Changes from Version 7.0 to Version 8.0

Version 8.0 of the LEADTOOLS C API has changed from version 7.0 as follows:

The paint effects capabilities have been enhanced, with control over the speed and granularity of each effect, and with hundreds of new variations, including overlays of text and graphic shapes.
Region processing is now available in the LEADTOOLS Pro toolkits. New functions to get and set regions also make it easier to save a region as a mask in the alpha channel.
[Express editions only] You can now achieve faster rotation in 90-degree increments by applying a rotated view perspective to the bitmap.
You can now control the brightness and contrast of displayed images, without modifying the bitmap data.
New image processing functions give you more control over erosion or dilation of dark objects.
Other new image processing functions let you apply artistic effects to give an image the appearance of an oil painting or to simulate the accidental exposure of photographic film to light.
LEADTOOLS functions now preserve alpha-channel information. You can also get and set the alpha channel in 16- and 32-bit bitmaps.
TIFF file support now includes reading and writing of 32-bit images, images with PackBit compression, and images with CMYK or YCbCr color space.
BMP file support now includes reading and writing of RLE-compressed images.
You can now read and write Windows Icon (ICO) and Cursor (CUR) files.
You can now read and write Exif files.
[Express editions only] You can now read and write DICOM files.
You can now read and write Microsoft FAX (AWD) files.
You can now read and write comments in all of the file formats that support comments, including TIFF, GIF, DICOM, and Exif files.
Extended support for FlashPix files is available in the LEADTOOLS FlashPix Module.

Changed functions

The following functions have changed from the previous version of LEADTOOLS:

L_GetBitmapRowColCompressed

L_PutBitmapRowColCompressed

L_SizeBitmap

L_TwainSetProps

L_PaintDCBuffer (changed usage with 1-bit compressed data)

L_CombineBitmap (now uses Windows-style coordinates, with a top-left origin)

L_PaintDCEffect (moved from the kernel to the effects library)

L_PaintRgnDCEffect (moved from the kernel to the effects library)

Changed structures

The following structures have been changed to support new features:

EXTFILEOPTION has new fields for loading and saving stamp (thumbnail) images.
TWAINPROPERTIES has new fields for brightness, contrast, and autofeed capabilities.
FILEINFO has new constants for the Format field. The new constants are the same as you specify when saving an image.
EXTFILEOPTION has new constants for the Flags field. The new constants are used for loading FlashPix files with or without utilizing transforms stored with the image.

Changed error messages

The following constants for error messages have been changed to avoid conflicts with other Microsoft constants:

Old constant	New constant
ERROR_NOT_SUPPORTED	ERROR_FEATURE_NOT_SUPPORTED
ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND	ERROR_FILENOTFOUND
ERROR_INVALID_DATA	ERROR_INVALIDDATA

Other changes to upgrade your application code

The LEADTOOLS Express editions toolkit now supports rotated view perspectives, which let you achieve faster rotation in 90-degree increments. If you implement the new view perspectives, you should make the following changes in your code. (You can follow the examples in the LEADTOOLS sample code.)

If a bitmap has a view perspective that is rotated 90 or 270 degrees, the Width and Height fields in the BITMAPHANDLE and the FILEINFO structures do not match the displayed width and height. Therefore, you should reverse the values in places where you use these fields to determine an image's aspect ratio (for example, when you size a window). LEADTOOLS provides macros for this, which are described in Accounting for View Perspective.
Some function, such as L_GetPixelColor, reference bitmap coordinates. The previous code for translating to and from bitmap coordinates is inadequate. Instead, you should use the support functions, which are described in Accounting for View Perspective. You can find places in your code that need attention by searching for any reference to the ViewPerspective field in the BITMAPHANDLE or FILEINFO structure.