Which is smaller footprint in C# - memory

A lable sized like a rectangle with no text but has a border and is invisible (for a visual rectangle on the form around controls but not to contain the controls) or a panel?

What you want to use is a GroupBox. Not that it really matters, most likely, but a label should be cheaper than a panel.

The answer is; it doesn't matter which has the smaller footprint, and if it does you have a design problem (i.e., you have way too many controls on your form). Anyhow, you should just use the control that fits the job, in this case, a Panel or a GroupBox.

If this is really a problem, then the best way to provide a visual separation between controls is to handle each tab page's Paint event, and use e.Graphics.FillRectangle(...) to draw the separator. You would get rid of a very large number of controls that way.
If you can't do something as simple as just drawing a rectangle underneath each control on each tab page, you can write a code-generating routine that you run one time on the form, and for each tab page you generate something like this (by iterating through all the separator controls on the page):
List<Rectangle> rects = new List<Rectangle>();
rects.Add(new Rectangle(10, 40, 200, 5)); // position of first separator
rects.Add(new Rectangle(10, 80, 200, 5)); // position of second separator
// etc.
Then you copy-and-paste these generated code routines into your application, and use them for each page's Paint event, like so:
SolidBrush brush = new SolidBrush(Color.PeachPuff);
foreach (Rectangle rect in rects)
{
e.Graphics.FillRectangle(brush, rect);
}
Then you delete all the separators from your tab control. What you should end up with is an array of type List<Rectangle> (one list for each page) that you instantiate and fill in the form's Load event or its constructor (using the generated code).
I have to reiterate what Ed said, though. .Net forms can have a lot of controls on them without any real problems, so if you're running into problems stemming from having too many controls on the form, you might be better off redesigning the whole thing.

Related

How to always show Sirius Label in foreground

For the context, I'm working with Capella, an Eclipse RCP application based on Sirius (hence, EMF, GMF and draw2d). This application is used for MBSE, that basically means diagram representations for industrial systems.
I'm developping an add-on (viewpoint) to display custom labels next to diagram elements. These diagram elements are, to put it simply, boxes inside boxes. My problem is that usually the label text is larger than the space between a box and its container, so the label gets hidden. What I need is these labels to always be in foreground. As I'm more used to web development, what I'm looking for would be the equivalent of the z-index CSS property.
Currently I have no idea of how to achieve this, I'm using a custom .odesign that allows me to control some rendering options, like labels text, the color of some elements or to add decoration, but I dont think its the way to go for my problem. Maybe I should use a custom EditPart or a custom StyleConfiguration (I already used these components for other projects) but I have no clue where to start for this issue.
Any leads will be greatly appreciated.
We recently did this kind of changes to keep some labels in Sirius Sequence diagrams always on top: the combined fragments are placed behind the lifelines (z order) but we wanted to keep the labels of the CombinedFragments visible event their bounds intersects Lifelines, Executions or States).
This has been handled in Bug 564239 for Sirius 6.3.2 (used in Capella 1.4.1).
You could find some hints the bugzilla (Gerrits and commits can be retrieved from the See also section).
In Sirius Sequence diagram , we use org.eclipse.sirius.diagram.sequence.ui.tool.internal.layout.SequenceZOrderingRefresher to control the z-order of CombinedFragments : all the figures that composes them comes from some expressions in the odesign, and synchronization with the Capella model for exemple.
But in your case you want to control only the label, so it must not be dealt on the edit par level, but on the figure one. The "overlay" layer and figure lead might be a good one.
Do not forget another thing: in GMF/GEF, the labels of an element is displayed/shown/rendered/visible if it fits to the visible area of the parent container: in the case of a node in a container with scrollbar, the visible are will impact the visibility of the sub nodes (extended to their border nodes, edges, labels, ...)
Regards
Maxime

Divide a Tchart into equal parts and then draw rectangles on it in Firemonkey

I have a simple program in C++ builder with VCL that i need to migrate to Firemonkey. In this application i need to draw on a TChart, but i don't know how to get it to work. My application is really simple; a user inputs data in a stringgrid and then the data is displayed in two different TChart by clicking two different buttons.
The first button click is to divide the TChart into equal parts (generally in two parts, but the user can divide the TChart into more than two parts). In the first example there is a column, with two long rectangles with texts, in it. In this example it's two rectangles with "CH PL".
The second button is supposed to draw on the same TChart this:
It's essentially two or more rectangles which go from the beginning of the chart until the end.
To make it simple i need to divide the TChart into two or more equal parts horizontally and then draw rectangles with texts on it, which is the simplest solution.
I'm really lost because by searching on the net i came across a similar problem by simply using the TChart.AfterDraw() method, but I don't know how to use it, it's not really clear.
The drawing are generated once the user clicks a button, else there should be nothing.
My method for drawing so far:
void __fastcall TForm1::rbComprChange()
{
Series5->Clear(); //used for clearing the series to regenerate them from the user input
for(int i=0;i<StringGrid1->RowCount;i++)
{
Series5->AddGantt(StrToDate(StringGrid1->Cells[4][i]),StrToDate(StringGrid1->Cells[5][i]),i,StringGrid1->Cells[1][i]);
Series5->NextTask->Value[i]=i;
}
// How and where should i draw these rectangles?!
}
Can someone guide me or explain to me how to do that either in C++ Builder or Delphi.

