VB6-rotate form 90 degrees? [Visual Basic]

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From: Ed from AZ on 9 Aug 2010 10:05

I have a problem that could be solved more easily if my VB6 form with
a text input field and several drop-down controls can be rotated 90
degrees clockwise. (Monitor is being turned sideways - long story -
exploring solutions.) Is this possible with Classic VB? Not just to
rotate text on the form, but to rotate the entire form so it looks and
functions normally? If so, what commands do I need?

Ed

From: mbyerley on 9 Aug 2010 10:26

From: Ed from AZ on 9 Aug 2010 12:10

> What about mouse movements?

Sucks, but I can get by with just keyboard input. The mouse is used
just to preselect some of the drop-downs; after that, it's all
keyboard. I could even put a button on the form to rotate it after
pre-selections are made.

Ed

On Aug 9, 7:26 am, "mbyerley" <mDotByerley(a)VerizonDottieNettie> wrote:
> "Ed from AZ" <prof_ofw...(a)yahoo.com> wrote in messagenews:a7ed093e-38d2-49f2-a606-f5621b34cf0c(a)i19g2000pro.googlegroups.com...
>
> >I have a problem that could be solved more easily if my VB6 form with
> > a text input field and several drop-down controls can be rotated 90
> > degrees clockwise. (Monitor is being turned sideways - long story -
> > exploring solutions.) Is this possible with Classic VB? Not just to
> > rotate text on the form, but to rotate the entire form so it looks and
> > functions normally? If so, what commands do I need?
>
> What about mouse movements?
>
>
>
> > Ed- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

From: H-Man on 9 Aug 2010 12:55

On Mon, 9 Aug 2010 07:05:23 -0700 (PDT), Ed from AZ wrote:

> I have a problem that could be solved more easily if my VB6 form with
> a text input field and several drop-down controls can be rotated 90
> degrees clockwise. (Monitor is being turned sideways - long story -
> exploring solutions.) Is this possible with Classic VB? Not just to
> rotate text on the form, but to rotate the entire form so it looks and
> functions normally? If so, what commands do I need?
>
> Ed

Generally done at the video driver level. AFAIK, it would be much harder to
rotate a single form that it would be to just rotate the entire display.
Samsung has a program called MagicRotate. This consists of an EXE, DLL and
SYS file. Still it's done at the driver level.

--
HK

From: Mike Williams on 9 Aug 2010 13:29

"Ed from AZ" <prof_ofwhat(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:a7ed093e-38d2-49f2-a606-f5621b34cf0c(a)i19g2000pro.googlegroups.com...

> I have a problem that could be solved more easily if my
> VB6 form with a text input field and several drop-down
> controls can be rotated 90 degrees clockwise. (Monitor
> is being turned sideways - long story - exploring solutions.)
> Is this possible with Classic VB? Not just to rotate text
> on the form, but to rotate the entire form so it looks and
> functions normally? If so, what commands do I need?

You don't need to look for ways to rotate Forms or individual controls
(which would in any case be a complicated task). All you need to do is
display your Form and its controls in the standard way but write your VB6
code so that it automatically places your Form's controls at sensible
positions on the Form, in response to the Form Resize event, regardless of
whether your user has maximized the Form or has dragged it out to some other
smaller than maximum size, and regardless of whether that size (in either
case) is wider than it is high or vice versa. That's what you should be
doing anyway in virtually any VB program that you write. In that way your
program will work properly regardless of the user's resizing of your Form or
the pixel area or dpi setting or orientation (portrait or landscape) of the
user's monitor.

As far as rotating your own monitor display is concerned so that it matches
the physical orientation of the monitor, most modern graphics cards are
capable of performing that task. All laptop graphics cards have this
function readily available, and it is usually a case of simply right
clicking a blank part of the desktop and selecting the desired rotation from
the appropriate dropdown menu. In such cases the orientation of the mouse
will automatically set itself to the same orientation as the desktop, and so
everything will work just as normal in portrait orientation as it does in
the standard landscape orientation.

For desktop machines (where you have a computer tower and a separate
monitor) the same functionality is usually also available, although the menu
option is sometimes not quite as easy to find. For example, on the Vista
desktop machine I am using at the moment which uses an ATI Radeon graphics
card I need to open the ATI Catalyst Control Center (how I hate those
American spellings!) and select Graphics / Desktop Properties / Mode and
then select the desired orientation in one of the drop down Lists on that
page. On most desktop machines (as far as I recall) choosing a Portrait
orientation automatically causes the mouse to orientate itself in that
manner as well (in just the same way as it automatically does on laptops),
but on this specific desktop machine I am using at the moment (probably a
bit of a video or mouse driver fault) is does not do so and the desktop goes
into portrait mode whilst the mouse stays in landscape mode (making the
machine a bit hard to use, to say the least!). However, I think you'll find
most modern desktop machines do not have that problem (at least as far as I
recall from memory) and even if they do then it is not an insurmountable
problem.

By the way, a word of warning if you are using one of those modern
"All-In-One" desktop machines that seem to be fashionable these days (those
in which the entire computer is built into the monitor). Many of those
machines have orientation settings in just the same way as laptops do, but
on many of them the act of running it whilst it is physically turned to
portrait orientation can cause some of its internal components to fail,
probably because of overheating due to the way the air flow is arranged, and
so I would not advise you to do it on those machines, at least not without
first thoroughly checking the documentation that came with the machine to
determine whether you are allowed to run them on their sides.

In your case the first thing I would advise you to do is look in detail at
the options provided by your graphics card driver's UI software and check
out whether it has an orientation setting available. You might need to look
at all the menu options in great detail just in case it is buried deep down
somewhere. If you still cannot find the appropriate option on your own
machine then it might be because your graphics card is quite old and simple
cannot perform that task, but it might be just that at does actually have
that functionality built into its hardware but that the driver you are using
is out of date or perhaps simply does not present the option to the user. If
that is the case then you can download some freeware that will examine your
graphics card's capability and attempt to provide you with an orientation
setting if your card can physically handle it. Here is one example:

http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/iRotate-Download-17093.html

If you still have problems then perhaps it might be useful if you posted
more details of exactly what you are doing (and, often just as importantly,
why you are doing it) and specifically what problems you have come across
that are currently preventing you from doing so.

Mike

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