In the Designer, you use symbols to represent the nodes in the diagram. A symbol is a graphic object made up of several elements. Symbols can be created and edited through the Symbol Editor which is accessible through the menu Symbols>Edit symbols of the Designer.

Styling Customizer

When a symbol is selected in the diagram, the Styling Customizer displays three tabs: Parameters, Controls, and Interactor.

The parameters are customizable through the Symbol Editor when the symbol is selected.

Assigning a Symbol

You can replace the symbol assigned to a specific rule by selecting it in the diagram (or by selecting the corresponding rule in the Style rules tree) and choosing Symbols>Assign symbol in the menu bar or by clicking the Assign symbol button in the Styling Customizer. This displays the following dialog box:

The Load a Palette button allows you to select a palette from which to choose a symbol.

The left pane displays the palettes that are loaded. Select a symbol in one of the available palettes.

The right pane shows a preview of the selected symbol.

The View report option allows you to display a report on the selected symbol, that is, the symbol description and parameter details.

Editing a Symbol

You can choose Symbols>Edit symbols in the menu bar to open the Symbol Editor. If no symbol was selected in the diagram, the Symbol Editor opens on an empty window. If a symbol was selected, the Symbol Editor opens on this symbol and allows you to customize it.

Refreshing Symbols

The command Symbols>Refresh symbols of the Designer allows you to rebuild all the symbols if they have changed in the palette.

Managing Palettes

The command Symbols>Manage palettes displays the list of all the palettes used in the diagram, with their location.

You can:

Palette Lookup

The palettes need to be added to the classpath of the application before deployment. However, the Designer requires extra information to correctly manage the symbol customizers. For external palettes, this information is retrieved only if the Designer knows the absolute path of the palettes. In this case, the palettes do not need to be in the Designer classpath.

During a Designer session, an external palette is loaded directly from the Assign Symbol dialog box, through a file selector. The absolute file path of the palette is then known and saved in the style sheet when the project is saved. If the project is loaded in another session, make sure the external palette path has not changed, otherwise the Designer has trouble working out the symbols and a warning message may be displayed.

To ease development, a fallback rule tries to load missing palettes from the project directory (the directory containing the .idpr file).

Please note that, as the Designer environment is very particular, the external palettes must be in the classpath of all deployed applications.