Tom Mueller

Thank you for sharing your experience with us. How did you replace TMainMenu, TPopupMenu, and TToolBar controls? Especially the MainMenu and PopupMenus, as they are widely used in our applications.

My little tests with TcxImageList and SVG images shows the lack of scaling on a HighDPI monitor (here scaled to 225%). Even TcxListView does not scale correctly compared to Delphi TVirtualImageList. Thank you for the skinning tip. Until now we tried to avoid skinning or styling our applications - but I'll give it a try.

Yes, unfortunately. cxImageList would be the ideal solution if all controls (not just DevExpress) were supported.

This essentially means that no ImageList can be used for a centralized TActionList. Instead, a TVirtualImageList must be created on each form and associated with the control. This is a significant limitation of the TImageCollection/TVirtualImageList concept. I wonder how DevExpress handles this, as the scaling works even when the cxImageList is placed on a DataModule. Thanks Uwe for pointing me to your blog. The article is very well-written and could help me with implementing centralized image management.

Thank you for your tip. I tested the DevExpress TcxImageList, and it works fine with DevExpress controls. However, it does not support certain Delphi controls, such as TMainMenu, TPopupMenu, TToolBar, TTreeView, TListView and maybe more, which are essential controls for me.

A common scenario in our applications involves using a centralized TActionList connected to a TVirtualImageList on a data module. The actions in the list are linked to controls on different forms (UI). However, when moving a form to a monitor with a different DPI, the action images do not scale properly. This occurs because the TVirtualImageList is not located on the moved form. Given that we have several centralized TActionLists in our applications, moving or duplicating them to different forms solely for image scaling doesn’t seem like an ideal solution. How should centralized TActionLists be handled in HighDPI-supported applications?

That leads to the same result: reducing the size of the sub-control, witch is not an option. I could live with it, if the size of the sub-control is reduced only in multi-selection mode. But how to figure out if more than one control is selected in the IDE?

Thanks for your effort but you can see the partial markers only because the panel has a border of 1 pixel (due to BevelOuter=bvRaise). Set BevelOuter=bvNone the markers are hidden completely again.

Thank you for your response. I noticed that you reduce the size of the sub-control to display the markers correctly. This works but unfortunately, this approach prevents the sub-control from being displayed at its desired size. In my case, the sub-control can be of type TEdit, TCheckBox, TComboBox, TDateTime or TMemo, and it is essential that they maintain their correct size at design time. By reducing the sub-control size, a correct form layout is not possible, and it would look like: Or, is there a way to reduce the size of the sub-component only when more than one control is selected?

To handle this, I could register my own IOTANotifier with a IOTAWizard to get notified when the control is selected, and then draw the markers manually. I found some notifiers for the code editor like TNTACodeEditorNotifier but could not find a proper notifier for the form designer. If anyone has undertaken a similar task, your assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Hallo all I have a control (TWinControl) that contains an other control (TPanel) and registered it in a package (see demo code in the attachment), First Problem: When selecting the control in the IDE, the selection markers are only partially visible. Second Problem: When selecting more than one control, no selection markers are visible at all. Is this a known problem and are there any solutions for it? Thanks Tom TestSelectMarker.7z

Yes, that's something Embarcadero can't change. But it seems that if the menu is connected to an ImageList Embarcadero uses its own draw method. There are no round corners anymore and the text color does not change to white. I found a QP issue for the rounded corner as well and I created one for the text color problem: https://quality.embarcadero.com/browse/RSP-34597 https://quality.embarcadero.com/browse/RSP-35800

Hello I found that the Captions of Delphi's TMainMenu and TPopupMenu are hard to read under Windows 11, if an ImageList is connected to the menu. Tested with Delphi 10.4 and 11.0. Windows 10 menu without and with images (ok) Windows 11 menu without and with image (hard to read black text on dark-blue background) Can anyone reproduce this behavior? Best regards Tom

Set the forms BorderStyle to bsDialog, bsToolWindow or bsSizeToolWin. Sorry, forgot to mention that.

Yes, OwnerDraw would probably work - if I use a base form for all the forms in an application. I hoped that there is a more simple way to I just adjust the intent of the caption.