1 XRC resources format specification
2 ==================================
4 !!!!! NOT YET FINISHED !!!!!
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.
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)
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.
24 Note: see also http://ldaptool.sourceforge.net/XRCGuide/XRCGuideSingle/
31 The usual XML terminology applies. In particular, we shall use the terms
32 NODE, PROPERTY and VALUE in the XML sense:
34 <node property1="value1" property2="value2">...</node>
36 The term ATTRIBUTE is specific to XRC and refers to a subnode
37 of an <object> or <object_ref> node that is itself not <object> or <object_ref>.
38 In the example below, <pos>, <label> and <style> are attributes, while neither
39 <resource> nor either of <object>s is:
41 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8">
42 <resource xmlns="http://www.wxwidgets.org/wxxrc" version="2.5.3.0">
43 <object class="wxPanel">
44 <style>wxSUNKEN_BORDER</style> <!-- attr -->
45 <object class="wxStaticText">
46 <label>A label</label> <!-- attr -->
47 <pos>10,10</pos> <!-- attr -->
52 ATTRIBUTE VALUE is the content of all text elements within attribute tag. In the
53 above example, "wxSUNKEN_BORDER", "A label" and "10,10" are attribute values.
54 ATTRIBUTE TYPE defines what attribute values are valid for given attribute (you
55 can think of it as attribute value syntax definition).
59 2. Elementary description
60 =========================
62 XRC resource file is a well-formed XML 1.0 document. All elements of XRC file
63 are from the http://www.wxwidgets.org/wxxrc namespace.
65 The root node of XRC document must be <resource>. The <resource> node has
66 optional "version" property. Default version (in absence of the version
67 property) is "0.0.0.0". The version consists of four integers separated by
68 periods. Version of XRC format changes only if there was an incompatible
69 change introduced (i.e. either the library cannot understand old resource
70 files or older versions of the library wouldn't understand the new format).
71 The first three integers are major, minor and release number of the wxWidgets
72 release when the change was introduced, the last one is revision number and
73 is 0 for the first incompatible change in given wxWidgets release, 1 for
76 Differences between versions are described within this document in paragraphs
77 entitled "Version Note".
79 The <resource> node contains namespace declaration, too:
81 <resource xmlns="http://www.wxwidgets.org/wxxrc" version="2.5.3.0">
83 The <resource> node is only allowed to have <object> and <object_ref>
84 subnodes, all of which must have the "name" property.
86 The <object> node represents a single object (GUI element) and it usually maps
87 directly to a wxWidgets class instance. It three properties: "name", "class"
88 and "subclass". "class" must always be present, it tells XRC what wxWidgets
89 object should be created in this place. The other two are optional. "name" is
90 ID used to identify the object. It is the value passed to the XRCID() macro and
91 is also used to construct wxWindow's id and name attributes and must be unique
92 among all children of the nearest container object (wxDialog, wxFrame,
93 wxPanel, wxNotebook) upside from the object in XML nodes hierarchy (two distinct
94 containers may contain objects with same "name", though). "subclass" is
95 optional name of class whose constructor will be called instead of the
96 constructor for "class". Subclass must be available in the program that loads
97 the resource, must be derived from "class" and must be registered within
98 wxWidgets' RTTI system.
102 <object name="MyList1" class="wxListCtrl" subclass="MyListCtrlClass">
106 <object> node may have arbitrary child nodes. What child nodes and their
107 semantics are class-dependent and are defined later in this document. The user
108 is allowed to register new object handlers within XRC and extend it to accept
109 new <object> classes (and therefore different <object>'s child nodes).
111 <object_ref> node is identical to <object>, except that it does _not_ have
112 "class" property and has additional required property "ref". It's concept is
113 similar to Unix symlinks: value of the "ref" property is equal to the value of
114 "name" property of some existing node (called referred node) in the resources
115 (not necessary top-level). Referred node's "class" property and all subnodes
116 are copied in place of the referee <object_ref> node which is then processed as
117 regular <object> node. If the <object_ref> node itself has child nodes, then
118 these nodes _override_ any nodes from the referred node.
122 <object name="foo" class="wxTextCtrl">
126 <object_ref name="bar" ref="foo">
127 <value>bar</value> <!-- override! -->
132 <object name="foo" class="wxTextCtrl">
136 <object name="bar" class="wxTextCtrl">
143 3. Common attribute types
144 =========================
146 There are several attribute types (see section 1. Terminology) that are common
147 to many attributes of different classes:
151 Any text. Some characters have special interpretation and are translated
152 by XRC parser according to this table:
153 "_" -> "&" ('&' is used to underline e.g. menu items in wxWidgets)
155 "\n" -> line break (C character '\n')
156 "\r" -> carriage return (C character '\r')
157 "\t" -> tab (C character '\t')
159 (introduced in version 2.5.3.0, not done in earlier versions)
162 '$' was used instead of '_' prior to version 2.3.0.1.
167 Like String, but the value is translated to native language using wxLocale
168 at runtime (unless it was disabled by not passing wxXRC_USE_LOCALE flag to
169 wxXmlResource constructor). Used for strings that are "visible" in the GUI.
174 This is obvious. Only digits 0-9 may be present and there must be at least
180 Like UnsignedInteger but may be prefixed with '-' (ints less than zero).
185 Specifies (window's) position in 2D space. Syntax is <integer>,<integer>[d]
186 where <integer> is valid value of Integer type.