How change just some characters from my label to bold?

I'm trying to make a Rectangle to show some information. Inside this Rectangle I have a lot of labels, and in this labels I want to show some texts in bold. For example: 'Name:' <- Bold, and after this not bold.
If this is not possible, how can I know the size in pixels of a label.text? If I have this information, I can create two label and set the position of the second to be: label2.position.X := label1.textWidth;
Thanks!
Using the standard label control your only option is to use two such controls, one with Font.Style including fsBold, the other not.
Place your first, bold label then as long as you leave/set the AutoSize property true, the Width property will tell you the width:
// Where:
//
// - boldLabel is a created, initialised and positioned
// label with bold text
//
// - normalLabel is a created and initialised label which
// has not yet been positioned (horizontally)
//
// - spacingPixels is the distance you wish to maintain
// between the two
normalLabel.Position.X := boldLabel.Position.X + boldLabel.Width + spacingPixels;
There are a number of 3rd party label controls, many of them free + open source (for VCL [see below]), which support varying degrees of markup in a label. There may be similar implementations for FMX.
For VCL projects you might want to check out the JediVCL library which includes a label supporting not just bold but other, albeit limited HTML markup. If this is of interest, the control you are looking for in that library is TJvHTLabel.
NB. For future ref: You don't specify whether your project is FMX or VCL but it appears from the use of the Position property that it is likely to be FMX. For issues involving controls, the framework in use can be a significant factor and should be mentioned to avoid eliciting answers that may not be relevant.

Implementing a 'tag panel' control in Delphi?

Please have a look at this screenshot
alt text http://www.maclife.com/files/u18/Yep3-big.jpg
I think these are the main features of such a 'tag panel':
1) Each tag on the panel is a standalone control and can be clicked
2) Auto line wrapping when there is not enough space to show the next tag in the current line.
3) Rounded corner rectangle border for each tag is a nice-to-have feature.
I want to implement the similar function in Delphi, Is there an existing control to do this? If not, what's the best way to implement such a control?
Thank you.
When you are on a recent Delphi version use a TFlowPanel and some appropriate controls for the tags. A simple TButton or a TLinkLabel should do for that.
Each clickable tag doesn't necessarily have to be its own control. It just has to be a region that you can detect being clicked.
Suppose you represent each area as a Windows region. You can figure out how wide each one should be based on its text with the TCanvas.TextExtent function. Then create a region with a function like CreateRectRgn. For rounded corners, try CreateRoundRectRgn instead. You can test for mouse events in each region with the PtInRegion function. You can paint borders around them with FrameRgn. The last obstacle is to draw them on the screen so they'll all fit. You're creating the regions and you know their widths, so assign tags to a row until you run out of space, and then start the next line.
There are two possible solutions to custom alignment in Delphi 7. You can make your own flowpanel by deriving from TCustomPanel and override the AlignControls( )-method, or you can set alignment to alCustom and handle the OnAlignPosition-event.
I guess I would have gone for the TCustomPanel-derivative option. TFlowPanel in form Delphi 2007 uses that option- I have to admit, though, that I have never tried either my self...

BiDi text in Delphi - How do you select text to edit by language like this pic?

I saw this picture and now wondering if/how you can do this in Delphi. The highlighted/selected text shows two forms of formatting, i.e. highlight color and hash lines.
http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/4121/easilyselecttextofonela.jpg
I've done something very similar recently in a bible application, also done in Delphi.
The user can select a single verse and single words of the selected verses. (But this feature is not released yet, so don't bother looking for it)
I used the web browser control from Microsoft and added my own kind of selection handling.
I've done the formatting by enclosing the relevant parts with span elements and changing their CSS style. When the selection gets removed, I also remove the enclosing elements.
The hard part was backing the "visual" selections with a selection data structure and handling all the selection events (clicking, shift-clicking, shift-ctrl-clicking, ...)
Embedding IE seems to be an easier way to do this as DR says, but you can also do this manually by drawing it all on a canvas, an easy way would be to create two bitmaps (one without a selection and another selected (could be as complicated as you like - dashed, colored, ... )), and you need to know the positions/rects of all your characters which would be somewhat difficult for long texts.
You basically show the unselected bitmap, and overlap the selected parts by portions of the second image.
You would also need to handle the selection manually by OnMouseDown, OnMouseMove, OnMouseUp...

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