Inherited Forms using the dwManager...

DockableWindow/TabStripPanel for Windows Forms Forum

Posted 20 years ago by Mark - Greenville, SC
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I am new to the DockableWindow control and dwManager. I set up a form, and was able to successfully get some dockwindows set up like I desired. I then tried to inherit from this base for, and when I try to open this inherited form in visual studio 2003 designer, I get an exception thrown, saying 'The dockable tool window data file was not found'. I tried putting the Layout File all over the place, but doesn't seem to help. I can run the application, no problem, but can't design it. At one point, when I just added a PLAIN dwManager (without layout defined), I was able to see the form in the designer. Any thoughts, or do we know if this is a known issue.

Thanks,

Mark

Comments (4)

Posted 20 years ago by Actipro Software Support - Cleveland, OH, USA
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Mark,

I just emailed you on the issue. You must be passing an invalid filename to the DWManager.LoadLayoutFromFile method somehow since that's the only thing that creates that exception and none of our internal code calls that method.


Actipro Software Support

Posted 20 years ago by Mark - Greenville, SC
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Let me ask this question. Based on what you said, I changed my code so that I had a HARDCODED path to the Layout file (which is obviously not what I want). However, when I did that, it appears to work well. My question is, I have the LoadLayoutFromFile() method call in the constructor of the Base form. Should this not be part of the constructor, as I feel that is why it is failing (since the path is calculated at runtime).

Thanks for the help. At least I got past the initial problem.

Mark
Posted 20 years ago by Actipro Software Support - Cleveland, OH, USA
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Yes the invalid path is definitely the problem here. You need to either make sure the path is correct even at design-time or you need to move that layout loading code to another initialization method that the constructor doesn't call.


Actipro Software Support

Posted 20 years ago by Mark - Greenville, SC
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I think I am probably going with the second option. I probably want that out of the constructor anyway. As soon as I 'hardcoded' that path, it worked fine. Thank you very much for your help and QUICK response. So far I love the controls!

Mark
The latest build of this product (v2.0.0208) was released 19 years ago, which was after the last post in this thread.