[Lazarus] String Grid Component

[Werner Pamler]

Am 27.11.2017 um 13:43 schrieb Torsten Bonde Christiansen via Lazarus:
> I am looking for grid component that can display string. Simple 
> enought and i know of a few already, but the ones i know of cannot do 
> both of the following requirements i have:
>
> a) Fast (very low delay on 100.000+ lines of test)
> b) Allow selecting multiple cells spanning rows and colomns.
>
> For a) i know of VirtualTreeview which handles large data very very 
> fine. The problem is that is does not allow for selecting multiple 
> columns and rows combined.
>
> For b) there is the native LCL stringgrid, the lazarus package 
> TKontrols is also good, but they don't handle large data very well. 
> Mostly because all rows/columns are traversed (initialized) instead of 
> the just the actual rows/columns displayed onscreen.

(a) What is "fast"? If I populate a standard TStringGrid with 100.000 
rows x 100 columns (= 10 millions of cells) it takes about 9 seconds on 
my PC - if BeginUpdate/EndUpdate is used. Not too bad in my eyes. If 
it's too long you should use a TDrawGrid and paint the cells in the 
OnDrawCell event. Since this draws only the visible cells it will occur 
within the blink of an eye. Editing a TDrawGrid is a bit more 
complicated, though, but doable.

(b) Multiselection has been added to the LCL grids (StringGrid and 
DrawGrid) some time ago. Set option goRangeSelect, and - if the cells 
selected are not contiguous - change RangeSelectMode to rsmMulti. Then 
you can select individual cells by Ctrl- and Shift-Clicks like you know 
from Excel.

Of course you should ask yourself the question: Is a grid with millions 
of cells really something a user wants to work with?