Yikes! Don't understand PPT 2007 rotated shape dimensions

[Dave Jenkins]

I'm trying to determine the coordinates of the corners of a rotated
rectangular shape whose width and height are known, as well as the
coordinates of the corners of the unrotated shape.

I've looked at the top, left, width, and height dimensions of inserted text
boxes til I'm blue in the face, and I see that PowerPoint keeps the width and
height dimensions constant, but varies the top and left dimensions when the
shape is rotated. The problem is, when the shape is rotated, the new Top and
Left shown in the shape's properties don't seem to be relative to the slide,
and they don't seem to tbe the Top and Left of the new shape realtive to its
orientation on the slide. They almost seem to be the new Left and Tops for
where the *old* Left and Tops were, or something even more bizarre. I just
can't figure it out.

This is easily demonstrated if you insert an arbitrary text box, and examine
its dimensional properties (do this in Debug, or use Miss Piggy in PPTools
Starter Set Plus). Now rotate it, and move it around and take note of the
Left and Top dimensions.

And then please post an explanation here as to how those values are
computed, and how I can use them to compute the real coordinates of the 4
corners of the rotated text box. (And no, I'm not afraid of a little trig
....).

Thanks.

Dave Jenkins
K5KX

 

[Dave Jenkins]

Ok - I've got it doped out.

I have to translate the corner coordinates relative to the center of the
placeholder (about which the placeholder is being rotated) and then apply
some simple formulas for rotation of a point about the origin. The I
translate the new coords back to being relative to the upper left corner of
the slide. Quite simple, really.

If you even *thought* about this - thanks! But it's solved.