Accusoft.NotateXpress13.ActiveX
Object Overview
| NotateXpress 13 for ActiveX - User Guide > Concepts > Object Overview |
The NotateXpress™ control enables the user to annotate an image and store these annotations in a separate file or variant, or with the image.
NotateXpress is a windowless control that provides annotation capability to an ImagXpress® client. Each NotateXpress control can have only one connected client ImagXpress control. The annotations created within NotateXpress are associated with the image being viewed in the ImagXpress client.
Annotations may be stored within the tags of a TIFF image, separately in a disk file, or in memory.
Annotations (also called elements) are textual or graphical notations that can be attached to an image. Annotations can be viewed with the image, but are not part of the image. (The Brand method can be used to make the annotation a permanent part of the image being viewed if desired.)
NotateXpress maintains annotations on layers. Layers act like transparent overlays to the image, and can be used to separate annotations. For example, a separate annotation layer could be established for each different end-user (e.g. legal department comments vs. marketing department comments on a proposal), or for each different function (e.g. plumbing notes vs. wiring notes on a house blueprint). Layers can be viewed simultaneously, or alone. (For example, view only legal department comment layer, or view legal department and marketing department comment layers). A layer must exist before annotations can be created. Each annotation (or element) that is created must reside on a layer, and cannot reside on more than one layer.
Within a layer, elements may be grouped. Grouping annotation elements lets you manipulate these items together. An element on a layer can be associated with only one group at any time, or may be associated with no group.
The NotateXpress toolbar contains a set of annotation tools, enabling the application end user to annotate the image. An annotation element is created by the application end user when a tool is selected in the toolbar and applied to the viewed image.
Each tool within the toolbar has a menu, which enables the application end-user to specify properties of the tool. For example, the application end-user may use the tool’s menu to specify that the line color of the rectangle tool should be blue. Then each time the tool is selected and applied to the image, a blue rectangle will be drawn.
Attributes of the NotateXpress toolbar and tools can be set globally to apply on all layers, or they can be set on a specific layer. For example, the text color on layer one could be set to blue so that all new text annotations produced on layer one are blue, and the text color on layer two could be set to red, resulting in red text on all new text annotations on layer two.
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When a tool attribute is specified both globally and locally to a specific layer, the local (layer) value has precedence. |
The context menu can be used in the for each item in the toolbar or over an individual annotation. An annotation is modified by the application end user using the context menu (activated by right click over the annotation) to modify annotation properties (e.g., color).