Types of Inheritance

There a several types of inheritance supported by the Microsoft .NET Framework (1.0-3.0). Alchemy CATALYST supports the following type of inheritance:-

An inherited object marked as Private is displayed with a red bounding rectangle in Alchemy CATALYST. For example in the Winform Microsoft name for a .NET Dialog Panel. below, the OK button inherits its text and position from a different winform and cannot be moved or translated in this form.

To translate objects that have been inherited privately you need to translate the original version of the object. All objects that are then inherited from this base object will appear correctly translated and position within Alchemy CATALYST.

Use the Results Toolbar or Inheritance View in the Project Navigator to locate the base declaration of these inherited controls.

An inherited object marked as Public is displayed with a blue inheritance mark in Alchemy CATALYST. For example in the Winform below, the title text (“Select Saved Reports”) is publicly inherited and can be translated and it’s co-ordinated modified.

While a publicly inherited object gets its initial text value and co-ordinates from a base object, these can be changed in each instance of the object. This differs significantly from Private Inheritance where only the base object can be modified and nothing else.

Use the Results Toolbar or Inheritance View in the Project Navigator to locate the base declaration of these inherited controls.

For the purposes of visual translation, protected inheritance and public inheritance are equivalent and these objects are displayed with blue inheritance marks in Alchemy CATALYST. For example in the Winform below, the text item “Reports to Convert”) is inherited in a protected way and can be translated and it’s co-ordinated modified.

Use the Results Toolbar or Inheritance View in the Project Navigator to locate the base declaration of these inherited controls.

Visual Inheritance is a powerful .NET technology however applications using it can be difficult to localise due to the complexity of the relationships between individual winforms and the type of inheritance used by the Developer of the application. As a general rule, all visual inheritance should be Public as this makes it possible to localize each instance of an inherited control.