How to Use More than One Type of Font in Picture Box (81220)

SUMMARY

The text box control in Visual Basic for Windows displays the entire text box with either the FontUnderline, FontBold, FontItalic, or FontStrikethru fonts, but with only one font at a time. This behavior is by design.

However, you may want to display a box with all four fonts at the same time with separate words displayed in different fonts. Below is an example of displaying the fonts FontBold, FontItalic, FontStrikethru, and FontUnderline fonts in a picture box control in Visual Basic for Windows to work around the limitation in text boxes.

MORE INFORMATION

The example below is one way of simulating a text box's contents in a variety of fonts.

Run Visual Basic for Windows, or from the File menu, choose New Project (press ALT, F, N) if Visual Basic for Windows is already running. Form1 is created by default.
Place a picture box on Form1, and double-click the picture box to open the Code window. Add the following code to the Click event. Notice that the font properties are a Boolean type (that is, -1 = True and 0 = False).

Sub Picture1_Click ( )

'** The word "Hello, " will be in FontBold.
        temp$ = "Hello, "
        Picture1.FontBold = -1
        Picture1.FontItalic = 0
        Picture1.FontStrikethru = 0
        Picture1.FontUnderline = 0
        Picture1.Print temp$

'** Need to program the next location to print in FontItalic.
        Picture1.Currentx = 500
        Picture1.Currenty = 0
        Picture1.FontBold = 0
        Picture1.FontItalic = -1
        Picture1.FontStrikethru = 0
        Picture1.FontUnderline = 0
        temp$ = " there!"
        Picture1.Print temp$

'** Need to program location to print in FontStrikethru.
        Picture1.Currentx = 1100
        Picture1.Currenty = 0
        Picture1.FontBold = 0
        Picture1.FontItalic = 0
        Picture1.FontUnderline = 0
        Picture1.FontStrikethru = -1
        temp$ = "This"
        Picture1.Print temp$

'** Need to program location to print in FontUnderline.
        Picture1.Currentx = 0
        Picture1.Currenty = 200
        Picture1.FontBold = 0
        Picture1.FontItalic = 0
        Picture1.FontStrikethru = 0
        Picture1.FontUnderline = -1
        temp$ = "is a test."
        Picture1.Print temp$

End Sub

Notice that the CurrentX and CurrentY properties are used to place the text at a certain location in the picture box. This example is rather simple, but its purpose is to give you an idea on how to simulate a text box in Visual Basic for Windows to be more flexible with a mix of the different types of fonts available. The same method can be used to print more than one type of font to a printer. To do this, modify the Picture1_Click Sub procedure by changing Picture1. to Printer.