C# Correct way to design/implement this UI? - c#

This is my first tryst with C#. The form that i have in mind consists
A textfield which will be supplied with the path of an executable.
A "Run" button which will call the executable(cosole app)
The executable console output should be displayed in the rich textbox.
Now when i click on a line in richtext box, i select and get the text in the line. This text maps to some other text info. I need to display this text info as a tooltip over the line.
More explanation:
The output of the exe is displayed in the text box as
Address1=Value
Address2=Value
Now when i click the line "Address1=Value", i map this text to find some info regarding what bits are set like
enable : 1
select : 0 ..etc
this info i need to display as tooltip over the line. Is such a thing possible? Is there better alternative to RTB/tooltip for this problem?
Thanks
Vivek

I would recommend using a ListBox for each string of data returned and then if you use a tooltip it makes alot more sense because you are hovering over a list item specifically not the whole text field.
Using the ListBox and items should make it alot easier to work with overall since it will be separating them into defined items instead of just appending lines to a text box.
Also I think you might have alot of work in store for you for trying to make the text box behave the way you want it to for it to treat each line differently dependent on the text of the line.
If you're using the textbox because later you want to be able to select all the output to copy and paste it I would have the textbox hidden by default and have a button that says like "Toggle Raw Output" that will show/hide the text field so users can get the text easily. While using the ListBox as the primary display for information.

What I understand from your question is that when you click on the line in the RTB, your code scans the text on that line, identifies the extra data associated with that line and then inserts it into the tooltip for the RTB.
Technically I believe that this is possible to do - although I am not 100% sure of the mechanics of inserting tooltip text. However as a user interface feature I would personally not do that as the tooltip text is displayed whenever the mouse pointer is anywhere over the RTB. Thus if a user clicks on line #1, (and sees the data associated from line #1) but hovers the mouse of line #3, they might think that the tooltip is associated with line #3.
You could alleviate my concerns with a strongly worded tooltip, but I feel that what you are doing is misusing the tooltip for something other than what it was intended to be used for. IMHO it may be that you are better off displaying your data with a tree control rather than with a RTB, as the tree control more naturally expresses the functionality that you desire (click on a node, expand it to see details etc).

Related

How to make a WinRT textbox with multicolored text?

I am working on an autocomplete search box in a Windows 8 app. The box needs to allow typing and then have text show up beyond the cursor, in a different color.
Our current approach is to layer one textbox on top of the other, but it seems to me like there could be a better way.
On iOS/Mac I could do this with an NSAttributedString, but I don't know if an equivalent like that exists on WinRT/.NET.
(For those that don't know, an NSAttributedString is a string that allows you to set attributes like color or size on different sections)
I usually approach that by auto-completing the text and marking the completed part as selected, so when the user continues typing - the selected part gets replaced by typed in characters. I doubt this will give you the specific visual effect - with no highlight, but changed text color, but I'd claim this is the only feasible and reliable solution.

Make Current Line in Read-Only Rich Text Box Editable

I'm attempting to make a command prompt clone in C# so I can get familiar with using IO. However, instead of just one text body, I created two text boxes (one for the command and another for the "parameters") and a rich text box to view the result of the commands. It may sound confusing and the title may be misleading, but I didn't know how else to word it. Anyway, my question is- how do you make only the current line editable and the rest read-only? And how would I be able to combine the commands and parameters in the two text boxes so I wouldn't need two separate text boxes? I have spent 6 days trying to figure out the logic to implement this but I got nothing.
Here's a picture of the form:
And here's what I want to make it similar to:
I'm not sure if you can do that, but if it was me, and this was a "get it done now" situation (and this is just off the top of my head), I would create a user control to contain the "screen". This user control would have the RTF or list box as the top, and a textbox flush under it.
I would remove the borders and wrap both these controls in a panel that has borders. This would simulate a single control.
The textbox would check for the enter key in one of the key-press events, and the control itself would have events that could be handled by the parent control.
This may be hacky, but it would probably be what I'd do in a last minute situation.
Oh as far as the command and parameter stuff, if you read the textbox as a single value, then split the string into an List or array, you could then define a switch or some other conditional code that would know what to do with parameters (index 1+), based on the value of the first item/index.

