[twinBASIC] ColorFontLabel - Color emojis, angled text, and more (w/ OCX for VB6/VBA)

[fafalone]

ColorFontLabel v1.3

ColorFontLabel is a UserControl/ActiveX Label Control that supports Color Fonts-- fonts that have characters with multiple colors, most commonly used for color emojis that are still copy/paste-able text and not images. Powered with Direct2D/DirectWrite.

Additional features

• Font effects (bold, italic, underline, strikethru, condense/expand) can be applied only to a specific range.
• Angled text
• Color gradients (linear and radial)
• Locale can be specified
• Several options for word wrap mode
• Set line spacing
• Antialiasing options
• Can act as a drop target for DragDrop from other apps and displays the fancy icons like Explorer.
• Mouse events including MouseWheel
• Background picture property with stretch or offset options
• Normal Label properties like Alignment, RightToLeft, ForeColor/BackColor, etc.

The project is provided as both a UserControl you can use within twinBASIC projects, and as a OCX control tested to work in VB6 and VBA (both 32 and 64bit). ColorFontLabel.twinproj can be used to build the OCX, and ucColorFontLabel.tbcontrol/.twin are the files you'd import to use in a project, with ucColorFontTest.twinproj being a test project for this type.

Requirements
-Color fonts are only supported on Windows 8 and above. The control should work on Windows 7, but emojis etc would be in black and white.
-For building or IDE use of the tbcontrol version, my WinDevLib package, v9.1.566+, is required (References->Available packages). Projects use the new package linking option so it's no longer embedded by default, which means I can once again post it here!
-The latest twinBASIC Beta is recommended, and 828+ is required, to build the OCX or read the test project.

Changelog

• v1.3 (07 Jul 2025)
  - Bug fix: Font was smaller than regular label with same font/size.
  - Bug fix: PictureStretch size wrong when DPI awareness enabled.
  
• v1.2 (07 Jul 2025)
  
  - Added support for Picture property to set a background image. PictureStretch property sets whether it's stretched to fill the label. If not, you can set an x/y offset with PictureOffsetX/Y.
  
  
  
• v1.1 (05 Jul 2025)
  - Now using quicker/more stable DC render target. Thanks to Wayne Phillips for this contribution. This works better in the IDE and faster at runtime.
  (Bug fix) Size/position badly broken when DPI awareness enabled.

Project repository (may be more up to date)