Hi,
I had this query long time back but can't find it. I create some controls and add it to dock manager. After that I call LoadFromXML. Some of the controls are removed from UltraDockManager and re parented to MainForm. This is not desirable behaviour.
This problem is occuring 2007 Vol.2. I have not tested with latest Infragistics version 2008 Vol.3. Can I expect some improvement in behaviour for this version.
Like the grid has DisplayLayout which we can Load the XML and inspect before actually applying to the grid. Do we have similar class for UltraDockManager
There is currently no way to inspect the contents of the layout file in a copy of the dock manager before actually using it. However, it sounds like maybe when your layout file was saved, it had less panes then you currently have. When you load the layout file, the new panes are all destroyed and new panes are created from the layout file. Any controls which had new panes but don't have panes after the load will be reparented to their original parent. It sounds like you would need the ability to merge a layout file into the current configuration so new panes are not affected. You can submit a feature request for this: http://devcenter.infragistics.com/Protected/RequestFeature.aspx.
To work around this limitation, you can keep all of your controls which will be docked on a single Panel in the form. Set the Panel's Visible property to False so it is never seen. After you load your settings file, iterate the Controls collection of this Panel. Any control which didn't have panes in the layout file would have been added back to this Panel. Now you can take all those controls and recreate their panes so the Panel is once again empty.