Labels or e.graphics?

[sjn78]

I'm making a form to display results, nearly like a grid, but each cell is multiline (has to be for aesthetics) and yes I know labels can draw multiline text. There will be over 100 cells minimum on the form, also depends on the form size, but could be more.

 

I tried it with labels and it caused the exe to be 500k, then I tried using the onpaint graphics event to draw them all. That made the exe 220k in size.

 

The program will have several forms like this and I want the exe size to be kept to a minumum.

 

Are there any issues with drawing the cells instead of labels?, apart from the amount of coding required. Performance is good so far, but I havent drawn any text strings on there yet. The form resizes without flicker and so on. One advantage is that I can have gradient fill on the cells to make it look nicer than a label.

 

Any comments or suggestions would be great.

[divil]

I'd go with drawing manually. You'll likely end up with a solution faster and smaller than using labels, and like you say, much more flexible.

[sjn78]

I ended up making my own control. I'm still manually drawing everything, but have the added bonus of being able customise it easier as well.

 

And I can see that later down the track if something needs changing in the display, I only have to recompile the dll and replace the old one which is only 10K. Good for downloads if I put it up on a website (if I eventually get that far)