AvalonDock Layout Without DocumentPane - wpf

Question

I am trying to create a layout with avalon dock which looks something like this:
On the left side, the user is supposed to select the content which is displayed in the red box. This sort of layout can be easily achieved if the red box in the middle is declared as Document pane, and the content is displayed as a tab.
However, usage of tabs in this case is not needed because there is only one content, so I want to display the red box as an anchorable instead as a document.
So, basically, I want a layout which does not contain the document pane at all.
This is my code so far:
<ad:DockingManager
LayoutUpdateStrategy="{StaticResource dockingLayoutStrategy}"
AnchorablesSource="{Binding Path=Anchorables}"
ActiveContent="{Binding Path=ActiveContent, Mode=TwoWay}"
>
<ad:DockingManager.LayoutItemContainerStyleSelector>
<local:DockingPaneStyleSelector>
<local:DockingPaneStyleSelector.AnchorableStyle>
<Style TargetType="{x:Type adc:LayoutAnchorableItem}">
<!-- a bunch of properties-->
</Style>
</local:DockingPaneStyleSelector.AnchorableStyle>
<local:DockingPaneStyleSelector.PaneStyle>
<!-- a bunch of properties-->
</local:DockingPaneStyleSelector.PaneStyle>
</local:DockingPaneStyleSelector>
</ad:DockingManager.LayoutItemContainerStyleSelector>
<adl:LayoutRoot>
<adl:LayoutPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
<adl:LayoutAnchorablePane Name="ContentSelectionPane" DockWidth="100"/>
<adl:LayoutPanel Orientation="Vertical" DockWidth="*" IsMaximized="True">
<adl:LayoutPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
<adl:LayoutAnchorablePane Name="MainPane" IsMaximized="True" />
<adl:LayoutAnchorablePane Name="PropertyPane" DockWidth="300"/>
</adl:LayoutPanel>
<adl:LayoutAnchorablePane Name="StuffPane" DockHeight="150"/>
</adl:LayoutPanel>
</adl:LayoutPanel>
</adl:LayoutRoot>
The first problem I am experiencing is that when the left pane is loaded, it takes all available space, and it never allows the right side to show. If I commment out the left side pane, the right side of the window is shown.
The second problem is that the panes do now have the size which I declared, but always take the half of the available size. E.g. if I have:
<adl:LayoutRoot>
<adl:LayoutPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
<adl:LayoutAnchorablePane Name="ContentSelectionPane" DockWidth="100"/>
<adl:LayoutAnchorablePane Name="{x:Static si:Panes.DocumentPane}" DockWidth="*" IsMaximized="True" />
</adl:LayoutPanel>
</adl:LayoutRoot>
Both panes take exactly half of the availalbe place.
Any ideas on how I might achieve the "DocumentPane" size behaviour which does not display tabs, but achorables?

Answer 1

Well, I have a major "hack" that I did which worked for me. I set a negative top-margin on the top of the container holding the document pane. The negative margin pulls the content up hiding the document tab well.
It is tricky because you have to do it after the content is rendered/loaded, because the Xaml panes are not the actual visuals put into the Visual Tree.
Here is my Xaml for the document area:
<xcad:LayoutDocumentPane
x:Name="LayoutDocumentPaneArea"
CanRepositionItems="False"
DockMinHeight="0"
DockMinWidth="0"
IsMaximized="True">
<xcad:LayoutDocument
CanClose="False"
CanFloat="False"
IsMaximized="True">
<Grid x:Name="DocumentArea" />
</xcad:LayoutDocument>
</xcad:LayoutDocumentPane>
Then in the window's Content_Rendered event call this function to strip away the document tabs and in my case a 1px border of the content I had hosted there:
private void TrimDocumentArea()
{
var border = DocumentArea.FindVisualAncestor<Border>();
if (border != null)
{
border = border.FindVisualAncestor<Border>();
if (border != null && border.Name == "ContentPanel")
{
border.Margin = new Thickness(-1, -21, -1, -1);
}
}
}