Synth Look and Feel

synthis askinnableJavalook and feel,which is configured with anXMLproperty file.

According to Sun, goals for synth were:

• Enable to create custom look without writing any code.
• Allow appearance to be configured from images.
• Provide the ability to customize the look of a component based on its named properties.
• Provide a centralized point for overriding the look of all components.
• Enable custom rendering based on images, or user-definedSynthPainters.

History

synth is available beginning with versionJ2SE 5.0of Java (seeJava version history).

Java SE 6 Update 10release and newer containNimbus,a cross-platform Look and Feel implemented with Synth. However, for backwards compatibility, Metal is still the default Swing look and feel.

Architecture

Synth is a skinnable look and feel in which all painting is delegated to the components, without having to write any code (seeSynth Look and Feel).

However synth does not provide a default look, and components that are not defined in the synthXMLfile will not be painted. It is however possible to assign a default style to all other widgets, and customize styles for some specific widgets only.

Example

The following XML declaration defines a style named textfield and binds it to all text fields. ThedefaultStyleallows to set a default font, foreground and background colors to all other widgets.

<synth>
<styleid="defaultStyle">
<fontname="Verdana"size="16"/>
<state>
<colorvalue="WHITE"type="BACKGROUND"/>
<colorvalue="BLACK"type="FOREGROUND"/>
</state>
</style>
<bindstyle="defaultStyle"type="region"key=".*"/>
<styleid="textfield">
<state>
<colorvalue="yellow"type="BACKGROUND"/>
</state>
<imagePaintermethod="textFieldBorder"path="textfieldborder.png"
sourceInsets="5 6 6 7"paintCenter="false"/>
<insetstop="5"left="6"bottom="6"right="7"/>
</style>
<bindstyle="textfield"type="region"key="TextField"/>
</synth>

Supposing that the XML declaration is defined in a file namedsynthExample.xml,the following code loads the XML definition file and sets the current look and feel to synth (loading a synth Look and Feel is done using theloadmethod of theSynthLookAndFeelclass):

SynthLookAndFeellaf=newSynthLookAndFeel();
laf.load(newFile("synthExample.xml").toURI().toURL());
UIManager.setLookAndFeel(laf);

See also

• Swing,the standard cross-platformwidget toolkitfor Java
• Pluggable look and feel

External links

• Synth Look and FeelAPI documentation
• synth file format
• synth tutorial
• another synth tutorial
• nimbus home page