Symbol Dynamics^® EXP^®

The Scientific Word Processor

Why does a border appear around a graphic when I have not set one?

Affected versions of EXP

EXP 5.1

Symptom

A thin black border appears around a metafile graphic that does not have a border applied to it.

Cause

Windows is encountering an error while drawing the metafile graphic and this is causing EXP to draw an error border. The error border shows where the graphic would have appeared if Windows had been able to draw it.

EXP uses a Windows-provided drawing function to display metafile graphics. If Windows encounters an error while drawing a metafile graphic, the drawing function returns an error code. When EXP sees that Windows encountered an error, EXP draws an error border.

For certain metafile graphics, Windows draws the graphic completely but then returns an error code to EXP. EXP has no way of knowing whether Windows did in fact draw anything. If the Windows drawing function returns an error code, EXP draws an error border.

Solution

Add a thin white border to the graphic. When Windows encounters an error while drawing a graphic, EXP checks to see if the graphic has a border applied to it. If it does, EXP draws that border instead of the default error border. A white border will not be visible on the screen and it will not be printed either.