| 1 | XRC resources format specification |
| 2 | ================================== |
| 3 | |
| 4 | !!!!! NOT YET FINISHED !!!!! |
| 5 | |
| 6 | 0. Introduction |
| 7 | =============== |
| 8 | |
| 9 | This note describes the file format used for storing XRC resources that are |
| 10 | used by wxXmlResource class. It is probably only useful for those implementing |
| 11 | dialog editors with XRC support. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | If you only want to use the resources, you can choose from a number of editors: |
| 14 | a) wxDesigner (http://www.roebling.de) |
| 15 | b) XRCed (wxPython/tools) |
| 16 | c) wxWorkshop (http://wxworkshop.sf.net) |
| 17 | b) wxrcedit (contrib/utils/wxrcedit) |
| 18 | |
| 19 | The XRC format is based on XML 1.0 (please consult W3C's specification). There |
| 20 | is no DTD available since it is not possible to fully describe the format with |
| 21 | the limited expressive power of DTDs. |
| 22 | |
| 23 | |
| 24 | |
| 25 | 1. Terminology |
| 26 | ============== |
| 27 | |
| 28 | The usual XML terminology applies. In particular, we shall use the terms |
| 29 | NODE, PROPERTY and VALUE in the XML sense: |
| 30 | |
| 31 | <node property1="value1" property2="value2">...</node> |
| 32 | |
| 33 | The term ATTRIBUTE is specific to XRC and refers to a subnode |
| 34 | of an <object> or <object_ref> node that is itself not <object> or <object_ref>. |
| 35 | In the example bellow, <pos>, <label> and <style> are attributes, while neither |
| 36 | <resource> nor either of <object>s is: |
| 37 | |
| 38 | <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"> |
| 39 | <resource xmlns="http://www.wxwindows.org/wxxrc" version="2.3.0.1"> |
| 40 | <object class="wxPanel"> |
| 41 | <style>wxSUNKEN_BORDER</style> <!-- attr --> |
| 42 | <object class="wxStaticText"> |
| 43 | <label>A label</label> <!-- attr --> |
| 44 | <pos>10,10</pos> <!-- attr --> |
| 45 | </object> |
| 46 | </object> |
| 47 | </resource> |
| 48 | |
| 49 | ATTRIBUTE VALUE is the content of all text elements within attribute tag. In the |
| 50 | above example, "wxSUNKEN_BORDER", "A label" and "10,10" are attribute values. |
| 51 | ATTRIBUTE TYPE defines what attribute values are valid for given attribute (you |
| 52 | can think of it as attribute value syntax definition). |
| 53 | |
| 54 | |
| 55 | |
| 56 | 2. Elementary description |
| 57 | ========================= |
| 58 | |
| 59 | XRC resource file is a well-formed XML 1.0 document. All elements of XRC file |
| 60 | are from the http://www.wxwindows.org/wxxrc namespace. |
| 61 | |
| 62 | The root node of XRC document must be <resource>. The <resource> node has |
| 63 | optional "version" property. Default version (in absence of the version |
| 64 | property) is "0.0.0.0". The version consists of four integers separated by |
| 65 | periods. Version of XRC format changes only if there was an incompatible |
| 66 | change introduced (i.e. either the library cannot understand old resource |
| 67 | files or older versions of the library wouldn't understand the new format). |
| 68 | The first three integers are major, minor and release number of the wxWindows |
| 69 | release when the change was introduced, the last one is revision number and |
| 70 | is 0 for the first incompatible change in given wxWindows release, 1 for |
| 71 | the second etc. |
| 72 | |
| 73 | Differences between versions are described within this document in paragraphs |
| 74 | entitled "Version Note". |
| 75 | |
| 76 | The <resource> node contains namespace declaration, too: |
| 77 | |
| 78 | <resource xmlns="http://www.wxwindows.org/wxxrc" version="2.3.0.1"> |
| 79 | |
| 80 | The <resource> node is only allowed to have <object> and <object_ref> |
| 81 | subnodes, all of which must have the "name" property. |
| 82 | |
| 83 | The <object> node represents a single object (GUI element) and it usually maps |
