UserInterfaceTheme
Last updated at 4:48 am UTC on 3 July 2018
A UserInterfaceTheme is a dictionary of preferred visual-properties; colors, borderStyles, borderWidths, fonts, forms, etc. used to color and style the IDE.
A theme for doing presentations may also be activated (details).
Accessing The Theme
To access the proper UserInterfaceTheme instance for an object, send it #userInterfaceTheme. The default implementation on Object provides an instance of UserInterfaceThemeRequest that provides a lightweight, clean proxy of the actual theme in-use by the IDE at the current time. To do anything more sophisticated than basic query and setting of properties you must ask the proxy for the actual theme by sending #theme.
Customizing The Theme
We can ask the userInterfaceTheme for the value of any visual-property, by name:
mySystemWindow userInterfaceTheme closeBoxImage
Initially that would answer nil, which causes the legacy code to use whatever default it's always used. To override various visual-properties of any kind of object, the #set: for: to: message can be used. For example,
myUserInterfaceTheme
set: #closeBoxImage
for: SystemWindow
to: MenuIcons smallCancelIcon
Now the closeBoxImage message will answer the MenuIcons icon instead of nil.
Alternatively, values may be derived based on other values in the theme, as in:
myUserInterfaceTheme
set: #color
for: FillInTheBlankMorph
to: { MenuMorph->#color. #twiceDarker }
This would make FillInTheBlankMorph use the same color as a MenuMorph but twiceDarker, providing a clean way to build coherent sets of colors within a theme. SystemWindow's code can be changed to use the expression above to access elements of the theme.
Upgrading Legacy Code
Following the introduction of this class, various client code all around the system must be modified to access it. This variety of legacy code uses a variety of methods to specify their visual properties:
1) a hard-coded values.
2) a values derived from some other value.
3) providing local storage for a settable value which can be nil.
4) providing local storage for a settable value which is expected to always have a particular valid value (never nil).
The requirement, for each case, is to let the value be overridden.
The solution for each of the above should be handled respectively to the above list, as follows:
1) Check the userInterfaceTheme, if that property returns nil, use the legacy hard-coded value. (see example: SystemWindow>>#createCloseBox).
2) Nothing to do – simply perform the same derivation on the result of (1).
3) Check the local storage, if present, use it. If nil, then check the userInterfaceTheme, if it has this property present, use it, else return nil.
4) Check the userInterfaceTheme, if the property is not nil, use it, otherwise use the local value.
Tool Support
If a new access to #userInterfaceTheme is added to the code, be sure to add the property and its description to the #themeSettings for that class. See implementors of #themeSettings for examples.
UI changes 2016
