.NET Windows Forms in a Nutshell

Name

SystemPens

Synopsis

This class provides a set of static properties that return Pen objects for (almost) all the standard system colors. Sadly, as some of the system colors were deemed to be “not for drawing lines”—InactiveCaption for instance—you’ll have to fall back on SystemColors and Pen if you want to use them in some kind of inverse colors cheme.

Like most of these SystemXXX classes, although IDisposable is implemented, you must not dispose of the object yourself. The internal implementation caches the pens in a system table, but only tests for nullness and not whether the object has been disposed, so you will leave an unpleasant surprise for the next person to use that pen!

To retrieve a Pen for one of the web colors, see Pens.

public sealed class SystemPens {

// Public Static Properties

   public static Pen ActiveCaptionText{get; }

   public static Pen Control{get; }

   public static Pen ControlDark{get; }

   public static Pen ControlDarkDark{get; }

   public static Pen ControlLight{get; }

   public static Pen ControlLightLight{get; }

   public static Pen ControlText{get; }

   public static Pen GrayText{get; }

   public static Pen Highlight{get; }

   public static Pen HighlightText{get; }

   public static Pen InactiveCaptionText{get; }

   public static Pen InfoText{get; }

   public static Pen MenuText{get; }

   public static Pen WindowFrame{get; }

   public static Pen WindowText{get; }

// Public Static Methods

   public static Pen FromSystemColor(Color c);

}