Chapter 13. The System.ComponentModel Namespace
The
System.ComponentModel namespace provides many of
the classes that support the design-time features of the framework.
The key class is Component, which provides a means
of encapsulating a class for design-time hosting.
IContainer and ISite provide a
means to host Component objects and bind them to
the design-time environment. Support for custom designers is provided
by the System.ComponentModel.Design.IDesigner
interface, System.Drawing.Design.UITypeEditor, and
custom TypeConverter classes.
Figure 13-1 shows many types from this namespace.
There are also a number of classes related to license management.
The designer environment is largely controlled through metadata provided by custom attributes. Classes and properties are adorned with these attributes to indicate how they should appear in the designer host, which custom designers to use, and how they should be serialized. Figure 13-2 shows the attributes in this namespace.
Note that several of the essential classes for the design-time
environment can be found in
System.ComponentModel.Design,
System.Windows.Forms.Design, and
System.Drawing.Design.
In addition to the design-time component support, this namespace has
become a dumping ground for classes (such as
IListSource) that support the data-binding
framework, but are not specifically UI related (and hence, are not to
be found in the System.Windows.Forms namespace).
There are also a couple of refugees from
System.Configuration
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