JADE Development Environment Skin Classes

In addition to the JadeSkin class, JADE provides classes that enable you to define a skin for each base control class. These classes are global to all of your schemas, as they are defined in the RootSchema.

As the JadeSkin class is completely separate from and does not provide the functionality provided by the classes in this chapter, it will be deimplemented in a future release.

You should therefore use the classes and features described in this section for your user applications.

With the exception of the JadeSkin class that is to be deimplemented in a later release, the JADE skin classes provided by the JADE RootSchema have the following hierarchy.

These classes are summarized in the following subsections. For more details, see Chapter 1 of the JADE Encyclopaedia of Classes.

For details about using runtime skin facilities provided by JADE methods, see "Run Time Skin Facilities", later in this chapter. See also "Maintaining Skins Using Extended Functionality", in Chapter 2 of the JADE Runtime Application Guide.

The following MemberKeyDictionary subclasses enable you to access skin elements.

JadeSkinApplicationNameDict
JadeSkinCategoryNameDict
JadeSkinControlNameDict
JadeSkinEntityNameDict
JadeSkinFormNameDict
JadeSkinMenuNameDict
JadeSkinSimpleButtonNameDict
JadeSkinWindowStateNameDict

With the exception of the JadeSkinEntityNameDict class that allows duplicate keys, these dictionaries are defined with one key: JadeSkinEntity::name, which is case-sensitive and does not allow for duplicate keys. These dictionaries are referenced by the JadeSkinRoot class and are automatically maintained via inverses defined using the JadeSkinEntity::mySkinRoot property. In addition, each skin entity has a JadeSkinEntityNameDict dictionary of other skin entities that reference that skin. This myOwners dictionary is automatically maintained via inverses between the referencing property and the dictionary.