TImageList/TListview: correct design choice?

Question

This is a question about picking the right Delphi components.

Using Delphi for a new app.

I'm looking to allow my user to have a list of (his own, on harddisk) pictures (just jpg for now, but should support different formats in the future), import them into my app, and then display them to him in a TListView. I was planning to tie that TListView to a TImageList (since this comes out of the box)... but when I tried, I ran into a set of weird problems about importing jpg's into a TImageList, reported here:

TImagelist not adding bitmap

So I'm wondering, am I using components for something they aren't intended for? Specifically, is the TImageList (even with some pre-formatting on import) useful for this kind of freestyle-all-sizes-and-formats-allowed stuff?

Any advice appreciated!

Answer 1

TImageList is designed to contain images of stored with the same format and size. If I am understanding correctly, TImageList doesn't do what you ask for.

TListView is tied to TImageList and therefore has the same limits. In my experience, a component flexible as you ask requires a custom component and manual drawing.

If you could change the requirement and decide a fixed size, you can preprocess the images making a thumbnail of the decided sizes and store them in the image list. This way you avoid building a component specific for your needs.