(Jacked straight from my last thread:) Reading through the GTK Book, there are lots of things to clean up when making sure to learn GTK3-focused skills. One is color selection widgets.
First, I'm wondering how GtkColorChooser is supposed to permit alpha choosing. The book just has you gtk_color_selection_set_has_opacity_control (GTK_COLOR_SELECTION (colorsel), TRUE);. There's a similar function for GtkColorChooser, but it doesn't seem to create anything. There's also the show-editor attribute that I flipped to TRUE without seeming to do anything.
Second, is there an equivalent notion to GtkColorSelectionDialog->colorsel for GtkColorChooserDialog? As in, can you access the GtkColorChooser widget from the parent dialog?
EDIT:
This is the source for the dialog creation where I'm missing something. I'm expecting this to show me an alpha-enabled color chooser widget, but it only gives me the regular swatches.
dialog = gtk_color_chooser_dialog_new(title, window);
gtk_color_chooser_dialog_set_use_alpha(GTK_COLOR_CHOOSER(dialog), TRUE);
My only guess is that I'm trying to access the color chooser incorrectly, but I haven't been able to find sufficiently detailed instructions about how to get to the chooser from the dialog.
the GtkColorChooser interface allows choosing the alpha channel by setting the :use-alpha property:
https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkColorChooser.html#gtk-color-chooser-set-use-alpha
when the :use-alpha property is set, you can select the alpha when creating a new custom color in the editor; a new scale widget will appear at the bottom of the color editor and will let you select the alpha level:
the GtkColorChooserDialog is a GtkDialog with a GtkColorChooserWidget inside the dialog's content area, so you can use gtk_dialog_get_content_area() and then get the first child of the returned GtkBox. this is arguably a layering violation, and should not be needed: GtkColorChooserDialog proxies all the GtkColorChooser methods to its GtkColorChooserWidget, and you should never need to access the widget directly. if you want to keep control of the GtkColorChooserWidget, you should create your own GtkDialog and pack a GtkColorChooserWidget into it yourself. again, I would not recommend doing that unless you want to create your own custom dialog.
Related
I have inherited a large MFC application which contains a CComboBox subclass that overrides OnPaint. Currently it does all its drawing by hand (with lines and rectangles), and renders a combo box that looks decidedly Windows 98-style. However, it otherwise works great and provides a lot of useful custom functionality that we rely on, and rewriting the entire control is probably not an option.
I would like to modernize it so that the OnPaint draws in Aero style where available (falling back to the old code when modern theming is unavailable). I've done this with some other custom controls we have, like buttons, and it works great for our purposes. I know there are some tiny behaviors that it won't get right, like gentle highlights on mouse-hover, but that's not a big deal for this app.
I have access to the CVisualStylesXP ckass, so I've already got the infrastructure to make calls like OpenThemeData, GetThemeColor or DrawThemeBackground pretty easily (via LoadLibrary so we don't force Vista as a min-system). Unfortunately, I don't know the proper sequence of calls to get a nice looking combo box with the theme-appropriate border and drop-down button.
Anyone know what to do here?
Honestly, I don't know why they originally tried to override OnPaint. Is there a good reason? I'm thinking that at least 99% of the time you are just going to want to override the drawing of the items in the ComboBox. For that, you can override DrawItem, MeasureItem, and CompareItem in a derived combo box to get the functionality you want. In that case, the OS will draw the non-user content specific to each OS correctly.
I think you best shot without diving in the depth of xp theming and various system metrics is take a look at this project: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/2584/AdvComboBox-Version-2-1
Check the OnPaint of the CAdvComboBox class - there is a full implementation of the control repainting including xp theme related issues.
Not sure if it's the same situation - but when I faced this problem (in my case with subclassed CButtons), solving it only required changing the control declaration to a pointer and creating the control dynamically.
Let's assume that your subclassed control is called CComboBoxExt.
Where you had
CComboBoxExt m_cComboBoxExt;
You'll now have
CComboBoxExt* m_pcComboBoxExt;
And on the OnInitDialog of the window where the control is placed, you create it using
m_pcComboBoxExt = new CComboBoxExt();
m_pcComboBoxExt->Create(...)