| 84 | directly to a wxWindows class instance. It three properties: "name", "class" |
| 85 | and "subclass". "class" must always be present, it tells XRC what wxWindows |
| 86 | object should be created in this place. The other two are optional. "name" is |
| 87 | ID used to identify the object. It is the value passed to the XRCID() macro and |
| 88 | is also used to construct wxWindow's id and name attributes and must be unique |
| 89 | among all children of the neareset container object (wxDialog, wxFrame, |
| 90 | wxPanel, wxNotebook) upside from the object in XML nodes hiearchy (two distinct |
| 91 | containers may contain objects with same "name", though). "subclass" is |
| 92 | optional name of class whose constructor will be called instead of the |
| 93 | constructor for "class". Subclass must be available in the program that loads |
| 94 | the resource, must be derived from "class" and must be registered within |
| 95 | wxWindows' RTTI system. |
| 96 | |
| 97 | Example: |
| 98 | |
| 99 | <object name="MyList1" class="wxListCtrl" subclass="MyListCtrlClass"> |
| 100 | ... |
| 101 | </object> |
| 102 | |
| 103 | <object> node may have arbitrary child nodes. What child nodes and their |
| 104 | semantics are class-dependent and are defined later in this document. The user |
| 105 | is allowed to register new object handlers within XRC and extend it to accept |
| 106 | new <object> classes (and therefore different <object>'s child nodes). |
| 107 | |
| 108 | <object_ref> node is identical to <object>, except that it does _not_ have |
| 109 | "class" property and has additonal required property "ref". It's concept is |
| 110 | similar to Unix symlinks: value of the "ref" property is equal to the value of |
| 111 | "name" property of some existing node (called referred node) in the resources |
| 112 | (not neccessary top-level). Referred node's "class" property and all subnodes |
| 113 | are copied in place of the referee <object_ref> node which is then processed as |
| 114 | regular <object> node. If the <object_ref> node itself has child nodes, then |
| 115 | these nodes _override_ any nodes from the referred node. |
| 116 | |
| 117 | Example: |
| 118 | |
| 119 | <object name="foo" class="wxTextCtrl"> |
| 120 | <value>hello</value> |
| 121 | <size>100,-1d</size> |
| 122 | </object> |
| 123 | <object_ref name="bar" ref="foo"> |
| 124 | <value>bar</value> <!-- override! --> |
| 125 | </object_ref> |
| 126 | |
| 127 | is identical to: |
| 128 | |
| 129 | <object name="foo" class="wxTextCtrl"> |
| 130 | <value>hello</value> |
| 131 | <size>100,-1d</size> |
| 132 | </object> |
| 133 | <object name="bar" class="wxTextCtrl"> |
| 134 | <value>bar</value> |
| 135 | <size>100,-1d</size> |
| 136 | </object> |
| 137 | |
| 138 | |
| 139 | |
| 140 | 3. Common attribute types |
| 141 | ========================= |
| 142 | |
| 143 | There are several attribute types (see section 1. Terminology) that are common |
| 144 | to many attributes of different classes: |
| 145 | |
| 146 | String |
| 147 | ------ |
| 148 | Any text. Some characters have special interpretation and are translated |
| 149 | by XRC parser according to this table: |
| 150 | "_" -> "&" ('&' is used to underline e.g. menu items in wxWindows) |
| 151 | "__" -> "_" |
| 152 | "\n" -> line break (C character '\n') |
| 153 | "\r" -> carriage return (C character '\r') |
| 154 | "\t" -> tabelator (C character '\t') |
| 155 | |
| 156 | Version Note: |
| 157 | '$' was used instead of '_' prior to version 2.3.0.1. |
| 158 | |
| 159 | |
| 160 | I18nString |
| 161 | ---------- |
| 162 | Like String, but the value is translated to native language using wxLocale |
| 163 | at runtime (unless it was disabled by not passing wxXRC_USE_LOCALE flag to |
| 164 | wxXmlResource constructor). Used for strings that are "visible" in the GUI. |
