MDI issue - second attempt

Hi again...

as there was still no reply to my previous post I get teh impression I am attempting someting difficult ;-).

So I here again outline what I am planning to implement - Anyone who ever used Microsodt Access, MS SQL-Server or Visual InterDEV database tools knows this kind of diagram - it shows the tables of arelational db as separate windows and draws the relationships between them on the view they are contained in. Using Shells in a container view I was in minutes (literally) able to put up 80% of this functionality - the only glitches I noticed so far:
1. The wrong repaints when moving a window that is visually overlapped by another one
2. Table column headers paint "through" covering windows.

I tried to solve this with active repaints but found no way to repaint the Shell borders, only contents (refreshContents). Is there such a method?

I digged up old discussions about MDI in DSDN and also read something in the MSDN-Libs. What disturbed me there was a setence saying that all MDI childs would ALWAYS show close, minimize and maximize controls. Well, none of the diagram editors show these. This makes me suspect that the implementation of these diagram editors do not use MDI.

My hope is thet there is someone around who can tell me in which direction I should continue: solving remaining repaint issues with minor fixes in event handling, going to try to implement MDI support myself (uh oh) or give up on the idea entirely and attempt to set up an own graphics framework that simulates windows with contained tables (sounds even worse to me given that 80% of stuf is already looking so good), or use Visual Basic (don't take the latter too serious ;-).


Ciao

....Jochen
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: MDI issue - second attempt
    ... So I here again outline what I am planning to implement - Anyone who ever used Microsodt Access, MS SQL-Server or Visual InterDEV database tools knows this kind of diagram - it shows the tables of arelational db as separate windows and draws the relationships between them on the view they are contained in. ... I tried to solve this with active repaints but found no way to repaint the Shell borders, ... What disturbed me there was a setence saying that all MDI childs would ALWAYS show close, ... When faced with this problem, I have used multiple shells, one of which is a "project view" that lists the other shells and will activate or close them. ...
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