Styling in JViews
Diagrammer involves the following constructs:
- Style rules
- Composite graphics
- Backgrounds
JViews Diagrammer style rules
The StyleSheet renderer applies a style sheet to a data model. The style
sheet contains style rules in CSS2 format that describe how the objects
in the data model are displayed in the diagram.
A style rule consists of two parts:
- The condition part called the selector applies to the data model, and is used for pattern-matching.
- The action part called the declarations applies to the corresponding graphic objects, and is used for rendering.
When designing a notation, you create many
style rules, each of them matching a particular case in the data
model. You define rules that apply to objects represented as
nodes, and rules that apply to objects represented as links.
The style rules are usually defined from
the most generic to the most specific. The generic rules usually
create the base symbol for each type of object. The more specific
rules add new shapes, or change graphics properties for the
symbol defined in the generic rule.
The style rules are also used to specify
the options of a diagram. Such rules have no selector and the
declarations customize the way the options operate.
The Designer for JViews
Diagrammer is perfectly suited for creating style sheets that
define the look-and-feel of diagrams. Within the Designer,
styling takes place, but the CSS syntax is largely hidden: selectors are
defined in a natural-language editor and declarations are defined
by setting graphic properties through panels called Styling
Customizers. The style sheet generated by the Designer can be
loaded into your application at run time.
Backgrounds and maps
For applications that require a geographic map as a background,
you can install a map renderer on your diagram that uses the
Rogue Wave JViews
Maps facilities to read map formats—vector or raster—and to
display nodes according to their latitude and longitude.