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Renderer and Resources Management

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Look and Feel Renderer

The full name of renderer is “look and feel renderer”, which is developed from MiniGUI 3.0.

Renderer separates the management logic of window from drawing of window. MiniGUi is only responsible for managing window, while renderer finishes drawing of window non-client area. Concept of renderer is similar to the concept of skin or theme. The differences are:

  1. MiniGUI provides special renderer interface, which is implemented by concrete renderer

  2. Renderer is composed of a group of interface realizations and a group of property definitions

  3. Renderer can be applied to the global, having effect on all the windows; it can also be applied to a special window instance

MiniGUI itself provides a group of renderer interfaces, which are based on the window itself, and known as the category of system renderer or global renderer. mGNCS provides renderer interface for each control, and different controls have different interfaces. It falls into the category of control renderer.

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Common properties of the Renderer

Property

Type

Explanation

RDR_3DBODY_FGCLR

DWORD (MakeRGBA)

3D object foreground color

RDR_3DBODY_BGCLR

DWORD (MakeRGBA)

3D object background color

RDR_CLIENT_FGCLR

DWORD (MakeRGBA

Window client area foreground color

RDR_CLIENT_BGCLR

DWORD (MakeRGBA

Window client area background color

RDR_SELECTED_FGCLR

DWORD (MakeRGBA)

Foreground color of the selected object

RDR_SELECTED_BGCLR

DWORD (MakeRGBA)

Background color of the selected object

RDR_SELECTED_LOSTFOCUS_CLR

DWORD (MakeRGBA)

Color of the object losing focus

RDR_DISABLE_FGCLR

DWORD (MakeRGBA)

Foreground color of disabled object

RDR_DISABLE_BGCLR

DWORD (MakeRGBA)

Background color of disabled object

RDR_HIGHLIGHT_FGCLR

DWORD (MakeRGBA)

Foreground color of the highlighted object

RDR_HIGHLIGHT_BGCLR

DWORD (MakeRGBA)

Background color of the highlighted object

RDR_METRICS_BORDER

int

Border Size

RDR_FONT

PLOGFONT

Logic font used by the window

RDR_BKIMAGE

PBITMAP

Window background image

RDR_BKIMAGE_MODE

enum ImageDrawMode

Window drawing mode

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Resources Management

In the new control set, as an independent module, resources management module is mainly responsible for managing the resource package, including the functions of loading, accessing and unloading the resource package. When it accesses the resources, it gets the content needed through appointing the resource package where the resource lies in and information such as the unique identifier (ID) of the resource etc.

Resource package is the concept brought forward in order to manage all kinds of resources effectively in a unified way and unifying the mapping of resource and resource identifier (ID). A resource package can contain multiple kinds of resource types, such as image, string and UI resource etc. Resource package brings the following advantages to the management of resources.

Before understanding resources management, it is necessary to understand the following two basic concepts:

  • Resource package : Set of resources, resource set of any kind and any number, which is the minimum unit of resource replacement.

  • Resource ID: Unique identifier for accessing certain resource in the resource package.

Compared to MiniGUI intrinsic control set, resources management module provided by mGNCS has many advantages. For example:

  • Separation of resources management from application codes.

  • Management interfaces of all kinds of resources are unified, making it more convenient and rapid to access resources is.

  • Through simple replacement of resource package, effects can be realized, such as multi-language, multi-style and skin change etc. .

  • Resources deployment is simpler.

  • Matched with visual tool miniStudio, it is convenient to generate resource package containing all kinds of resources.

Resources management of mGNCS mainly implements all kinds of management and accessing to resources surrounding the resource package. If you want to access certain resource correctly, you only need to know the resource package where it is and corresponding resource ID. The overall accessing process is normally:

  1. Load the specified resource package.

  2. Get resource through resource ID.

  3. Use resource, for certain resources, it is necessary to release the resource after use.

  4. Unload resource package

Resource types that the current resource package supports are:

Resource Type ID

Explanation

Remark

NCSRT_UI

UI window resource

Description information of the main window and control, such as window style, size, title and property etc

NCSRT_STRING

String resource

Fixed system constant string such as file name, renderer name and control class name etc

