Customizing the chart customizer

If you want to define your chart customizer for a particular style rule in your own application, these are the possible customizations:

It is possible to rearrange the existing buttons, fields, and boxes. For example, you can change the order of the GUI elements in the tabbed panes.

It is not possible to create new buttons, fields, and boxes that control a completely different parameter. The chart customizer can control a well-defined set of JViews Charts parameters. Rendering parameters that are not part of this set cannot be handled.

When you select a style rule for the chart customizer by using the method customizer.setRule("chartArea"), the panel of the chart customizer displays the controls that are needed to customize this style rule.

This is controlled by an XML file that is associated with the corresponding IlvRuleCustomizerLogic. You can change this XML file to modify the controls that appear in the panel.

Examples of XML files are located in the directory <installdir>/jviews-charts/samples/customizer/data/examples.

It is possible to adapt the XML file according to your needs. The format is described in XML specification of the chart customizer.

For internationalization purposes, each XML file is associated with a property file containing the text (labels, tooltips) that should appear in the chart customizer. This property file must be located in the same location as the XML configuration file.

For example, the IlvChartAreaCustomizerForm.xml file that describes the appearance of the chart customizer for the chart area and the selectorIlvChartAreaCustomizerForm.properties file that is the corresponding property file must be placed in the same directory.

To make your chart customizer use the XML and property specifications you have modified, it is possible to use one of the following methods:

This solution is applicable when you modify the contents of the XML or property specifications without altering the file names.

This solution forces you to maintain yourself the association between colors and file names, but allows you to use different configurations for the same selector. For example, you might use separate configuration files (and therefore also separate chart customizers) for the colors of the chart area and for the margins of the chart area, although both would be associated with the selector chartArea.