Question

THis is a followup to my previous question ‘Font-dependent control positioning.‘ It’s an attempt to solve the real problem behind that question, perhaps in ways different than the one I was asking about.

Example of the problem statement: I want a checkbox that says ‘Adjust prices by <X> <Y> after loading,’ where <X> is a number—adjustable with a NumericUpDown—and <Y> is either ‘percent’ or ‘dollars,’ with the choices being made by a ComboBox. This will be on a single line.

The complication: I want to be able to change my fonts for all these controls (basically setting them to System.Drawing.Fonts.MessageBoxFont, which is Tahoma 8 pt on Windows XP/etc. and Segoe UI 9 pt on Vista), without messing up my layout, which with my current Position-property–setting paradigm does not work.

More generally, I’d like the controls to be dynamically laid out in a font-independent way, so that the <X> NumericUpDown fits snugly into the space between ‘by ‘ and the <Y> ComboBox, and similarly the <X> ComboBox fits in with respect to the <X> CheckBox and the string ‘ after loading’ to its right.

The part everyone seems to miss: This is all nested within a CheckBox. So, ideally, clicking on the words ‘after loading’ should check/uncheck the checkbox, and draw that little highlight rectangle around ‘Adjust prices by          after loading.’ So just slapping an extra Label on the end doesn’t work, because then it doesn’t toggle the CheckBox; similarly, trying to band-aid things by hooking up such a Label‘s Click event won’t produce the desired highlight-rectangle.

Solutions? At this point I’m thinking either:

1. Rethink the problem, somehow, maybe with an ugly solution like two separate lines of text: ‘Adjust found prices after loading’ (CheckBox), ‘Adjustment amount:’ (NumericUpDown and ComboBox). This is really bad because my options box is absolutely full of options of this type (i.e. the type in the example), so it would at least double in vertical size.

2. Some sort of custom control? SplittableCheckBox?

3. Some kind of magic with a TableLayout control? (Pretty sure this fails at ‘the part everyone seems to miss.)

4. Give up and either go back to MS Sans Serif, or use Tahoma uniformly, or package Segoe UI with my application, thus disrespecting the system default fonts.

5. (New, via edit) Switch to WPF, if someone can convince me that it supports this scenario exactly.

Answer 1

If you have several options that follow this layout, why not create a user control? The user control will contain the CheckBox, a NumericUpDown, a ComboBox and a label for the ‘after loading’. You can override OnFontChanged to adjust the location of the controls based on the rendering of the text with the given font. Add an EventHandler to the Label to check/uncheck the CheckBox.

As for having the focus rectangle surround all of the controls, you should be able to give the user control focus when one of its inner controls is clicked.