| 165 | |
| 166 | |
| 167 | UnsignedInteger |
| 168 | --------------- |
| 169 | This is obvious. Only digits 0-9 may be present and there must be at least |
| 170 | one digit. |
| 171 | |
| 172 | |
| 173 | Integer |
| 174 | ------- |
| 175 | Like UnsignedInteger but may be prefixed with '-' (ints less than zero). |
| 176 | |
| 177 | |
| 178 | Position |
| 179 | -------- |
| 180 | Specifies (window's) position in 2D space. Syntax is <integer>,<integer>[d] |
| 181 | where <integer> is valid value of Integer type. |
| 182 | |
| 183 | |
| 184 | Size |
| 185 | ---- |
| 186 | Syntax is same as Position's syntax, but the values are interpreted as window |
| 187 | size (wxSize type) and not position (wxPosition type). |
| 188 | |
| 189 | |
| 190 | Style[wxSomeClass] |
| 191 | ------------------ |
| 192 | List of style flags that can be passed to wxSomeClass' constructor. Flags are |
| 193 | written in same way as in C++ code (e.g. "wxSUNKEN_BORDER", |
| 194 | "wxHW_SCROLLBAR_NEVER") and are delimined with any combination of whitespaces |
| 195 | and '|'. Possible flags are class-dependent and are not described in this |
| 196 | technote. Please refer to wxWindows manual for all styles that given class can |
| 197 | accept; if XRC does not accept a flag listed in wxWindows documentation, it is |
| 198 | a bug. |
| 199 | |
| 200 | |
| 201 | Bitmap |
| 202 | ------ |
| 203 | Attribute value is interpreted as filename (either absolute or relative to |
| 204 | the location of XRC resource file). In addition, attribute node may have |
| 205 | "stock_id" and "stock_client" properties. Their values may be any of wxArtID (or |
| 206 | wxArtClient respectively) values as used by wxArtProvider (because the user may |
| 207 | define own constants, efectively any string is legal here). Examples are |
| 208 | "wxART_FILE_OPEN" (id) or "wxART_MENU" (client). |
| 209 | |
| 210 | Any of "stock_id" or "stock_client" properties or the filename may be omitted. |
| 211 | XRC determines the bitmap to use according to this algorithm: |
| 212 | 1. If there is non-empty "stock_id" property, query wxArtProvider for the |
| 213 | bitmap (if there is no "stock_client", use default one, which is usually |
| 214 | wxART_OTHER; exceptions are noted in class-specific sections bellow). If |
| 215 | the query fails, continue to 2. |
| 216 | 2. Load the bitmap from the file in attribute value. |
| 217 | |
| 218 | |
| 219 | Boolean |
| 220 | ------- |
| 221 | Boolean value, either "0" (false) or "1" (true). |
| 222 | |
| 223 | |
| 224 | |
| 225 | 4. Supported classes |
| 226 | ==================== |
| 227 | |
| 228 | Attributes are listed in tables in the following format: |
| 229 | attribute name attribute type default value, if any |
| 230 | [(optional remarks.................... |
| 231 | ...................................)] |
| 232 | |
| 233 | wxBitmap |
| 234 | -------- |
| 235 | This is a special case, because it does not create a wxWindow instance but |
| 236 | creates wxBitmap instead. Another exceptional thing is that it does not have |
| 237 | any attributes. Instead, the node itself is interpreted as if it were attribute |
| 238 | of type Bitmap. |
| 239 | |
| 240 | Example: <object class="wxBitmap">bitmaps/foo.gif</object> |
| 241 | |
| 242 | |
| 243 | wxIcon |
| 244 | ------ |
| 245 | Identical to wxBitmap class, except that it creates wxIcon instead of wxBitmap. |
| 246 | |
| 247 | |
| 248 | wxButton |
| 249 | -------- |
| 250 | position Position -1,-1 |
| 251 | size Size -1,-1 |
| 252 | style Style[wxButton] |
| 253 | |
| 254 | label I18nString |
| 255 | default Boolean false |
| 256 | (Is the button default button?) |
| 257 | |
| 258 | |
| 259 | wxCalendarCtrl |
| 260 | -------------- |
| 261 | position Position -1,-1 |
| 262 | size Size -1,-1 |
| 263 | style Style[wxCalendarCtrl] |
| 264 | |
| 265 | |
| 266 | wxCheckBox |
