Toggling the Splitter Orientation

This is a pair of classes that will allow you to give the user control over the
orientation of the splitter in a static splitter window.

The first is CTogSplitterWnd, a CSplitterWnd that contains support
for actually toggling the splitter bar. The second, CSplitFrame, is a CMDIChildWnd
(though changing this to be any other CFrameWnd shouldn’t be hard).

The CMDIChildWnd derived class provides support for various message handlers
to allow the user to get at these functions as well as providing support for closing
either pane of the view. It does this by resizing the splitter rather than completely
hiding the view, for my application this was more appropriate.

The full code is in the zip file, but here are a few
comments about the code.

The actual toggle function is:


void CTogSplitterWnd::Toggle()
{
    if ( BarIsHorizontal() )
    {
        SetWindowLong( GetPane( 1, 0 )->m_hWnd, GWL_ID, AFX_IDW_PANE_FIRST + 1 );
        m_nRows = 1;
        m_nCols = 2;
    }
    else
    {
        SetWindowLong( GetPane( 0, 1 )->m_hWnd, GWL_ID, AFX_IDW_PANE_FIRST + 16 );
        m_nRows = 2;
        m_nCols = 1;
    }
}

It turns out to be fairly simple, though it took some rooting around in the MFC source
to work out how to do it. Whilst I’m sure that this is undocumented, this code is
basically the same as the version I wrote for MFC 1.5 many moons ago (SetWindowWord
became SetWindowLong if I remember correctly).

There is certainly more code to CSplitFrame since it has to store the location
of the splitter bar so that it restores back to its last location. It also depends upon
the definition of a number of command IDs that are in the sample resource file.


More by Author

Get the Free Newsletter!

Subscribe to Developer Insider for top news, trends & analysis

Must Read