+ const HDC hdc = GetHdcOf(memdc);
+
+ // The drawing logic of the native tab control is absolutely impenetrable
+ // but observation shows that in the current Windows versions (XP and 7),
+ // the tab control always erases its entire background in its window proc
+ // when the tabs are top-aligned but does not do it when the tabs are in
+ // any other position.
+ //
+ // This means that we can't rely on our background colour being used for
+ // the blank area in the tab row because this doesn't work in the default
+ // top-aligned case, hence the hack with ExtFloodFill() below. But it also
+ // means that we still do need to erase the DC to account for the other
+ // cases.
+ //
+ // Moreover, just in case some very old or very new (or even future,
+ // although it seems unlikely that this is ever going to change by now)
+ // version of Windows didn't do it like this, do both things in all cases
+ // instead of optimizing away the one of them which doesn't do anything for
+ // the effectively used tab orientation -- better safe than fast.
+
+ // Notice that we use our own background here, not the background used for
+ // the pages, because the tab row background must blend with the parent and
+ // so the background colour inherited from it (if any) must be used.
+ AutoHBRUSH hbr(wxColourToRGB(GetBackgroundColour()));
+
+ ::FillRect(hdc, &rc, hbr);
+
+ MSWDefWindowProc(WM_PAINT, (WPARAM)hdc, 0);
+
+ // At least for the top-aligned tabs, our background colour was overwritten
+ // and so we now replace the default background with our colour. This is
+ // horribly inefficient, of course, but seems to be the only way to do it.
+ if ( UseBgCol() )