Why does FontDialog.ShowColor not show the KnownColors?

Nov 12 2004 8:44 PM
Create a FontDialog, and assign its ShowColor property to true. Then run the FontDialog. It is mysterious to me that only the 16 basic colors -- red, green, yellow, brown, blue, cyan, magenta, black and white, etc. -- are presented as choices. Why not Aquamarine? Why not Chocolate? Goldenrod? MistyRose? And so forth? It seems like an odd design choice on Microsoft's part to build a .NET common dialog for fonts, but to give it only the ability to display basic Win32 colors, rather than giving it the ability to show all of the .NET color choices. Does anybody have a good explanation for why that design choice was made the way it was? Is this a limitation in the way printer drivers are written, or something of that nature? I'm straining to imagine a good reason for it, and I'm just stumped. Meanwhile, here's the real question: What do I have to do if I want to present the user with a FontDialog which gives him/her those extra color choices that .NET makes available? In other words, what do I do if I'm not satisfied with the behavior of the FontDialog in this regard? Thanks, Brian / Cove