NCSRT_TEXT

Text resource

Text string and locale information specified by the user on UI interface

NCSRT_IMAGE

Image resource

Information of bmp, png and jpg images

NCSRT_RDR

Renderer resource

Information of setting the window element look and feel properties of the specified window renderer

NCSRT_RDRSET

Renderer set resource

Set of renderer resources of the same class

NCSRT_BINARY

User defined resource

Resource of user defined format

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Resource Interface

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Access Resource Package

Resource package is divided into built-in format and external file. No matter which, it is necessary to firstly load resource package when the system starts, and then access the internal resource, and finally unload the resource package correctly after the system exits,. When accessing non built-in resource package, it is necessary to use the following interfaces:

ncsLoadResPackage is responsible for loading resource package, and ncsUnloadResPackage is responsible for unloading resource package. The two need to be used in pairs.

If the resource package that need to be loaded is built-in memory format, it is necessary to firstly get memory resource package information interface (ncsGetIncoreResPackInfo), return the concrete information of the memory resource package, and then use the interface (ncsLoadResPackageFromMem) loading resource package from the memory to load resource package, and finally use the same unload interface (ncsUnloadResPackage) as provided above to unload resource package. NcsGetIncoreResPackInfo interface is provided by built-in conversion tool, which is generated when using the built-in tool to convert the specified resource package file to built-in resource, and application does not need to care about its realization.

These are the example codes of loading resource package file:

These are the example codes of unloading resource package file:

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Get and Set Locale

To set and get locale conveniently, resource management module provides the following two interfaces:

The setting interface is only valid to the resource got through the resource package after setting, and the two parameters represent the language code and country code:

  • language code is represented by two English lower case letters.

  • country code needs to be represented by two to three English lower case letters.

If setting American English as default locale, it can be implemented through the following statement:

The getting interface returns current locale information, and format of the information is: language_country.

ISO639 Language Codes Comparison Table:

ISO3166 Country Codes Comparison Table:

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Create Window UI

When the resource package is used, the creating main window interface provided by mGNCS is more simple compared to creating main window of MiniGUI. Description of the look and feel information of the main window is stored in the resource package, and the interface can start the interface through window resource ID.

  • owner parameter refers to the hosting window;

  • For hIcon and hMenu, 0 by default;

  • handlers and connects are the event listening and connection associated with the window resource ID defined by the user;

  • user_data is additional data, 0 by default.

The method of creating dialog box through window resource ID is similar to the main window. Creating interface through resource ID, the parameter meaning is also similar to the interface of the main window created above:

Create example codes of UI main window through the resource package:

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Get Character String

The method of getting string through resource package is very simple. It is only necessary to transfer the resource ID to interface ncsGetString, and the management module will return the default locale string to the application according to the current locale information.

Get example codes of string through resource package:

  • Note: mGNCS reserves the ID value from NCSRM_SYSSTR_BASEID to NCSRM_SYSSTR_MAXID as the system ID, and public definitions can be returned, such as default renderer: NCSRM_SYSSTR_DEFRDR

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Get Bitmap

Resources management module provides the function of getting corresponding file name through bitmap ID, making it convenient for the upper layer applications to directly use the bitmap provided by MiniGUI to load related interface operation bitmap after getting the file name:

Besides using MiniGUI related interface to access the bitmap, mGNCS also provides the interface to get bitmap object directly through resource ID. After the upper layer applications use the bitmap resource provided by the interface, it is necessary to release the bitmap object through corresponding release interface. This is valid for setting independent bitmap and setting dependant bitmap.

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Set Renderer

Through renderer ID contained in the resource pack, specified window can be set, making it has the window element look and feel property under the renderer configuration. But only the renderer used in the current window by the interface has the same name as the newly set renderer, and it can be valid only when the window class is the child class of the new renderer affiliated control class, otherwise failure will be returned, and the setting is not successful.

In addition, certain renderer set can be configured as default system renderer through renderer set resource setting.

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Example

This instance demonstrates how to use resources management part interface to get resources to the users. This part of codes is automatically generated by miniStudio tool.

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Figure 1 Output of resmgr Program

The program creates a 300x250 dialog box containing two buttons on the screen. The main window is the look and feel effect of classic renderer, and the two buttons are the look and feel effects of skin and flat renderer respectively.

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List 2 resmgr_main.c

List 3 resmgr.c

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