About GDI+

[José Roca]

 
GDI+ is the successor to GDI, the graphics device interface included with earlier versions of Windows. Windows XP or Windows .NET Server supports GDI for compatibility with existing applications, but programmers of new applications should use GDI+ for all their graphics needs because GDI+ optimizes many of the capabilities of GDI and also provides additional features.

A graphics device interface, such as GDI+, allows application programmers to display information on a screen or printer without having to be concerned about the details of a particular display device. The application programmer makes calls to the provided functions and those functions in turn make the appropriate calls to specific device drivers. GDI+ insulates the application from the graphics hardware, and it is this insulation that allows developers to create device-independent applications.

GdiPlus.inc is an include file containing the constants, structures and function declarations needed to use GDIPLUS.DLL with the PowerBASIC compilers.

Microsoft Windows GDI+ exposes a flat application programming interface (API) that consists of about 600 functions, which are implemented in Gdiplus.dll and declared in Gdiplusflat.inc. Microsoft has wrapped these functions with a collection of about 40 C++ classes and the Microsoft Product Support Services will not provide support for code that calls the flat API directly.

The functions in the flat API return a status value that indicates whether the call has succeeded or not.

CGdiPlus.inc is the master include file of several COM classes that allow to use GDI+ with PowerBASIC in a way as close as possible as using the C++ classes.

The attached file contains a help file documenting the GDI+ Flat API and the PowerBASIC classes.