Jackson Harpers Web Log

After a frustrating day of attempting to fix some bugs in MWF I decided to take the night off and hack up something that windows forms is missing. I (along with other many other people) have always wanted a gtk like layout system in windows forms. In fact most criticism of the winforms api is because of the lack of a nice automatic layout system. Below is a screenshot of a little demo app using my new packing controls. I will most likely release the code for this after the weekend, I want to write some more tests, and clean up the build though first.

A demo created with Wink is here

Code from my sample app:

using System;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using Mono.Winforms.Packing;


public class BasicPacking : Form {

	public BasicPacking ()
	{
		VBox vbox = new VBox ();

		vbox.PackStart (Row (), false, true, 0);
		vbox.PackStart (CenterRow (), true, true, 0);
		vbox.PackStart (Row (), false, true, 0);

		vbox.Dock = DockStyle.Fill;
		Controls.Add (vbox);
	}

	private HBox Row ()
	{
		HBox hbox = new HBox ();

		Button button = new Button ();
		button.Text = "one";
		hbox.PackStart (button, false, true, 0);

		button = new Button ();
		button.Text = "two";
		hbox.Controls.Add (button);      // Can add Items in a winforms-ish way also

		button = new Button ();
		button.Text = "three";
		hbox.PackStart (button, false, true, 0);

		return hbox;
	}

	private HBox CenterRow ()
	{
		HBox hbox = new HBox ();

		Button button = new Button ();
		button.Text = "one";
		hbox.PackStart (button, false, true, 0);

		PictureBox pb = new PictureBox ();
		pb.Image = Image.FromFile ("roxy-sandy-scaled.jpg");
		pb.SizeMode = PictureBoxSizeMode.StretchImage;
		hbox.PackStart (pb, true, true, 0);

		button = new Button ();
		button.Text = "three";
		hbox.PackStart (button, false, true, 0);

		return hbox;
	}

	public static void Main ()
	{
		Application.Run (new BasicPacking ());
	}
}

NOTE: Can't you just see a postcard with that picture and "Welcome to sunny sandy California" and maybe a little paw print at the end? Man, if the programming thing doesn't work out I think I could have an illustrious postcard making career.