Since this is now a pointer, don't forget to call DestroyWindow() and delete the pointer on termination.
This solved my particular problem - if your control is declared in the same way, consider giving it a try.
I'm working on a project that involves creating a custom graphical editor. The graphical editor has multiple tabs, and I want to create a preview function that will show a popup with Bitmap previews of the content of each of the tabs. However, the problem I'm running into is that the content for each of the tabs must be arranged before a proper preview can be generated for it. This means going into each of the tabs to ensure that they're rendered and arranged. Then, and only then, do the previews get properly generated, otherwise the previews have a size of 0x0. Does anybody know how to force an arrange of a content control so that I can get a properly sized preview generated ?
Apparently you can just call the 'Arrange' method directly, but you have to be careful about the rectangle you pass in as a parameter, because it can adversely affect the display of your control if you just want to force the object to draw itself (ie can force it to draw out of the desired position).
Here is a link to MSDN where it discusses the "arrangeOverride" method of a control.
I'm not sure this is what you need, but this method seems to be what you're asking about.
Hope this helps!
In order to make a convenient UI for an .Net 2.0 Winforms application I am working on, I have need for a control that I'm pretty sure goes beyond the "out of the box" behavior of any standard control. A mock-up of what I'm trying to achieve follows:
Mock up http://www.claware.com/images/temp/mockup.png
Essentially, this part of the application attempts to parse words into syllables from tribal languages (no dictionary to refer to; any and all unicode characters are possible.) By the time the user gets this far, he has already defined the vowels / consonants in his language and some other configuration. There is then an iterative process of (1) the application guesses which syllables exist in the language based on some rules, (2) the user refines the guesses, selecting the correct parsings or manually parsing a word, (3) the application "learns" from the user's feedback and makes smarter guesses, (4) repeat until the data is "good enough" to move on.
The control needs to present each word (the grey headers), then all the syllable break guesses (the white areas with dots separating the parts of words.) There is also a way to manually enter a parsing, which will display a text area and save button (at the bottom of the mockup.) When the user hovers over a guess, the background changes and "accept / reject" buttons appear. Clicking on the accept, or entering a manual parsing, removes the entire word from the list. Clicking the reject button removes just that item.
I'm by no means 100% sold on the formatting I have above, but I think you can get a general idea of the types of formatting and functional control I need. The control will also scroll vertically--there may be thousands of words initially.
My question for you experienced WinForms developers is: where to start? I would really, really like to stay within the .Net core framework and extend an existing control as opposed to a third-party control. (At the risk of starting a religious war: yes, I suffer from NIH-syndrome, but it's a conscious decision based on a lot of quick-fix solutions but long-term problems with 3rd party controls.) Where can I get the most "bang for my bucK" and the least reinventing the wheel? ListView? ListBox? ScrollableControl? Do I need to go all the way back to Control and paint everything manually? I appreciate any help that could be provided!
[Edit] Thanks everyone for the ideas. It seems like the most elegant solution for my purposes is to create a custom control consisting of a FlowLayoutPanel and a VScrollBar. The FlowLayoutPanel can contain instances of the custom controls used for each word. But the FlowLayoutPanel is virtual, i.e. it only contains those instances which are visible (and some "just out of scroll"). The VScrollBar events determine what needs to be loaded. A bit of code to write, but isn't too bad and seems to work well.
I would look at the TableLayoutPanel and FlowLayoutPanel controls. These will let you organize a series of controls with moderate ease in a vertical fashion. I would then create a UserControl that consists of a label and 2 buttons. The UserControl will expose properties like Text and events that are exposed for the button clicks.. For each entry in the list, you will create an instance of the UserControl, assign the text value, and handle the click events. The instance will be placed in the Table/Flow panel in the correct order. Both of those layout panels do allow for inserting items between other items so you can add/remove items from the list dynamically.
