Slide Shows and Snapshots

The slide show feature Maptitude lets you group together any number of Windows bitmap, .avi and .wav files and display them in sequence. This capability is based on GISDK functions for creating and displaying bitmap files and for preparing and presenting multimedia slideshows:

GISDK Function	Summary
GetAVILength()	Returns the number of frames in the AVI file
GetWAVLength()	Returns the length of the WAV file in seconds
PlaySound()	Plays a sound file
PlaySlideshow()	Plays a multimedia slide show
SaveEditorToBitmap()	Saves the editor image as a Windows bitmap file
SaveFigureToBitmap()	Saves the figure image as a Windows bitmap file
SaveFigureToImage()	Saves the contents of the figure window to an image file
SaveLayoutToBitmap()	Saves the layout image as a Windows bitmap file
SaveLegendToImage()	Saves a legend in a separate window to an image file
SaveMapToBitmap()	Saves the map image as a Windows bitmap file
SaveMapToImage()	Saves the contents of the map window to an image file
ShowBitmap()	Displays a Windows bitmap file in a window

Snapshots are bitmap images of the way that a map looks at a particular scale. You can create any number of snapshots for a particular map. These snapshots are stored with the map file. When the map file is opened, you can switch back and forth among these snapshots extremely quickly, rather than waiting for the entire map to redraw feature by feature.

You can use snapshots to build many kinds of custom applications. For example, a sales and marketing application could start out with a single map showing all the sales regions. When the user clicks on a particular region, you can switch to a snapshot that shows the region in question with territory boundaries added. When the user clicks on a territory you can switch to a snapshot that shows the territory and all the large customers. For an application like this one, you can even write a macro that creates all the necessary snapshot files in an automated fashion.

Map files in Maptitude are stored with a single snapshot (named "Default Snapshot") that shows how the map looked when it was saved. This snapshot is displayed when the file is opened. The snapshot GISDK functions summarized below let you make far more creative use of this capability:

GISDK Function	Summary
ConstructSnapshot()	Converts a customized image file into a map snapshot
CreateSnapshot()	Stores a snapshot image of the map as currently displayed
DeleteSnapshot()	Removes a snapshot from a map and deletes its image file
GetSnapshot()	Gets the scope and image file of a snapshot
GetSnapshots()	Gets a list of all snapshots associated with a map
ShowSnapshot()	Displays a snapshot and sets the map scope to match