Describes how to create and manage APP-6a symbols.

APP-6a standard is a subset of the MIL-STD-2525B standard. The standard provides common warfighting symbology for Command, Control, Communications, Computer, and Intelligence (C4I) systems development, operations, and training.

A tactical symbol is composed of a frame, fill, and icon and may include text and/or graphic modifiers that provide additional information.

The following figure shows an example of a tactical symbols.

The frame attributes, that is, affiliation, battle dimension, and status, determine the type of frame for a given symbol. Fill color is a redundant indication of the affiliation of the symbol (frame shape also indicates affiliation, see Symbol modifiers).

An APP-6a symbol ID code is a 15-character alphanumeric identifier that provides the information necessary to display a tactical symbol.

You can use the NATO Symbol Manager (for example, in the Map Builder) to hierarchically retrieve the ID code prototype or construct it from its base elements.

The positions of the symbol ID code are described below. Since many symbols do not have an entry in every code position, a dash (-) is used to fill each unused position.

An asterisk (*) indicates positions that are user-defined, based on specific symbol circumstances such as affiliation or echelon/mobility.

The standard defines a set of modifiers that provides optional additional information about a symbol. Modifier information is represented around the central frame.

The following figure shows a schematic of the symbol modifier information.

The following table provides descriptions of these modifiers.

The following figure shows some examples of APP-6a symbols:

APP-6a Symbols are a specialized use of JViews Diagrammer capabilities and take advantage of JViews Diagrammer technology. The coding of the APP-6a standard in a set of java classes provides even greater performance than the (more flexible) output of the Symbol Editor. APP-6a Symbols. The symbols are nodes of a diagrammer data model that are rendered into the graphical view with styling information contained in a Cascading Style Sheet. (See also Basic Concepts in Introducing JViews Diagrammer).

Using symbols and maps in the Map Builder

The Symbols view in the Map Builder provides a way to edit an APP-6a symbol model. You can add, remove or modify objects from this model but, by default, it does not provide persistence for these symbols.

Symbol rendering is based on Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) files that provide the basic rules to build graphic objects from the symbol model.

Providing the Map Builder with a different CSS ( data/app6.css file) can change the way APP-6a symbols appear. The APP-6a model content, however, is hard coded, so you need to use the same model properties in the new CSS as are used in the default file.

There are a few classes inside the Map Builder that deal with symbols. You can change these to better suit your model by using the JViews Diagrammer SDK.

Storing symbols

You can use a default SDM Model to store your symbols such as:

Displaying symbols

In order to display APP-6a Symbols on your map, you need to use IlvApp6aGraphic graphic objects. These manage all the complexity of rendering the correct symbol from the provided properties.

In order to pass parameters between the model and the CSS engine, the symbols provide a this property that can be used to transfer all APP-6a properties and ID code to the IlvApp6aGraphic in a single line of code. An APP-6a CSS file can then be something like:

The other settings in this example are options of the IlvApp6aGraphic that determine the parts of the graphic to be rendered. The example settings display all of the optional data but, for performance and decluttering reasons, it may be necessary to hide the modifiers, or the direction line.

Describes the classes that control the appearance of APP-6a symbols and a symbol manager for editing or creating a new symbol. The complete source code for an APP-6a demonstration can be found at <installdir> /jviews-maps-defense/samples/app6a/index.html.

The IlvApp6aSymbol class

The IlvApp6aSymbol class implements the representation for war fighting symbols. Its appearance is rendered using an IlvApp6aGraphic class. As with any other JViews graphic, an IlvApp6aGraphic can be customized through individual CSS declarations that refer to properties of the data model (usually IlvApp6aSymbol nodes). However, they also have a special declaration that simplifies the syntax for APP-6a applications. You can simply declare the entire IlvApp6aSymbol instance as a data model property for the IlvApp6aGraphic using the following syntax:

In keeping with the APP-6a standard, these IlvApp6aSymbol are defined by a set of predefined properties:

Symbol properties

Rogue Wave® JViews constructs all the other graphical indicators automatically from the ID_CODE property.

The following table contains a list of constants that identify the symbol properties and the part of the symbol they control.

Displaying a symbol

To display a symbol:

The IlvApp6aSymbologyTreeViewActions class

If you want to use an IlvSymbologyTreeView bean in your code to manage APP-6a symbols, you need to create an instance of IlvApp6aSymbologyTreeViewActions. This object is then responsible for displaying the APP-6a symbol manager when editing or creating a new symbol.