[wx-dev] wxAUI hint windows

[Alex Bligh]

Ben,

> It's true-- it's not my favorite solution.  I feel that it is only
> slightly better than an XOR rectangle, and I feel that, because XOR
> rectangles are the way things have been in the past, it's the most
> sensible solution for now.   I've never liked XOR rectangles, and I
> would prefer something different as well.

The trouble with XOR rectangles is they leave dirt around.

> I have tried a number of solutions, all which didn't work out.  I've
> pretty thoroughly researched taking a snapshot of a window into an
> offscreen dc, but this only leads to problems.

I spent most of yesterday trying to get this to work, but it doesn't.
We have semi-transparent dragging working on XaraLX but that only
works because the dragged item is on the top. The fundamental reason
it won't work is because the hint rect is beneath the frame of the
dragged bar (and that isn't even rectangular).

> Maybe we'll go with the Venetian blinds scenario, and we'll try some
> different patterns (diagonal lines, hatch patterns, etc) to see what
> looks best.

Sadly the problem here is that it uses a wxRegion. A wxRegion's
size with horizontal lines is proportional to the height of the
window. With (say) diagonal lines or hatch patterns (which would
look far nicer) it's proportionate to the area of the window, as
it's scanline based. This tends to explode pretty quickly.

> Anybody have a better idea?

Indeed. Any better ideas very welcome.

Alex