[Feacture Request] Customize the look and feel by widget

[sirlordt]

Is possible make api to do something like "skins"?. I mean to change the look and feel by widget not only the color.

Maybe a setter where you can set to the widget witch char use to draw the border, the shadow. In the window widget can be nice you can set the position of the buttons. For example move the close button from the left to the right. Aside right from maximize button and change the icon to X.

O even better define custom button to attach to upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right to the window widget.

You can change from "Turbo Vision Style" to "Ubuntu Style":

O maybe to "Ubuntu Server Setup Style":

Thanks!!!.

[magiblot]

Ideally, there could be an external widgets library with a custom TFrame which allows you to change skins easily. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to do something like this.

But maybe there is one thing that can be done. In the file source/tvision/tvtext1.cpp there are the definitions of the border chars of several views. For example, TFrame::frameChars:

char _NEAR TFrame::frameChars[33] =
    "   \xC0 \xB3\xDA\xC3 \xD9\xC4\xC1\xBF\xB4\xC2\xC5   \xC8 \xBA\xC9\xC7 \xBC\xCD\xCF\xBB\xB6\xD1 "; // for UnitedStates code page

These chars are encoded in codepage 437. Actually, the string looks like this:

"   └ │┌├ ┘─┴┐┤┬┼   ╚ ║╔╟ ╝═╧╗╢╤ "

Or, in vertical:

TFrame::frameChars[0]   = ' '
TFrame::frameChars[1]   = ' '
TFrame::frameChars[2]   = ' '
TFrame::frameChars[3]   = '└'
TFrame::frameChars[4]   = ' '
TFrame::frameChars[5]   = '│'
TFrame::frameChars[6]   = '┌'
TFrame::frameChars[7]   = '├'
TFrame::frameChars[8]   = ' '
TFrame::frameChars[9]   = '┘'
TFrame::frameChars[10]  = '─'
TFrame::frameChars[11]  = '┴'
TFrame::frameChars[12]  = '┐'
TFrame::frameChars[13]  = '┤'
TFrame::frameChars[14]  = '┬'
TFrame::frameChars[15]  = '┼'
TFrame::frameChars[16]  = ' '
TFrame::frameChars[17]  = ' '
TFrame::frameChars[18]  = ' '
TFrame::frameChars[19]  = '╚'
TFrame::frameChars[20]  = ' '
TFrame::frameChars[21]  = '║'
TFrame::frameChars[22]  = '╔'
TFrame::frameChars[23]  = '╟'
TFrame::frameChars[24]  = ' '
TFrame::frameChars[25]  = '╝'
TFrame::frameChars[26]  = '═'
TFrame::frameChars[27]  = '╧'
TFrame::frameChars[28]  = '╗'
TFrame::frameChars[29]  = '╢'
TFrame::frameChars[30]  = '╤'
TFrame::frameChars[31]  = ' '

Therefore, it would be possible to change the skin by changing these arrays. Unfortunately, these arrays are private members.

You can cheat and write something like this in a file which doesn't include <tvision/tv.h>:

class TFrame
{
public:

    static char frameChars[33];
    static const char * closeIcon;
    static const char * zoomIcon;
    static const char * unZoomIcon;
};

void useCustomSkin()
{
    TFrame::frameChars[19]  = '\xC0';
    TFrame::frameChars[21]  = '\xB3';
    TFrame::frameChars[22]  = '\xDA';
    TFrame::frameChars[23]  = '\xC3';
    TFrame::frameChars[25]  = '\xD9';
    TFrame::frameChars[26]  = '\xC4';
    TFrame::frameChars[27]  = '\xC1';
    TFrame::frameChars[28]  = '\xBF';
    TFrame::frameChars[29]  = '\xB4';
    TFrame::frameChars[30]  = '\xC2';
    TFrame::closeIcon       = "\xB4~X~\xC3";
    TFrame::zoomIcon        = "\xB4~\x18~\xC3";
    TFrame::unZoomIcon      = "\xB4~\x12~\xC3";
}

Then you will get something like this:

[sirlordt]

Ok thanks, Let me try,

[WillianBR]

Ideally, there could be an external widgets library with a custom TFrame which allows you to change skins easily. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to do something like this.

But maybe there is one thing that can be done. In the file source/tvision/tvtext1.cpp there are the definitions of the border chars of several views. For example, TFrame::frameChars:

char _NEAR TFrame::frameChars[33] =
    "   \xC0 \xB3\xDA\xC3 \xD9\xC4\xC1\xBF\xB4\xC2\xC5   \xC8 \xBA\xC9\xC7 \xBC\xCD\xCF\xBB\xB6\xD1 "; // for UnitedStates code page

These chars are encoded in codepage 437. Actually, the string looks like this:

"   └ │┌├ ┘─┴┐┤┬┼   ╚ ║╔╟ ╝═╧╗╢╤ "

Or, in vertical:

