Can MDI layout do these things?

Hi Greg,

Thanks for evaluating our controls.  Based on your description and screenshot, I do think the functionality you referred to as the outer dock site would be an excellent use of our Docking/MDI product.  The properties and tool controls are perfect for embedding in our tool windows, and the tabbed MDI seems to be a great container for your canvases.

That being said, I'm not sure if standard MDI would work well for the plots on your canvas.  Standard MDI windows have Window-like chrome around them that allows them to move/resize, whereas you wouldn't want the chrome in your UI.  I would probably suggest that instead of having a nested inner dock site, you have a custom control for your canvas with a ScrollViewer around a fixed-size Canvas.  Allow it to use a WPF Canvas and you'd need to do some mouse tracking to know when the mouse is over a child plot control.  Then wire up some code that captures the mouse when the left button is down and allow the plot to be dragged around within the canvas by setting its Canvas.Left/Top attached properties during the drag.  Add some bounds tests to prevent the plots from going out of the Canvas size and you should be set.

As for Catel, we haven't used that framework.  But our MVVM design for Docking/MDI even works with pure MVVM designs (no third-party frameworks) so it should be compatible with any kind of MVVM-oriented framework.