Edit:
Given the length of what you are trying to render, I would consider using the DataGridView and do some custom rendering to make it perform how you want it to work. Using the rendering events of the DGV you can merge columns, change background colors (like highlighting the dark gray lines), turn on/off the buttons, and handle changing the grid into edit mode for your rows to allow modification or inserting of new values. This method would easily handle large datasets and you could bind directly to them very easily.
Well, this certainly looks like a candidate for a custom component that you should be creating yourself. You can create this using standard .Net drawing commands along with a text-box, and a regular button control.
Now you want to find out where to start.
Create a Windows Forms Control Library project.
Drop in the textbox and the button control.
The panel drawing code should preferably be done by code. This can be done using the regular GDI+ commands.
Edit:
Here's another idea, and one that I've practically used in my own project with great success.
You could use a web-browser control in the app, and show your data as html. You could update the source of the web-browser control based on the input in the textbox, and clicking on the links in the web browser control will give you the event that you can trap to do some action. Your CSS will work.
I used this technique to build the 'desktop' in an app I made called 'Correct Accounting Software'. People loved the desktop so much that it is one of the best loved features of the app.
Here's how I would do it:
Create a custom control. In this custom control, have a ListBox atop a LinkButton, and when the LinkButton is clicked you can make it give way to a TextBox. The ListBoxes will have the top row unselectable... you can probably get the rest from there. When you get your list of words, fill a Scrollable of some kind with one control for each word:
(foreach String word in words){
myScrollable.add(new MyComponent(word));
}
From there, I'm not sure what you want to do with the boxes or the data, but that's my initial idea on the UI setup.
Use the WebBrowser control and generate the HTML markup into it using DocumentStream or DocumentText.
I want to setup my WinForm to look like the Delphi7 IDE. Basically that means the window has no background (the desktop shows through), and child windows float around.
Here's a sample image:
I can handle the floating windows, but how would I go for the main window (the menu bar and the toolbar)? What are the WinForm properties required to get this layout? I can't seem to be able to get rid of the window's client area.
Thank you
Why can't you get rid of the client area? Just resize the main form so that it's as thin as you can make it.
You may be implementing the floating windows as UserControls in the main form's Controls collection. If so, there are two ways you can deal with this:
Implement the floating windows as actual windows. Show them using "frmToolWindows.Show(this);" (this will keep them always on top of your main form).
If you need to keep the floaters as UserControls, you can make the client area of your main form transparent by setting the form's TransparencyKey property to some arbitrary color (Color.Red, for example) and then setting the form's BackColor property to the same color. This will make your form transparent and able to be clicked through.
Please don't make a UI like this. It is very non-standard, and doesn't gain anything in the realm of usability. You could simplify things by keeping it all in one window like Visual Studio.
I have a windows forms application with controls like textbox, combobox, datagridview etc.
These controls allow a user to use the clipboad, i.e. cut/copy and paste text. It is also possible to delete text (which is not related to the clipboard).
My application has a menubar with an Edit item containing Cut/Copy/Paste/Delete items, and a toolbar with these items as well. How can I enable/disable these items properly depending in the state of the control having the focus?
I am looking for a generic way, i.e. I look for an implementation I do once, and can reuse for the future independent of the controls my application will use.
There is no generic interface or set of methods for getting cut/copy/paste information from a windows forms control.
I suggest your best approach would be to create a wrapper class for each type of control. Then when you want to update the menu state you get the current control with focus and create the appropriate wrapper for it. Then you ask that wrapper for the state information you need. That way you only need to create a wrapper implementation for each type of control you use. Bit of a pain to start with but other time you only need to add the new controls you come across.
Clipboard information is much easier as you can ask the Clipboard singleton if it has data inside and what type it is. Then again you still need to ask the target control if it can accept that type of information so there is still extra work needs doing.
Create an array for each enable/disable group. Add the controls to the array (of course it has to be of the correct type such as Object or Any, etc. depends on the programming language you are using).
Then to enable, disable just loop through the array and invoke the enable/disable method or function for each control. Again, depending on the language you may need to cast back.