[Gambas-user] Proposal: IDE / custom control components

[adamnt42 at ...626...]

@Benoît & Fabien

I have been hacking around in our local IDE code over the last month attempting to create a way to
make a popup control property editor (like say, the list editor for a combobox, but please bear with me)
entirely contained within the custom control component itself. A more illustrative example would be Fabien's
Angle property for a Report.?? control. 

My theory is this:
It would be (generally) better to be able to define the property editor within the actual component itself, rather 
than having to change the IDE code each time a new popup property editor is needed.  The IDE would then
have to invoke the required editor from within that component.

My actual situation is this:
I have a (yes, the dreaded) virtual menu control component "vappoptions" that reduces the management of the user's application configuration down to a reasonably simple IDE virtual control. That is, we drag a "vappoptions" control from the toolbox onto a form and it provides the entire "Tools|Options" popup with no further coding needed. However, it has an IDE exposed property "Options" that needs a specialised property value editor (which exists inside the custom control component itself). That popup editor (to cut a long story short) edits via a nice gui a ".options" file in the project. So I need, for our purposes a way to invoke that popup editor from within the IDE form designer.

Gawd. I hope that was understandable?

Anyway, our local version of the IDE has a modified FProperty.class (and some other things) that makes this all possible... sort of.... but it works!
It's essentially a "hack" at the moment.  

So here's the guts of this:
1) It is possible to have a custom property editor, encased entirely within a custom component.
2) The hack is   v e r y  undeveloped.
3) I think this has great possibilities for "lightening the load" on the IDE for custom controls.
4) I need some help !!!  

So if any of the above is sensical and/or of interest, let me know.

best regards
bruce
-- 
B Bruen <adamnt42 at ...3379... (sort of)>