Upgrading Paint 8 scripts to Paint 9
Object Handling
Corel Photo-Paint 9 has improved object handling procedures which allow to apply some transformations to several objects at once.
To accommodate this functionality, most of ObjectNNN scripting commands were extended to support multi-object targets. These commands now require EndObject command to finish the clause. You can put ObjectSelectNone and ObjectSelect statements in between to specify which objects to apply transformations to.
For example, to move object 1 and 2, you should use:
.ObjectTranslate .ObjectSelectNone .ObjectSelect 1, True .ObjectSelect 2, True .EndObject
If you do not specify ObjectSelect statements, the operation is performed on the currently selected objects.
However there are some ObjectNNN commands that do not need EndObject command. These are commands that do not work with selected objects. They work with a specific object.
Here is the list of all ObjectNNN command that require EndObject and those which don't:
| Requires EndObject: | Does not need EndObject: |
| ObjectAddClipMask ObjectAddClipMaskFromMask ObjectAddClipMaskFromTransparency ObjectAffineDistort ObjectAlign ObjectClip ObjectCombine ObjectCreate (*1) ObjectDefringe ObjectDelete ObjectDistort ObjectDropShadow ObjectDropShadowCombine ObjectDropShadowDelete ObjectDropShadowSplit ObjectDuplicate ObjectFeather ObjectFlipHorizontal ObjectFlipVertical ObjectGroup ObjectMerge ObjectMergeMode ObjectName ObjectOpacity ObjectOrder ObjectRemoveClipMask ObjectRemoveMatte ObjectRotate ObjectSelection (*2) ObjectSkew ObjectStretch ObjectThreshold ObjectTranslate ObjectUngroup |
ObjectClipToParent ObjectEdit ObjectEditTransparency ObjectVisible ObjectOrderChange ObjectProperties ObjectNew ObjectToggleClipMask ObjectToggleLinkClipMask ObjectColorTransparencyTool (*3) ObjectCreateFromBackground ObjectSelectAll ObjectSelectNone ObjectSelect ObjectTagWWWURL (*4) ObjectURLInfo ObjectTransparencyTool (*5) |
Notes:
*1 - ObjectCreate accepts SetPaperColor command between ObjectCreate and EndObject to set the background color of the cut region.
*2 - ObjectSelection is meant to just select given objects without performing any actions on them. Unfortunately due to a bug, this command doesn't work
*3 - ObjectColorTransparencyTool requires EndObjectColorTransparencyTool to close the command, rather than EndObject
*4 - ObjectTagWWWURL should be closed with EndObjectTagWWWURL, not EndObject
*5 - ObjectTransparencyTool should be closed with EndObjectTransparencyTool rather than EndObject.
Also note, that ObjectDropShadow has different arguments than in Paint 8:
Sub ObjectDropShadow(Mode AS Boolean, Direction AS Long, Distance AS Long,
Feather AS Long, Type AS Long, Edges AS Long, Opacity AS Long,
Relative AS Boolean, Fade AS Long, Anchor AS Long, Stretch AS Double,
ColorModel AS Long, Color1 AS Long, Color2 AS Long, Color3 AS Long,
Color4 AS Long)
MaskCreate command
MaskCreate command now requires EndMaskCreate to close the command. ObjectSelectNone and ObjectSelect can be used in between to specify which objects to use to build a new mask...
Effect changes
Along with numerous new bitmap effects introduced in Photo-Paint 9, there are some changes to existing effects. You should keep this in mind when translating old scripts to version 9.
Here is the list of changed commands (see this document for more information about changed commands in Photo-Paint 9):
- EffectAddNoise: adds extra color parameters. In addition to this, the Noise effect produces much fainter effect, so you might consider adding several EffectAddNoise commands to create more intense effect.
- EffectImpressionist: renamed to EffectScatter. EffectImpressionist now represents different effect
- EffectRadialBlur: Mode argument is removed
- EffectSharpen: Background parameter is removed
- EffectTheBoss: new Invert parameter added
- EffectUserDefined: new Intensity parameter added
- FadeLastCommand: now have two parameters - Percent and MergeMode.
Other changes
Some other commands have been also changed:
- ImageConvert: two new parameters (Intensity and Flatten) added.
- ImageConvertDuotone: new parameter Flatten added
- ImageConvertPaletted: two new parameters (Intensity and Flatten) added.
- MaskFloaterMoveTo: background color parameters added.
- ObjectAlign: spacing parameters (ObjectSpacing, XSpacing, and YSpacing) added
- PathNode: X and Y parameters are now Doubles.
If you noticed some other compatibility issues when transferring Paint 8 scripts to Paint 9 platform, please let me know. Any comments are greatly appreciated.