How to get rid of TListBox vertical scroll limit?

Question

I've implement a log viewer using a TListBox in virtual mode.

It works fine (for all the code I wrote), displays the content as expected (I even added an horizontal scrollbar easily), but I guess I've reached the some kind of limit of the vertical scrollbar.

That is, when I scroll the vertical bar from the top to the bottom, it will not scroll the content to the end of the list, but only to some limit.

Do you know any possibility to get rid of this limit? I tried with SetScrollInfo, but it didn't work since the limit sounds to be not in the scrollbar, but in the TListBox itself.

I know the solution of creating a dedicated TCustomControl: in this case, the SetScrollInfo will work as expected. But does anyone know about a solution/trick to still use TListBox?

Edit: to make it clear - I don't ask for a (third-party) component solution, but to know if there is some low-level GDI message to send to the standard TListBox to override this limit. If there is none, I'll go to the dedicated TCustomControl solution.

Here is the code using TSCROLLINFO:

procedure ScrollVertHuge(Handle: HWND; count: integer);
var Scroll: TSCROLLINFO;
begin
  Scroll.cbSize:= sizeof(Scroll);
  Scroll.fMask := SIF_DISABLENOSCROLL or SIF_RANGE;
  Scroll.nMin := 0;
  Scroll.nMax := count;
  SetScrollInfo(Handle,SB_VERT,Scroll,false);
end;

To precise the issue: Adding and drawing both work, of course (my tool works as exepected), but what does not work is the vertical scrollbar dragging. I renamed the title of the question, and got rid of the deprecated MSDN articles, which are confusing.

TVirtualTreeView can do the same UI, but without 32K limits. — LU RD
@LU RD TVirtualTreeView is great, but not an option for me. It's too huge for this little tool, and I don't want to use third-party components. A TCustomControl could easily make the trick, but my question is if someone knows about a solution to override the TListBox limit (e.g. by some low-level message to send). — Arnaud Bouchez
What about TListView? Could you show what you tried with SetScrollInfo? I do remember I once did something similar, without deriving a component. — Rudy Velthuis
@Rudy I've added the SetScrollInfo code, but it seems to be an absolute 8 K row limit here... I could try TListView, but I found it slow, even in virtual mode - with it, the limit is 100,000,000 so it could be enough for my use. — Arnaud Bouchez
Not even W95, that article is for 16 bit Windows. I just put 500000 items in a 'lbsOwnerDrawFixed' list box, there's no such limit on the listbox itself. — Sertac Akyuz

Sertac Akyuz Sertac Akyuz · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-22T22:14:26

The below probably should be considered as a work-around for defective OS behavior, since, unless themes are enabled, the default window procedure of a listbox control handles thumb-tracking quite well. For some reason, when themes are enabled (test here shows with Vista and later), the control seems to rely upon the Word sized scroll position data of WM_VSCROLL.

First, a simple project to duplicate the problem, below is an owner draw virtual (lbVirtualOwnerDraw) list box with some 600,000 items (since item data is not cached it doesn't take a moment to populate the box). A tall listbox will be good for easy following the behavior:

type
  TForm1 = class(TForm)
    ListBox1: TListBox;
    procedure ListBox1Data(Control: TWinControl; Index: Integer;
      var Data: string);
    procedure ListBox1DrawItem(Control: TWinControl; Index: Integer;
      Rect: TRect; State: TOwnerDrawState);
    procedure FormCreate(Sender: TObject);
  end;

[...]

procedure TForm1.FormCreate(Sender: TObject);
begin
  ListBox1.Count := 600000;
end;

procedure TForm1.ListBox1Data(Control: TWinControl; Index: Integer;
  var Data: string);
begin
  Data := IntToStr(Index) + ' listbox item number';
end;

procedure TForm1.ListBox1DrawItem(Control: TWinControl; Index: Integer;
  Rect: TRect; State: TOwnerDrawState);
begin
  // just simple drawing to be able to clearly see the items
  if odSelected in State then begin
    ListBox1.Canvas.Brush.Color := clHighlight;
    ListBox1.Canvas.Font.Color := clHighlightText;
  end;
  ListBox1.Canvas.FillRect(Rect);
  ListBox1.Canvas.TextOut(Rect.Left + 2, Rect.Top + 2, ListBox1.Items[Index]);
end;

To see the problem just thumb-track the scroll bar, you'll notice how the items are wrapped to begin from the start for every 65536 one as described by Arnaud in the comments to the question. And when you release the thumb, it will snap to an item in the top High(Word).

Below workaround intercepts WM_VSCROLL on the control and performs thumb and item positioning manually. The sample uses an interposer class for simplicity, but any other sub-classing method would do:

type
  TListBox = class(stdctrls.TListBox)
  private
    procedure WMVScroll(var Msg: TWMVScroll); message WM_VSCROLL;
  end;

[...]

procedure TListBox.WMVScroll(var Msg: TWMVScroll);
var
  Info: TScrollInfo;
begin
  // do not intervene when themes are disabled
  if ThemeServices.ThemesEnabled then begin
    Msg.Result := 0;

    case Msg.ScrollCode of
      SB_THUMBPOSITION: Exit; // Nothing to do, thumb is already tracked
      SB_THUMBTRACK:
        begin
          ZeroMemory(@Info, SizeOf(Info));
          Info.cbSize := SizeOf(Info);
          Info.fMask := SIF_POS or SIF_TRACKPOS;
          if GetScrollInfo(Handle, SB_VERT, Info) and
              (Info.nTrackPos <> Info.nPos) then
            TopIndex := TopIndex + Info.nTrackPos - Info.nPos;
        end;
      else
        inherited;
    end;
  end else
    inherited;
end;

How to get rid of TListBox vertical scroll limit?

2 Answers