Get bitmap of a canvas

[Bixby Sayz]

Been messing around with various tutorials on forms/canvas. There are routines to get the canvas of a bitmap, manipulate bitmaps, write bitmaps to bitmaps, write bitmaps to canvas, but no? way to get an existing canvas into a bitmap where you can work with it?

 

Looking to take the canvas of a form and get it into some shape/form where the various manipulation functions (which all expect a bitmap) will work.

[FHannes]

Afaik you can't reshape a form without using a plugin or API calls in SCAR, I could be wrong though. You can use [wiki=SafeCopyCanvas]SafeCopyCanvas[/wiki] combined with [wiki=GetBitmapCanvas]GetBitmapCanvas[/wiki] to get/set the bitmap of a canvas.

[Bixby Sayz]

I'm missing something here.

- SafeCopyCanvas copies Canvas to Canvas. None of the bitmap routines will work with this.

- GetBitmapCanvas returns the Canvas of a Bitmap. Again none of the bitmap routines will work with a Canvas.

 

If you are starting with a Canvas (of a form, of a timage, of a whatever) how do you get it into a form where the routines that expect a bitmap will work. (All of the useful functions expect a bitmap not a canvas).

 

I'm not trying to resize anything. There is a routine to copy a bitmap with transparency to another BITMAP. What I want to do is copy that bitmap with transparency to a canvas. Which is where I flipped it around and asked "If I have a canvas, is there a way to get/treat that as a bitmap so all those useful functions will work?"

 

The answer seems to be no.

[FHannes]

You have to draw your image onto a bitmap, then use GetBitmapCanvas and SafeCopyCanvas to copy the bitmap onto the form's canvas. However, it's far better to just drop a TImage onto your form and copying the bitmap directly to it with TBitmapFromBmp.

[Bixby Sayz]

Was trying to avoid using a TImage, but that is the only thing that works.

 

But that still doesn't answer the question if that TImage has some existing content I want to pull off to use elsewhere, what then? Puzzler for another day. I got what I needed for now.

[FHannes]

Well, that's what I'm trying to explain, you can use SafeCopyCanvas to copy from or to a bitmap canvas.

[Bixby Sayz]

from or to a bitmap canvas.

That's the point: there is no bitmap!

 

There is a way to take a bitmap and get a canvas.

There is a way to copy/convert a bitmap to a canvas.

There is a way to copy a canvas to a canvas.

There is no way (that I am aware of) to take a canvas and get a bitmap.

 

There are a lot of useful routines but they all require a bitmap. If your source is a canvas then you are screwed. If you try to substitute a bitmap for a canvas in the copy routine you mentioned you crash SCAR.

[FHannes]

Why? You just create a bitmap and copy it on there? Bmp := BitmapFromString(w, h, '');

[Bixby Sayz]

Yeah, I was being incredibly dense there. Gotta stop trying to script when overtired. Sorry Freddy.