I would like to update the ribbon from the CDocument derived class because the information relevant for ribbon's status is stored there. The was created by the Wizard and edited in resource manager
Some elements (Buttons, checkboxes) can be updated with ON_UPDATE_COMMAND_UI macro.
But I have a headache with update other things like CMFCRibbonComboBox or CMFCRibbonProgressBar because CCmdUI doesn't provide suitable functions to deal with them (ie AddItem)
Other option using GetDlgItem doesn't work, because neither CDocument nor RibbonBar elements are derived from CWnd.
So what is the way to update CMFCRibbonComboBox and others?
I faced a similar problem with combo boxes on a toolbar. The combo box was used to display the current mouse coordinates of a point in "world coordinate" space while the mouse was moved. I derived my own class for the combo and exposed some methods that would update its contents. I then picked the most appropriate point in the code to make the appropriate calls to those methods. That may be during the paint cycle (eg. OnDraw), or, during idle time. A similar approach of deriving and exposing methods should work for you. The only caveat is to pick the correct location to inject your calls to perform the update.
I first tried RogerRowland's solution, but it soon became annoying to add a function to MainFrame for every trifle , then to call AfxGetMainWnd() from document and apply static_cast on it.
Instead I now store pointers to the ProgressBar and the combobox inside the document. I added the methods to CMainFrame to get them and removed the rest.
The only dificulty with it is the fact that the document is constructed before the main window. So I have to delay the initialisation of the mentioned pointers. I solved it by adding setRibbonBarPointers() to the document and calling it from OnInitialUpdate() of the view
