ISymbolCollectionElement Interface

Provides further access to members that control Collection Symbol Elements.

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Members

	All Properties Methods	Description
	AnchorPoint	Callout anchor point.
	Background	Background symbol.
	Bold	Indicates whether bold fonts style.
	CharacterSpacing	The character spacing.
	CharacterWidth	The character width.
	Color	Font color.
	DrawESRIAnno	Draws the anno in a compressed format.
	ExportToESRIAnno	Saves the anno in a compressed format.
	FlipAngle	Flip angle.
	FontName	Font name.
	Geometry	Shape of the element as a geometry.
	GetSharedSymbol	Collection symbol.
	HorizontalAlignment	Horizontal alignment style.
	ImportFromESRIAnno	Loads the anno in a compressed format.
	Italic	Indicates whether italic font style.
	Leading	The character leading.
	OverriddenProperties	Overridden properties.
	OverriddenPropertiesExclusionMask	Mask used to exclude overrides when drawing.
	SharedSymbol	The symbol ID associated with this element.
	Size	Font size.
	SymbolID	Symbol ID associated with this element.
	Text	Text being displayed by this element.
	TextPath	Text path.
	Underline	Indicates whether underline font style.
	VerticalAlignment	Vertical alignment style.
	WordSpacing	The word spacing.
	XOffset	Text offset along X-axis.
	YOffset	Text offset along Y-axis.

CoClasses that implement ISymbolCollectionElement

Remarks

Annotation feature classes often contain many text elements referencing text symbols with the same properties.  Rather than redundantly storing the same symbol with each feature in the feature class, annotation feature classes are created with a symbol collection and the TextElements of annotation features can reference symbols in this collection.

ISymbolCollectionElement provides access to properties of TextElements which reference TextSymbols stored in a SymbolCollection as part of Geodatabase Annotation Feature Classes.  When editing the TextElements of annotation features, it is critical that this interface is used in order to maintain the linkage to the SymbolCollection symbol.  Accessing and updating symbol properties through ITextElement::Symbol will cause the TextElement to become disconnected from the SymbolCollection symbol and the symbol will be stored inline with the feature in the feature class.  This is undesirable since TextSymbols can be large in size.

When referencing a symbol in the collection, it is possible to override some of the TextSymbol properties without disconnecting it from the symbol collection symbol.  The following properties are overridable: XOffset, YOffset, Horizontal Alignment, Vertical Alignment, Flip Angle, Size, Color, Character Spacing, Character Width, Word Spacing, Leading, Bold, Italic, Underline, Background, and Font Name.  Setting any of these properties via ISymbolCollectionElement will properly apply the override to the element.  Utilizing overrides instead of disconnecting the element from the SymbolCollection will help minimize the amount of storage required.  If you find yourself needing to override many properties to reach the desired appearance for a lot of features, it is recommended that you add another symbol to the symbol collection rather than storing many overrides.

If a element is not referencing a symbol in the SymbolCollection, ISymbolCollectionElement::SymbolID will report a value of -1.  Otherwise, it will report the ID of the referenced text symbol.

The property ISymbolCollectionElement::OverriddenProperties reports the value of combined overrides applied to the current element.  See the help for this property for an example of how to evaluate this property.  If the SymbolID of the element is -1, this property will always report 0.