Question

I have to enable all the text in a winforms application to be replaced; it is an old application and is in “maintenance”. The application was written in .NET v1.1 and later bits of it in .NET v2 therefore it does not use any layout controls.

The problem I have is that I need to make the UI cope when a string is longer then the default string. However I don’t wish to make lots of changes to the code due to the risk.

In the past I have found that simple changes like adding a panel to a form and dragging the current controls on to it have lost event hook-up etc. Due to the way the WinForms designer moves the code about, it is very hard to use DIFF to spot this sort of problem. So wish to avoid any changes to the control tree if possible.

So I am looking for some sort of layout manager that I can just add to a form without having to change the rest of the code (or control tree) – any ideals?

Any other options I should be looking at?

(The people that are replacing the strings do not have the skill set to rearrange the controls themselves; it would also be a maintenance nightmare as label may need to have different values for each customer)

(Answers that say, “If I was you I would not start from here are not useful”)

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Does anyone know of a layout manager that is external to the control tree? E.g I can point it at a form and it will take over the layout of the controls, without having to make all the controls children of the layout manager.

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see also this thread on the msdn Forums.

Answer 1

I don’t have much experience with layout managers, and I’m not really a UI designer, so I am hesitant about replying, but seeing that no-one else seems to be, I chip in with my thoughts.

If your only problem is that you don’t trust the designer to do the cut and paste (ie you trust it to do the re-sizing), then you can do that part manually.

What I have done in the past (not because I don’t trust the designer, but because I find it is sometimes easier to do it this way,) is :

(Assuming C# and adding a new panel to an existing form)

1) Make sure I have a backup (usually in source control)

2) Add the panel to the form (usually with the designer)

3) Close the designer and open the code (xxx.cs or xxx.designer.cs) and find where it adds all the top level controls to the form and move all of them (apart from the panel) to add them to the panel.

Ie you start with some like (hopefully with more meaningful names)

this.form1.Controls.Add(this.label1);
this.form1.Controls.Add(this.textBox1);
etc.
this.form1.Controls.Add(this.panel1);

and end up with

this.panel1.Controls.Add(this.label1);
this.panel1.Controls.Add(this.textBox1);
etc 

this.form1.Controls.Add(this.panel1);

Newer forms may use the syntax something like
this.form1.Controls.AddRange(new System.Windows.Forms.Control[] {
this.label1,
this.TextBox1,
etc
this.panel1});

but the principal is the same.

4) Do another backup. (This is where I wished I had a source control package that allowed me to do a temporary/private/personal backup without make it visible to other people.)

5) Open the form in the designer and check that all the controls are there.

6) Start amending the layout as needed.

Alternatively, I haven’t tried it, but I would be very surprised if you could not configure Beyond Compare (see http://www.scootersoftware.com) to just compare event hook up lines (ie those containing a += characters) and that should make it a lot easier to spot that if any have been lost.