
Version           : 
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbprb 

Last Reviewed: June 21, 1999