[Mono-list] Windows forms.

[A Rafael D Teixeira]

>A question for everyone:
>
>How big is the problem with custom controls?
>While the standard controls might be possible, I don't know how easy it is
>to get custom controls to work. You can for example build round buttons or
>outlook-bars or a calender control with .NET. Has anyone experience how 
>this
>is done and if it could be wrapped to gtk+?

I´ve constructed some, here are my thoughts on it:

There are 3 types of custom controls:

1 - The agreggated control. They are kind of a mini win.form that can be 
embed into others. This is easy for mono because it builds upon existing 
controls and win.forms glueing.

2 - The owner-drawn control. These use base controls specialized events to 
render differently, part of themselves (I have one "bitmap as a thumbnail" 
selector, done using a mere listbox, in one of my work project). Mono won't 
have big problems here, because you receive a System.Drawing.Graphics to 
draw things in each event.

3 - The totally-new-widget control. These are almost guaranteed to use API 
and native-code libs, or at least de WndProc hook, because they want a 
totally diferent look or more events, and want it with good performance. 
Third Party controls fall mostly in this category and unfortunately are 
widely used. Here our only hope is to have people developing open source 
mono-and-windows-compatible alternatives, that may be accepted by most (Win) 
developers.

Most custom controls fall in the first 2 categories, and represent little 
trouble in the road to mono winforms. But as SharpDevelop use of Magic show, 
many good (and sorely needed) controls have heavy dependences on Win32 APIs.

Rafael Teixeira
Brazilian Polymath

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