Another MC-Rev anomaly: "text of image" property

[Wilhelm Sanke]

First: The imagedata speed problem has been added to Bugzilla as bug 3938.--

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I took a look at the "text of image" property to see what is different 
from imagedata (tested for Windows XP).

Results:

- The number of chars of the text of an image is about 50% smaller than 
for imagedata, meaning that storing the "text of an image" needs less space.

- Other than with imagedata, restoring an image with the stored text of 
the image shows no speed differences between Rev and MC.
Resetting the text of a larger image is about 10 milliseconds slower 
(180 vs 190 for an image 1600X1200) for both Rev and MC 2.7.4 compared 
to MC 2.6.6 and Rev 2.6.1.

- For referenced images no "text of image" data are available, the 
retrieved imagetext is then empty (imagedata are *not* empty in this case).
You have either to import the image (or take a snapshot) or first to 
manipulate the imagedata to get any "text of the image"

- Manipulating the "text of an image" apparently is not possible like 
with imagedata. If you reset an image to its changed text, you will get 
a blank image.

Has anybody succeeded or tried to change the "text of an image"?

For the above points there are no differences between Rev and MC, but

- The format of the "text of image" property is different in Rev and MC 
- tested both in stacks and standalones.

Resetting an image to its previously stored text in MC and the MC IDE 
results in a blank image (unless the text was stored using Rev and the 
stack after that opened in MC).

This means that you cannot use the text property to store and retrieve 
images in MC.

The different format of the text of image property in Rev can be seen 
when you put the retrieved text into a field:

The first line of the image text in Rev always contains "‰PNG", which is 
missing in MC.--

The big question - similar to the one about imagedata, but this time to 
the disadvantage of MC - is (as both IDEs and standalones use the same 
engine) what is being added to the Rev standalone that allows proper 
handling of the "text of an image"?

Regards,

Wilhelm Sanke

<http://www.sanke.org/MetaMedia>