How Dare You Take My OwnerDraw Away!

So, I thought the ListView class might be the answer to all of my Key Event problems. I need an interface on the phone with multiple controls that all respond to "hot key" presses. The ListView Control, which is probably the most used layout control on the phone, basically gives you this functionality if your two controls are "labels" and "checkboxes." In my case, I need one more control ala "radiobuttons" -- how hard could it be to draw a radiobutton instead of a checkbox in a custom ListView class?

So, I derived the ListView class and overrode the OnPaint and OnBackgroundPaint methods and launched a test on the emulator. Hmm, it looked like my OnPaint methods were not being called. WTF? Some searching found, "The ListView control is drawn by the operating system or is owner drawn, so the Paint event is never raised. For more information about owner-drawing, see the OwnerDraw property." Stop right there!

Yes things still sound salvagable until you note that the .NET CF 1.0 ListView control does NOT have an OwnerDraw property. Try it yourself if you like -- create a simple class MyListView : ListView and then override OnPaint and OnBackgroundPaint. Note how those methods are never called. So, unless you are using .NET 2.0 you're screwed.

Jon goes back to the drawing board now (which will probably involve something like the custom list view found here, which is really not even a custom list view but rather a completely new custom control). Oh the woes of programming UI on the SmartPhones. Which bears the question, why build a huge set of widgets and then restrict their usage so much that they become useless?