• From a terminal window cd to:
  

  cd /home/idv/idv/ucar/unidata/idv/resources/skins

• View the directory listing.
• View the skin.xml

  java ucar.unidata.ui.XmlUi skin.xml
  less skin.xml

  Note the "idv." tags. We'll look at how these are handled in a bit.
• View the threeviewskin.xml

  java ucar.unidata.ui.XmlUi threeviewskin.xml

• List out the skin.xml. Note the attribute in the idv.view tag:
  class=${view_class} attribute.

  When the IDV reads these skin files in it replaces these macros with properties defined in the idv.rbi.

• Look at the "idv.resource.skin" resources entry in the main RBI file:

  less /home/idv/idv/ucar/unidata/idv/resources/idv.rbi

• Now, lets see how the IDV puts this all together
  • Bring up the IdvUIManager.java source code in an editor:

    cd /home/idv/idv/ucar/unidata/idv/ui
    <your favorite editor> IdvUIManager.java

  • Look for the doMakeIdvXmlUi method:

        protected IdvXmlUi doMakeIdvXmlUi(IdvWindow window, List viewManagers,
                                          Element skinRoot) {
            return new IdvXmlUi(window, viewManagers, getIdv(), skinRoot);
        }
    

  • This is a factory method for creating our own XmlUi class. This class handles the special "idv." tags.
  • Look at The IdvXmlUi.java source:

    cd /home/idv/idv/ucar/unidata/idv/ui
    <your favorite editor> IdvXmlUi.java

  • Look at the createComponent method:

        public Component createComponent(Element node, String id) {...}
    

    This is the method that the XmlUI class calls to create the components.

Unidata IDV Workshop for version 2.5 > Java Developer Topics > IDV User Interfaces