Extand and access the internat Microsoft Office object structure

[Guest]

Hello!

We are currently struggling with a problem of extending Microsoft PowerPoint
(PP) freehand line functionality.

Here is our objective:
Imagine you have a brush in your hand and you are drawing a line. You can
easily change the thickness of this line while drawing by controlling the
pressure on the paper. So after you drew it the line has many different
thicknesses in it depending on how many times you changed the pressure while
drawing. Back to PP.
We need something like a freehand line, but the output will not just be a
line that has the same thickness on the whole length of it. The thickness
varies depending on some logic (black box) that is implemented by our
algorithm. Image you inherit from "freehand line" object and extend it by
characteristics described in the brush example (different thicknesses
contained by one continuous line). We need something that behaves the same
way when you scale it (zoom) like lines in PP do. That means that the
thickness of line is not affected by scaling, opposite to objects in PP,
which change their shapes while scaling.
We have written our own OLE server, which creates such line, but when we
copy it into PP it becomes an object that does not scale like a line - it
changes its shape while scaling.

We think that one of possible directions could be to find out the structure
and format of all possible object types supported by MS Office (Lines,
Shapes, objects, etc). Examine them and find the one that has the closest
match to our requirements. Then inherit from it, extend it and introduce it
SOMEHOW to PP as a new custom drawing object type/class. We have not found
any information on types and formats or the possibility to extend the
standard graphical office objects types by custom graphical objects. Maybe
if you spent a lot of $$ on MS Certificates and you have a certain level of
support this information and appropriate framework is accessible to you?

We think that this problem requires a real expert in MS Office Area
therefore we post it here.

Any help will be gratefully appreciated.


Cheers,


gicio

 

[Steve Rindsberg, PPTMVP]

We think that one of possible directions could be to find out the
structure

and format of all possible object types supported by MS Office (Lines,
Shapes, objects, etc).

I think what you'll probably need to do is render your variable width lines
as PowerPoint Freeform shapes or Curves (ie, closed shapes that describe
what you could look at as the "outline" of your line shape)

match to our requirements. Then inherit from it, extend it and introduce it
SOMEHOW to PP as a new custom drawing object type/class. We have not found
any information on types and formats or the possibility to extend the
standard graphical office objects types by custom graphical objects. Maybe
if you spent a lot of $$ on MS Certificates and you have a certain level of
support this information and appropriate framework is accessible to you?

I doubt that you can add new types of drawing object to PowerPoint no matter
how much you've spent with MS. If it were possible, you'd probably have
seen examples of it by now.