191 Syntax is same as Position's syntax, but the values are interpreted as window
192 size (wxSize type) and not position (wxPosition type).
197 List of style flags that can be passed to wxSomeClass' constructor. Flags are
198 written in same way as in C++ code (e.g. "wxSUNKEN_BORDER",
199 "wxHW_SCROLLBAR_NEVER") and are delimited with any combination of whitespaces
200 and '|'. Possible flags are class-dependent and are not described in this
201 technote. Please refer to wxWidgets manual for all styles that given class can
202 accept; if XRC does not accept a flag listed in wxWidgets documentation, it is
208 Attribute value is interpreted as filename (either absolute or relative to
209 the location of XRC resource file). In addition, attribute node may have
210 "stock_id" and "stock_client" properties. Their values may be any of wxArtID (or
211 wxArtClient respectively) values as used by wxArtProvider (because the user may
212 define own constants, effectively any string is legal here). Examples are
213 "wxART_FILE_OPEN" (id) or "wxART_MENU" (client).
215 Any of "stock_id" or "stock_client" properties or the filename may be omitted.
216 XRC determines the bitmap to use according to this algorithm:
217 1. If there is non-empty "stock_id" property, query wxArtProvider for the
218 bitmap (if there is no "stock_client", use default one, which is usually
219 wxART_OTHER; exceptions are noted in class-specific sections below). If
220 the query fails, continue to 2.
221 2. Load the bitmap from the file in attribute value.
226 Boolean value, either "0" (false) or "1" (true).
233 Attributes are listed in tables in the following format:
234 attribute name attribute type default value, if any
235 [(optional remarks....................
236 ...................................)]
240 This is a special case, because it does not create a wxWindow instance but
241 creates wxBitmap instead. Another exceptional thing is that it does not have
242 any attributes. Instead, the node itself is interpreted as if it were attribute
245 Example: <object class="wxBitmap">bitmaps/foo.gif</object>
250 Identical to wxBitmap class, except that it creates wxIcon instead of wxBitmap.
255 position Position -1,-1
257 style Style[wxButton]
260 default Boolean false
261 (Is the button default button?)
266 position Position -1,-1
268 style Style[wxCalendarCtrl]
273 position Position -1,-1
275 style Style[wxCheckBox]
276 checked Boolean false
281 position Position -1,-1
283 style Style[wxCheckList]
284 content (see below) (empty)
286 Optional "content" attribute does not have attribute value. Instead,
287 arbitrary number of <item> nodes may be rooted under it (the control
288 is filled with strings contained in these nodes). Each <item>
289 node must contain I18nString value and may have "checked" property
290 with possible values "0" or "1" indicating the the item is initially
294 <object class="wxCheckList">
297 <item checked="1">Two</item>
298 <item checked="1">Three</item>
306 position Position -1,-1
308 style Style[wxDialog] wxDEFAULT_DIALOG_STYLE
311 centered Boolean false
313 wxDialog may have children objects.
318 position Position -1,-1
320 style Style[wxDialog] wxDEFAULT_FRAME_STYLE
323 centered Boolean false
325 wxFrame may have children objects. There can be at most one wxToolBar,
326 wxMenuBar and wxStatusBar children; objects of these types are automatically
327 set as frame's tool-, menu- and statusbar respectively.
332 position Position -1,-1
334 style Style[wxScrolledWindow] wxHSCROLL | wxVSCROLL
336 wxScolledWindow may have children objects.
341 position Position -1,-1
343 style Style[wxSplitterWindow] wxSP_3D
345 (Initial sash position)
348 orientation "horizontal"|"vertical" horizontal
350 wxSplitterWindow must have at least one and at most two children objects.
351 If there's only one child object, it is passed to wxSplitterWindow::Initialize
352 and the splitter is created unsplit. If there are two children, the
353 splitter is created split, either horizontally or vertically depending
354 on the value of "orientation" attribute.
359 fields Integer number of fields
360 widths Width1, Width2, Width3, ...
365 position Position -1,-1
367 style Style[wxToolBar] wxNO_BORDER|wxTB_HORIZONTAL
368 bitmapsize Size -1,-1
369 (Size of contained bitmaps)
372 separation Integer -1
374 wxToolBar node may have children <object> and <object_ref> nodes. Their class
375 may be either "tool", "separator" or any wxWidgets class derived from
376 wxControl. "tool" and "separator" are special pseudo-classes that may only
377 appear within wxToolBar node. Their attributes are as follows:
381 (doesn't have any attributes)
386 bitmap2 Bitmap wxNullBitmap
390 tooltip I18nString ""
391 longhelp I18nString ""
392 position Position -1,-1
395 At most one of "toggle" and "radio" attributes may be 1.
396 Attribute "position" may not appear if "label" or "radio" attributes
397 are used or if parent wxToolBar's style contains wxTB_TEXT.
400 Use of "position" attribute is strongly discouraged, it is deprecated
401 usage of wxToolBar and it is not supported by MSW and GTK
404 Children objects are added to the toolbar using AddTool for "tool" class,
405 AddSeparator for "separator" and AddControl for other classes.
412 FIXME -- "platform" property handling