PFX ToolKit

This is a tool kit, originally developed for FramePFX (a non-linear video editor)

It acts as a "base" for an application and provides a multitude of helper libraries, including:

• Activity Tasks (which track progress with a caption, message and completion or with an indeterminate mode)

• Advanced Menu system, which use model objects to define menus and context menus, and supports on-demand generators for menu options (i.e. generate options based on available context, and the state of the objects/application)

• Command System, Uses registered commands (with string keys) to centralize actions that can be invoked from multiple places (e.g. rename an object via a keystroke (CTRL+R), or via a button, or a context menu)

• "Command Usages" help with allowing UI controls to be updated when the state of contextual objects change, where those UI controls would typically cause a command to run which depends on those states that can change (i.e. if a task is already running, it can't be run again, so disable the button. The command never needs to know about the button, only the Command Usage)

• Themes, which allow user customizable theme options, supporting theme and theme-key inheritance (which is something Avalonia does not natively implement, AFAIK)

• Brush and Icon systems, which are mainly used by the Advanced Menu System, to support model-defined icons and usage of icons without exposing Avalonia-specific details. The brush system also supports the equivalent of DynamicResource, so that icons such as geometry icons can change colour when the theme changes.

• Plugins, either "Core" (referenced by an app's entry point project) or "Assembly" (loaded dynamically), to add extra functionality to an app

• Notifications (Toasts), adds a notification management system, with support for "actions" that the user can click within the notification.

• Shortcut System, which supports user-customizable shortcuts to run commands via the Command System.

• Persistent Configurations, which simplify dealing with configs by loading on app startup and saving on app shutdown

• Toolbars, which are still WIP, but allow for code-defined toolbars rather than a declarative (AXAML) toolbar

• Property Editor, a completely custom control for modifying models. Usually used with the DataParameter system, but FramePFX extends this with its own automatable/animatable parameters

• DataManager manages the context associated with UI objects using via the interface IContextData — basically a Dictionary<string, object>. It also allows for accumulating the absolute "fully inherited" context from a UI element by traversing the visual tree upwards.

  This system is used by the Notification, Command, Shortcut, Advanced Menu and ToolTipEx systems

• Windowing and Overlay abstractions, which allow showing a control either as a window or an overlay over another control.

• History (undo/redo) system

• ToolTipEx service, allows for reusable tool tips. Controls that wish to be shown as a tool tip implement IToolTipControl, and there will only ever be once instance of that control. The tool tip control then observes the context of its adorned control (i.e. tooltip owner) to update itself.

• Configuration Dialogs, which support trees of config pages

• EventRelay system, which allows allocating event handlers for any delegate type

• Binders, which is a more customizable system than regular Avalonia binding. For example, parse text box text manually and show a dialog on parse failure. Or a text block whose text changes based on multiple properties, all you have to do if specify the event names that cause the text box text to be re-evaluated