Metafile Format

An Enhanced Metafile format is used in applications written using the Microsoft Win32 application programming interface (API). Enhanced metafiles provide true device independence. You can think of the picture stored in an enhanced metafile as a “snapshot” of the video display taken at a particular moment. This “snapshot” maintains its dimensions no matter where it appears: on a printer, a plotter, or the desktop, or in the client area of any Win32-based application.

A Windows Metafile format is used for applications written using the Windows version 3.x API. The Windows format consists of a header and an array of metafile records. Windows-format metafiles are limited in their capabilities and should be used to maintain backward compatibility with applications that were written to run with Windows version 3.x.