TFrame::frameChars[0]   = ' '
TFrame::frameChars[1]   = ' '
TFrame::frameChars[2]   = ' '
TFrame::frameChars[3]   = '└'
TFrame::frameChars[4]   = ' '
TFrame::frameChars[5]   = '│'
TFrame::frameChars[6]   = '┌'
TFrame::frameChars[7]   = '├'
TFrame::frameChars[8]   = ' '
TFrame::frameChars[9]   = '┘'
TFrame::frameChars[10]  = '─'
TFrame::frameChars[11]  = '┴'
TFrame::frameChars[12]  = '┐'
TFrame::frameChars[13]  = '┤'
TFrame::frameChars[14]  = '┬'
TFrame::frameChars[15]  = '┼'
TFrame::frameChars[16]  = ' '
TFrame::frameChars[17]  = ' '
TFrame::frameChars[18]  = ' '
TFrame::frameChars[19]  = '╚'
TFrame::frameChars[20]  = ' '
TFrame::frameChars[21]  = '║'
TFrame::frameChars[22]  = '╔'
TFrame::frameChars[23]  = '╟'
TFrame::frameChars[24]  = ' '
TFrame::frameChars[25]  = '╝'
TFrame::frameChars[26]  = '═'
TFrame::frameChars[27]  = '╧'
TFrame::frameChars[28]  = '╗'
TFrame::frameChars[29]  = '╢'
TFrame::frameChars[30]  = '╤'
TFrame::frameChars[31]  = ' '

Therefore, it would be possible to change the skin by changing these arrays. Unfortunately, these arrays are private members.

You can cheat and write something like this in a file which doesn't include <tvision/tv.h>:

class TFrame
{
public:

    static char frameChars[33];
    static const char * closeIcon;
    static const char * zoomIcon;
    static const char * unZoomIcon;
};

void useCustomSkin()
{
    TFrame::frameChars[19]  = '\xC0';
    TFrame::frameChars[21]  = '\xB3';
    TFrame::frameChars[22]  = '\xDA';
    TFrame::frameChars[23]  = '\xC3';
    TFrame::frameChars[25]  = '\xD9';
    TFrame::frameChars[26]  = '\xC4';
    TFrame::frameChars[27]  = '\xC1';
    TFrame::frameChars[28]  = '\xBF';
    TFrame::frameChars[29]  = '\xB4';
    TFrame::frameChars[30]  = '\xC2';
    TFrame::closeIcon       = "\xB4~X~\xC3";
    TFrame::zoomIcon        = "\xB4~\x18~\xC3";
    TFrame::unZoomIcon      = "\xB4~\x12~\xC3";
}

Then you will get something like this:

I'll definitely use this trick!

The block used to close the window is ugly and say nothing! People get use to a big [X] as the close button.

In the perfect world the classes shound have a setPallete() method!

[WillianBR]

@magiblot

I have one small question!

Do you got the TV original library and rewrote some parts?

Because it's required is huge effort to change the TV theme. I wanna change the button colors, but change the pallete require a few tricks!

I'm thinking about save the pallete on disk and when the app start, check if there's a pallete file and load it. Or may be I'll save the pallete to a byte array and if the file is missing, load from memory.

One more intrusive question.

Do you have time to a chat, one to one?

Where are you from?

I'm from Brazil (TZ -3).

[magiblot]

Changing the palette values for all views is relatively simple. For example, if I modify the constructor of THelloApp (hello.cpp) like this:

THelloApp::THelloApp() :
    TProgInit( &THelloApp::initStatusLine,
               &THelloApp::initMenuBar,
               &THelloApp::initDeskTop
             )
{
    TPalette &palette = getPalette();       /*  foregr.   backgr.  */
    palette[cpGrayDialog[3  - 1]] = TColorAttr(0xbf0303,    '\x7'); // Frame icon
    palette[cpGrayDialog[10 - 1]] = TColorAttr(0xffffff, 0xb218b2); // Button normal
    palette[cpGrayDialog[12 - 1]] = TColorAttr(0x00007f, 0xb218b2); // Button selected
}

Then I am able to make the dialog look like this:

In order to write that I first had to look at dialogs.h, where it lists the palette entries for TDialog:

tvision/include/tvision/dialogs.h

Lines 39 to 54 in 7cdc0c8

	/* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- */
	/* class TDialog */
	/* */
	/* Palette layout */
	/* 1 = Frame passive */
	/* 2 = Frame active */
	/* 3 = Frame icon */
	/* 4 = ScrollBar page area */
	/* 5 = ScrollBar controls */
	/* 6 = StaticText */
	/* 7 = Label normal */
	/* 8 = Label selected */
	/* 9 = Label shortcut */
	/* 10 = Button normal */
	/* 11 = Button default */
	/* 12 = Button selected */

What makes TPalettes difficult is that they are nested. They contain indices into other palettes. Therefore, as soon as you want to design a palette for a new class you created, it becomes really hard to get the palettes right.

For this reason I made the TView::mapColor method virtual. By overrding it in your custom classes, you can skip the nested palette lookup and return colors directly. But for standard classes, the simplest way to change their color is to modify the application's palette as I showed earlier.

All of this is explained in the Extended color support section of the README (in an expandable section at the end of the document).

Do you have time to a chat, one to one?

Where are you from?

I am from Spain. However, I would not like to communicate using my phone number; would you be comfortable using regular e-mails? (magiblot@hotmail.com).