[Lazarus] TFrame improvements

[Martin Frb]

On 29/11/2021 10:52, Juha Manninen via lazarus wrote:
> Please everybody test issue:
> https://gitlab.com/freepascal.org/lazarus/lazarus/-/issues/25124
> Some components caused an error when placed on a Frame. Now it 
> apparently works.
> Can somebody please explain why it works. (See my comment there).
>

 From reading the issue, and a peak at the code:

- When the frame is read from stream, the property is triggered, as it 
should (and as on a Form.
- The property accesses "canvas" => that triggers asking for a handle 
(which is created based on CreateParams)

A form does not need a parent (it can have one, if it is embedded).
Therefore CreateParam for TForm checks this and removes flags such as 
WS_CHILD (not sure if WS_TABSTOP would cause an issue, but it makes no 
sense...)

A frame, at least at design time, can display without parent too. (I 
guess: it acts as if it is a TForm in that case).
=> So for that IMHO your patch is correct (for design time).

Yet a TFrame at runtime IMHO should always have a parent.
No idea, if there is other code, that relies on that....
So maybe your patch should be extended, to only do that, if the control 
is in "designtime" state?
Though, not sure if it is worth it. While it would be correct to fail at 
runtime if there is no parent, it would not bring any benefit. If other 
code in TFrame needs the parent, then it will fail in the other code, if 
not then it will work.
The question is, do we commit to it may work, and then maybe have to fix 
more later? Otherwise it may want to even throw an exception, if it does 
not have a parent at runtime?