| 267 | ---------- |
| 268 | position Position -1,-1 |
| 269 | size Size -1,-1 |
| 270 | style Style[wxCheckBox] |
| 271 | checked Boolean false |
| 272 | |
| 273 | |
| 274 | wxCheckList |
| 275 | ----------- |
| 276 | position Position -1,-1 |
| 277 | size Size -1,-1 |
| 278 | style Style[wxCheckList] |
| 279 | content (see bellow) (empty) |
| 280 | |
| 281 | Optional "content" attribute does not have attribute value. Instead, |
| 282 | arbitrary number of <item> nodes may be rooted under it (the control |
| 283 | is filled with strings contained in these nodes). Each <item> |
| 284 | node must contain I18nString value and may have "checked" property |
| 285 | with possible values "0" or "1" indicating the the item is initially |
| 286 | checked. |
| 287 | |
| 288 | Example: |
| 289 | <object class="wxCheckList"> |
| 290 | <content> |
| 291 | <item>One</item> |
| 292 | <item checked="1">Two</item> |
| 293 | <item checked="1">Three</item> |
| 294 | <item>Four</item> |
| 295 | </content> |
| 296 | </object> |
| 297 | |
| 298 | |
| 299 | wxScrolledWindow |
| 300 | ---------------- |
| 301 | position Position -1,-1 |
| 302 | size Size -1,-1 |
| 303 | style Style[wxScrolledWindow] wxHSCROLL | wxVSCROLL |
| 304 | |
| 305 | |
| 306 | wxSplitterWindow |
| 307 | ---------------- |
| 308 | position Position -1,-1 |
| 309 | size Size -1,-1 |
| 310 | style Style[wxSplitterWindow] wxSP_3D |
| 311 | sashpos Integer 0 |
| 312 | (Initial sash position) |
| 313 | minsize Integer -1 |
| 314 | (Minimal panel size) |
| 315 | orientation "horizontal"|"vertical" horizontal |
| 316 | |
| 317 | wxSplitterWindow must have at least one and at most two children objects. |
| 318 | If there's only one child object, it is passed to wxSplitterWindow::Initialize |
| 319 | and the splitter is created unsplitted. If there are two children, the |
| 320 | splitter is created splitted, either horizontally or vertically depending |
| 321 | on the value of "orientation" attribute. |
| 322 | |
| 323 | |
| 324 | wxToolBar |
| 325 | --------- |
| 326 | position Position -1,-1 |
| 327 | size Size -1,-1 |
| 328 | style Style[wxToolBar] wxNO_BORDER|wxTB_HORIZONTAL |
| 329 | bitmapsize Size -1,-1 |
| 330 | (Size of contained bitmaps) |
| 331 | margins Size -1,-1 |
| 332 | packing Integer -1 |
| 333 | separation Integer -1 |
| 334 | |
| 335 | wxToolBar node may have children <object> and <object_ref> nodes. Their class |
| 336 | may be either "tool", "separator" or any wxWindows class derived from |
| 337 | wxControl. "tool" and "separator" are special pseudo-classes that may only |
| 338 | appear within wxToolBar node. Their attributes are as follows: |
| 339 | |
| 340 | separator |
| 341 | --------- |
| 342 | (doesn't have any attributes) |
| 343 | |
| 344 | tool |
| 345 | ---- |
| 346 | bitmap Bitmap |
| 347 | bitmap2 Bitmap wxNullBitmap |
| 348 | toggle Boolean 0 |
| 349 | radio Boolean 0 |
| 350 | label I18nString "" |
| 351 | tooltip I18nString "" |
| 352 | longhelp I18nString "" |
| 353 | position Position -1,-1 |
| 354 | |
| 355 | Constraints: |
| 356 | At most one of "toggle" and "radio" attributes may be 1. |
| 357 | Attribute "position" may not appear if "label" or "radio" attributes |
| 358 | are used or if parent wxToolBar's style contains wxTB_TEXT. |
| 359 | |
| 360 | Note: |
| 361 | Use of "position" attribute is strongly discouraged, it is deprecated |
| 362 | usage of wxToolBar and it is not supported by MSW and GTK |
| 363 | implementations. |
| 364 | |
| 365 | Children objects are added to the toolbar using AddTool for "tool" class, |
| 366 | AddSeparator for "separator" and AddControl for other classes. |
| 367 | |
| 368 | |
| 369 | |
| 370 | 5. More features |
| 371 | ================ |
| 372 | |
| 373 | FIXME -- "platform" property handling |
| 374 | |
| 375 | |
| 376 | === EOF === |
| 377 | |
| 378 | Version: $Id$ |