Package ptolemy.actor.gui.properties

The ptolemy.actor.gui.properties package, used to augment the toolbar with user defined buttons.

Configurable User Interface

The user interface of Ptolemy II (vergil) can be configured with XML files. Those XML files are the configuration files located in directory ptolemy/configs and its subdirectories. By default, when vergil is started up, the configuration ptolemy/configs/defaultFullConfiguration.xml is used.

The startup configuration controls several settings of the Ptolemy II environment, including its user interface. It may also link to other configuration files.

The tableauFactory section of defaultFullConfiguration.xml specifies the tableaus (i.e., editors) to be used when certain types of models are opened in the environment. For example, a modalTableauFactory is used to open any modal model. At the time a model is opened, the tableaus in the tableauFactory section are tried one by one, until a tableau that can handle the model is found. In general, tableau factories that can handle more general types of models are usually placed after the more specific ones.

The defaultFullConfiguration.xml file links to graphTableauFactory.xml that specifies one of the most general-purpose tableau for actor models. The latter file defines how such a tableau looks like. The default menus and tool bar buttons are created in Java, so there is no description about them in the XML file. However, users may enhance the tableau with more graphical elements.

For example, if the following text is added before the last "</property>" in graphTableauFactory.xml, then a new button with text "Const" appears at the end of the graph tableau's tool bar, whose function is to create a Const actor in the middle of the current model: 

  <property name="Graph Editor"
           class="ptolemy.vergil.actor.ActorGraphTableau$Factory">
   <configure>
     <property name="toolbar" class="ptolemy.actor.gui.properties.ToolBar">
       <property name="Const" class="ptolemy.actor.gui.properties.Button">
         <configure>
           <entity name="Const" class="ptolemy.actor.lib.Const">
           </entity>
         </configure>
       </property>
     </property>
   </configure>
 </property>

Here the red text serves to add the button. The blue text specifies the action to be taken when the button is pressed. The action is written in MoML contained in a the <configure> element. The rest of the text sets the context for the button. It does not create anything because the editor and the tool bar in it are created originally in Java.

The Button class, as well as several other classes for objects in the user interface, are defined in package ptolemy.actor.gui.properties. By creating more classes in a similar way, the user may create any GUI objects supported by Java. Attributes of existing objects may also be enhanced by editing the existing classes.

An example of usage is provided in ptolemy/configs/layout, which contains the configuration files for the automatic layout configuration for Ptolemy II. To start vergil with that configuration, the -layout parameter must be provided to the JVM at startup time. (With that parameter, configuration.xml in ptolemy/configs/layout is used as the configuration rather than defaultFullConfiguration.xml in ptolemy/configs.

Since:
Ptolemy II 7.2