Pro's and Contra's For Showing Stencils in Your Application.

[soso]

Hello All,



Now I'm trying to work with the new Visio 2003 ActiveX control and got stuck
with the following problem. Developing an application we have two choices:
Show stencil(s) in the Visio control or imitate as shown in the only
available online example
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/e.../odc_vsProgrammingWithVisioActiveXControl.asp

The main positive factor to show a stencil is to leaving its initial
functionality available - drag'n'drop, icons and so on. But from the other
hand when you have a stencil opened your program should watching for at
least two instances of a Visio documents (the document opened for edition
and one or more documents containing stencils) and able filtering between
the events that complicates the application events model. There few more
issues that could be considered.

I'm really stumbled with the question - show or hide stencils in a
applications? Could someone suggest me something?

Sergo.

 

[Scott Metzger]

The main positive factor to show a stencil is to leaving its initial
functionality available - drag'n'drop, icons and so on. But from the other
hand when you have a stencil opened your program should watching for at
least two instances of a Visio documents (the document opened for edition
and one or more documents containing stencils) and able filtering between
the events that complicates the application events model. There few more
issues that could be considered.

I have included a stencil in my application. I am not experiencing the
event complication that you are talking about. Maybe I am just missing
something. Could you elaborate?

Thank You,
Scott Metzger

 

[soso]

Could you elaborate?

The problem is that I'm not sure about what pattern will be right choice
for the application using Visio control. We couldn't use
Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern for the application, because we have
integrated View-Controllers (VC), like Visio ActiveX control. In some
analysis the Visio ActiveX control also could be decomposed to Stencil
control and Visio Drawing control. That is my question - is it a good style
to leave Stencil as a part of the same Visio ActiveX control or it should be
separated (The separation could be done by showing it in the other Visio
ActiveX control or its hiding and usage through the other VC control.)

Thank You,

Soso.

 

[Scott Metzger]

Considering Steve Cox's post about Drag and Drop and all the problems he
is having I would go with the Same Drawing control for both stencil and
drawing.