How create console usercontrol

I need to create a usercontrol "Console".
I was faced with such problems:
If I use a TextBox, how do I prevent removal of an already recruited command?
If I use a ListBox/ListView, how do I select all the text?
Please tell me what to do from the Console.
The console should be able to complete the command (by pressing Tab), allow selection of text, and prevent the entry of already established commands.
Here is a start:
http://ansiconsole.codeplex.com
I used a bitmap, and render text to it. This way I have complete control over the input and output.
If you need some "simple" console application: insert commands, I presume in some DSL language, view result of execution, and other stuff, you can try to programm on RichTextBox base, which can give also some styling to content.
Reuse some already ready (complicated) editors, like for example:
Scintilla
And work to limit possibilities of that kind of component to fit your needs.
Regards.
You could consider deriving from the RichTextBox control, as Tigran suggested.
Depending on what you want the user to be able to do, you will have to put some logic in there that restricts what they can and cannot select. (For example, if you don't want them selecting previous commands). You can obtain the text that they've selected via the SelectedText property. And then put in your custom logic, for example, Ctrl+C will copy the text into a variable.
You may consider having a MaximumSize property so that old commands will be erased after the console becomes so large.
Winforms already has a type of Autocomplete that you could use, or simply keep a list of keywords and when the user presses TAB, fill in the first word in your list that starts with what they've already typed.
To obtain the command itself, and not any of the previous text that was entered, you will probably want to take everything from the LAST newline to the end.
The code may look something like this:
String allText = this.richTextBox1.Text; // All the text from the rich text box
Int32 lastIndex = allText.LastIndexOf("\n"); // Find the position of the last newline
String command = allText.Substring(lastIndex + 1); // Substring starting at the character after the last newline
And of course when the user presses RETURN, the command will be sent to your code and executed.

Wrapping text in C# dialog box

I've got a dialog box that pops up with a dynamic list of numbers, and I'd like to get the box to wrap the text because at the moment it displayed up to screen width and then cuts the rest off.
I know I can use \n to declare a new line, but the list is dynamic - it could be one item, it could be 20.
Is there any way to tell the dialog box to wrap text?
Edit: clarification + example code
I'm not using MessageBox.Show() - our code uses its own defined message box class, but the guts of it calls System.Windows.Forms.Form.ShowDialog(parent). Maybe this isn't as well-behaved (i.e., doesn't wrap) as MessageBox.Show()?
Create your own simple form and add a label. Do the wrapping there... You cannot do that much things with Dialog boxes.
In this way you have much more flexibility to show your information to the user.
Are you using the System.Windows.Forms.TextBox? It has a property WordWrap that you can set to true
No other way for a standart MessageBox. Only creating your own form.
You could programmatically format the text by restricting each line to a specific number of words then inserting a \n or Envoronment.NewLine

Suggestions on interface design

I need to design a kind of templating system for text: the user enters a piece of text and types some special markers like (**) inside the text that tell the software that the text (**) will need to be changed to some other content.
What I would like to do, is displaying the user the list of fields that need to be changes so that the user can insert the proper data.
I was thinking about doing that displaying all the text (in a text box) and substitute the (**) chars with a textbox so that the user can enter the text. Is there a way to do that? What do you think of this approach? Do you have better ideas? The point is that I would like to show the user the context in which the substitution takes place.
Thanks.
Why not scan the text and generate textboxes on the fly?
Your code would display the templated text, scan it and then, per templated variable it finds, generate 1 textbox. You list those textboxes, one per line, below the text and as soon as the contents in one textbox change, you update the text so that the user sees what this will look like.

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