Layout does not resize proportionately

Docking/MDI for Windows Forms Forum

Posted 18 years ago by Actipro User
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Numerous users of my application have complained about some layout issues in the docking control:

1) Layouts do not re-create proportionately on screens of different sizes. As an example, assume a checkerboard layout of 3x3 squares that is saved on a large monitor and re-opened on a smaller screen. The layout manager appears to size as many squares to the same size as they were saved, and then sizes the remaining squares to whatever is left. This results in a poor layout. The layout should proportionately resize all windows so that the effect is exactly like a zoom in/out.

2) In addition, the layouts appear to be stateful - if after first loading a layout as described above, the window is made smaller & then increased to full screen, it adjusts to a better layout that is more proportionate. In other cases also I have observed that the layout is stateful - it depends on how you got to the window size. This shouldn't be the case.

3) A third example: I have a layout that is split, first vertically, then horizontally, into 4 tool windows. I adjust the horizontal and vertical splitters to the middle of the screen & save the layout. When I reopen the application, I find that vertical splitter in the top half of the screen is displaced considerably with respect to the one in the bottom half of the screen, again violating the proportionality expectation.

Are these known issues? When will a fix be available?
Thanks

Comments (8)

Posted 18 years ago by Actipro Software Support - Cleveland, OH, USA
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Could you please build a small sample project that shows each of these items on separate Forms and email that over with steps on how to reproduce? Then we can understand better what you are looking for and can debug if necessary. Thanks much!


Actipro Software Support

Posted 18 years ago by Actipro User
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I've tried to be as detailed as possible in my description. I really cannot spend two or three days trying to build a project that shows each of these - you should be able to build one yourself from this description. If you have questions about my original post I'd be happy to help. These issues are basic and should be easy for you to both reproduce and understand. Thanks!
Posted 18 years ago by Actipro Software Support - Cleveland, OH, USA
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I assume you are talking about tool window inner fill mode here? If so, the problem is that the centermost tool window expands/collapses to fill the resized contents while the outer tool windows stay their set width/height. I believe that is what behind your request, am I correct? If so, yes that will be added to the TODO list to see what we can do so that when in inner fill mode, everything does proportional scaling instead of how it is now.


Actipro Software Support

Posted 18 years ago by Actipro User
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Yes, this is in inner fill mode. Please treat this as a very important request - I hear complaints about this almost daily, since the users of my application share documents (which contain saved layouts), and use different screen resolutions. It would be great to give them a good layout experience.
Posted 18 years ago by Actipro User
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Hello: Could you please let me know when this will be fixed? It would be most helpful for this to be predictable - "future release" does not give me (or the users of my application) much to go on.
Thanks!
Posted 18 years ago by Actipro Software Support - Cleveland, OH, USA
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I'm sorry but we can't give you a specific date. We've been getting hammered with support requests the past week and a half and haven't been able to do much new development at all. We did spend several hours looking into some options for handling your request the other day.

The one option examined was after a layout occurred on the host container control, it would adjust the dock controls proportionately. However after writing test code, we found that because the controls are all using their Dock property on the host container control and then being adjusted again, it was causing a lot of slowdown and flicker. We can continue to see if that can be improved but it wasn't looking good. That would have been the fast/easy solution.

The hard solution is when you switch to tool window inner fill mode to put a big DockContainer in the host container control and have everything dock within that. The logic for that is much different than all the code that is already implemented for the host container control docking. It would have to be made to act more like a floating tool window that has multiple tool windows in it. This will probably cause massive code updates to docking logic, saved layout logic, and would be very time consuming to implement. That's why we're trying to evaluate alternative methods before looking more into that.

Hopefully we'll have some more time to look into it in the next couple days again.


Actipro Software Support

Posted 17 years ago by Actipro User
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Hello, its been several months since the last reply & I really hope you've been able to solve this.
Could you please provide status?
Thanks!
Posted 17 years ago by Actipro Software Support - Cleveland, OH, USA
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Sorry but there isn't any news on this request.


Actipro Software Support

The latest build of this product (v24.1.0) was released 2 months ago, which was after the last post in this thread.

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