Baseline snaplines in custom Winforms controls

Question

I have a custom user control with a textbox on it and I\'d like to expose the baseline (of the text in the textbox) snapline outside of the custom control. I know that you

Answer 1

Thanks to all those for the help. This was a tough one to swallow. The thought having a private sub-class in every UserControl wasn't very palatable.

I came up with this base class to help out..

[Designer(typeof(UserControlSnapLineDesigner))]
public class UserControlBase : UserControl
{
    protected virtual Control SnapLineControl { get { return null; } }

    private class UserControlSnapLineDesigner : ControlDesigner
    {
        public override IList SnapLines
        {
            get
            {
                IList snapLines = base.SnapLines;

                Control targetControl = (this.Control as UserControlBase).SnapLineControl;

                if (targetControl == null)
                    return snapLines;

                using (ControlDesigner controlDesigner = TypeDescriptor.CreateDesigner(targetControl,
                    typeof(IDesigner)) as ControlDesigner)
                {
                    if (controlDesigner == null)
                        return snapLines;

                    controlDesigner.Initialize(targetControl);

                    foreach (SnapLine line in controlDesigner.SnapLines)
                    {
                        if (line.SnapLineType == SnapLineType.Baseline)
                        {
                            snapLines.Add(new SnapLine(SnapLineType.Baseline, line.Offset + targetControl.Top,
                                line.Filter, line.Priority));
                            break;
                        }
                    }
                }
                return snapLines;
            }
        }
    }
}

Next, derive your UserControl from this base:

public partial class MyControl : UserControlBase
{
    protected override Control SnapLineControl
    {
        get
        {
            return txtTextBox;
        }
    }

    ...

}

Thanks again for posting this.