Vista - Drawing scales and aligned objects

I have been trying to create a graphical control for WinFX that will have a
calibrated backdrop of time of day across the top and a list of data driven
objects that align their visual component at the appropriate start and end
time on the back drop..

So far I’ve taken 2 shots at this.. The First one uses a set of
IMultiConvert objects and calculates the height and width of things given a
top level object that is bound in for total width and a percentage factor for
how much of that goes into this or that object . It works but the XAML gets
pretty icky and, in the end, the rounding error makes stuff be a bit off of
alignment as you stretch and shrink the window the control is in.

The second approach is somewhat cleaner... I draw the control as a grid
of 96 columns ( 15 minute intervals for a day ) and then draw stuff in that
grid assigning Gid.Column and Grid.ColumnSpan to everything. That works fine
until I try to draw in the data… The ListBox will take positioning from the
Grid but none of the DataTemplates displaying the data care what Grid Column
I set.

So… How to proceed is my question… I figure there is an option 3 somewhere
that makes this all trivial and I’m just too old school to see it. Perhaps
number 2 can be made to work but I’ve beat on styles and XAML for a day now
and can’t seem to find it.

Can someone help me???

Regarding the second approach - if you want to position DataTemplates in a
container you should read this:
http://www.i-constructions.com/myblo...tabinding.html

--
Valentin Iliescu [MVP - Client Application Development]


"Chris Cook" wrote:

> I have been trying to create a graphical control for WinFX that will have a
> calibrated backdrop of time of day across the top and a list of data driven
> objects that align their visual component at the appropriate start and end
> time on the back drop..
>
> So far I’ve taken 2 shots at this.. The First one uses a set of
> IMultiConvert objects and calculates the height and width of things given a
> top level object that is bound in for total width and a percentage factor for
> how much of that goes into this or that object . It works but the XAML gets
> pretty icky and, in the end, the rounding error makes stuff be a bit off of
> alignment as you stretch and shrink the window the control is in.
>
> The second approach is somewhat cleaner... I draw the control as a grid
> of 96 columns ( 15 minute intervals for a day ) and then draw stuff in that
> grid assigning Gid.Column and Grid.ColumnSpan to everything. That works fine
> until I try to draw in the data… The ListBox will take positioning from the
> Grid but none of the DataTemplates displaying the data care what Grid Column
> I set.
>
> So… How to proceed is my question… I figure there is an option 3 somewhere
> that makes this all trivial and I’m just too old school to see it. Perhaps
> number 2 can be made to work but I’ve beat on styles and XAML for a day now
> and can’t seem to find it.
>
> Can someone help me???
>