control arrays

[ou_soonerfan]

Will .net support control arrays?

[Karl E. Peterson]

"ou_soonerfan" <ou_soonerfan@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3a8dd1da$1@news.devx.com...
>
> Will .net support control arrays?

No.
--
http://www.mvps.org/vb/rants/vfred.htm

[John Proffitt]

"Karl E. Peterson" <karl@mvps.org> wrote:
>"ou_soonerfan" <ou_soonerfan@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:3a8dd1da$1@news.devx.com...
>>
>> Will .net support control arrays?
>
>No.
>--
>http://www.mvps.org/vb/rants/vfred.htm
>
>
Microsoft's response at

http://www.mvps.org/vb/rants/VBTransition.doc

addresses the issue, but it's hard to tell from the brief treatment what
the right answer to your question is. Windows Forms won't support control
arrays directly, but they may afford similar functionality. The basic .NET
package will apparently be augmented by some kind of compatibility class(es)
intended to reproduce VB6 behavior.

John

[David Bayley]

> The basic .NET
> package will apparently be augmented by some kind of compatibility
class(es)
> intended to reproduce VB6 behavior.

In VB, there is a major distinction (albeit confusing) between a "control
array" and an "array of controls". Any compatibility B# classes that the
upgrade wizard introduces, are merely an augmented "array of controls". So
for all intents and purposes... "control arrays" are gone.

--
David.

[Bill McCarthy]

"David Bayley" <dbayley@aebacus.com> wrote in message
news:3a8df819@news.devx.com...
>
> In VB, there is a major distinction (albeit confusing) between a "control
> array" and an "array of controls". Any compatibility B# classes that the
> upgrade wizard introduces, are merely an augmented "array of controls". So
> for all intents and purposes... "control arrays" are gone.
>

I'd have to disagree to some extent with that. The
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Compatibility.dll has control array controls. They work
very similar to control arrays in VB6, as in they raise events for the
controls added to it. The major differences and problems with these control
from the ms.vb.compatibility dll at present are as follows. (but note, this is
beta 1. That doesn't mean things will change, but they might <g>)

- you need to add a control array component to the form for each control
array you want, and they must be of the specific type.
- you cannot cut and paste a control to create an array, instead you need to
add them in code to the control array.
- there seems to be a problem with the events fired for these compatibility
control arrays. At present they don't appear in the drop down combos. Also
they have signatures like those for a standard event rather than one for a
control array. That is, the events are missing the Index parameter. So in the
events you need to write
Dim Index as Int16 = MyControlArray.getIndex(eventSender)

- Also, you cannot refer to a control in a control array by name(Index) as you
can in VB6, although you can change that by declaring an array.

So, although control arrays are there in some manner, there are limitations to
them, and they require more coding if you want to use them.

[Gary Nelson]

> So, although control arrays are there in some manner, there are
limitations to
> them, and they require more coding if you want to use them.


Which translates to hours and hours of work to upgrade our present programs.

Gary

[Tim Jones]

Bill McCarthy wrote:
>
> I'd have to disagree to some extent with that. The
> Microsoft.VisualBasic.Compatibility.dll has control array controls.

And what's the betting on when they decide to pull that compat from
vb.net? Surely, it's only a matter of how long.

--
Regards, Tim Jones, http://www.aquatee.com

[Bill McCarthy]

"Tim Jones" <tim@aquatee.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.14fbb87c449ab16a989728@news.devx.com...
> Bill McCarthy wrote:
> >
> > I'd have to disagree to some extent with that. The
> > Microsoft.VisualBasic.Compatibility.dll has control array controls.
>
> And what's the betting on when they decide to pull that compat from
> vb.net? Surely, it's only a matter of how long.
>

I seriously doubt that. In anycase you could uses a decompiler to get the
source code and build your own. Jay's C# source code generator actually
already decompiles most of the Microsoft.VisualBasic.Compatibility.dll

But anyway, I do doubt MS would remove that dll at this stage. That doesn't
mean that they will necessarily update either as the .net platform gets
modified, but one would *hope* they would.

[David Bayley]

> I'd have to disagree to some extent with that. The
> Microsoft.VisualBasic.Compatibility.dll has control array controls.

Yeah, for a small subset of the controls in the CLR frameworks. Maybe the
upgrade blizzard will auto-generate XControlArray classes for other controls
by release. Regardless, I'd still describe them as augmented arrays of
controls (or more accurately collections). They're in the compatibility
library (read: TODO library), rather than the core VB library, for a reason
<g>.

--
David.

[Mike Mitchell]

On Mon, 19 Feb 2001 09:41:07 -0000, "Gary Nelson" <gn@contanet.es>
wrote:

>> So, although control arrays are there in some manner, there are
>limitations to
>> them, and they require more coding if you want to use them.
>
>
>Which translates to hours and hours of work to upgrade our present programs.

Hours and hours?!! You should be so lucky! We'd have weeks and weeks
of work. Multiply those weeks by 6 million programmers and you begin
to realise the enormity of the changes being thrust upon an as yet
unsuspecting world.

MM

[Mike Mitchell]

On Mon, 19 Feb 2001 23:45:09 +1100, "Bill McCarthy"
<Bill_McC@iprimus.com.au> wrote:

>But anyway, I do doubt MS would remove that dll at this stage. That doesn't
>mean that they will necessarily update either as the .net platform gets
>modified, but one would *hope* they would.

One might have hoped that no company with a product enjoying the
popularity of classic Visual Basic would be so crass as to chuck it in
the bin and bring out a new, incompatible version. But one did!

MM

[Gary Nelson]

Mike,

> Hours and hours?!! You should be so lucky! We'd have weeks and weeks
> of work. Multiply those weeks by 6 million programmers and you begin
> to realise the enormity of the changes being thrust upon an as yet
> unsuspecting world.

When I said hours and hours I was thinking of hundreds (perhaps thousands).
Is there any place we can go to complain?

Gary

[Mike Mitchell]

On Tue, 20 Feb 2001 17:11:30 -0000, "Gary Nelson" <gn@contanet.es>
wrote:

>When I said hours and hours I was thinking of hundreds (perhaps thousands).
>Is there any place we can go to complain?

No, Gary, you can't do that! Complain? But why would you need to?
Microsoft are extolling VB.NET as the replacement for VB6, ergo it's
got to be the greatest thing ever. Not.

(Sorry, that should have read VB.NOT!)

MM

[Karl E. Peterson]

Hi Gary --

> > Hours and hours?!! You should be so lucky! We'd have weeks and weeks
> > of work. Multiply those weeks by 6 million programmers and you begin
> > to realise the enormity of the changes being thrust upon an as yet
> > unsuspecting world.
>
> When I said hours and hours I was thinking of hundreds (perhaps thousands).
> Is there any place we can go to complain?

Dave Mendlin tells me he has "nearly 500" emails paralleling the Russell Jones
editorial, and apparently that's sufficient to ignore the flipside. I'd start there.

http://news.devx.com/cgi-bin/dnewswe....vb7&item=9388

Then again, maybe you want to go higher? BillG started the company with BASIC. He
must care, right?

Later... Karl
--
http://www.mvps.org/vb

[Gary Nelson]

Karl,

You know what peeves me is that they are taking out the simple things. I
mean, how much code does it take to create an LSET? And I see a lot of
people knocking GOSUB, but I’ve been programming since basica and I find
GOSUB very useful for little repetitious routines for which I don’t want to
create a SUB. Of course I can make a program without GOSUBs, but I just
checked one of my programs and it has 709 GOSUBs! How long will it take me
to get all of that code straight?

Anyway, is there any place where we can place our complaints?

Gary