GUI Note Skin Depths

The R3 GUI defines three depths (levels) of skinning:

thin-skin: These are lightweight changes made only to the attributes (facets) of GUI elements. These are sometimes called color schemes. For example changing the default background colors for panels, buttons, fields is a thin-skin change.

medium-skin: These are changes made to the DRAW block specifications of GUI elements (within styles). These provide a greater level of graphical detail, but they are also more difficult to make (they are scalar vector graphic changes). Since they include thin-skins, these are often called themes. They change the appearance of visual elements, but not their positions (beyond size changes).

thick-skin: These are changes to the layout of panels (other than those due to sizing) but may include changes to style actors (the interactor functions). For example, a panel includes special action icons along the right side, but a person wants a new skin that moves them to the top.

All of these are achievable in the R3 GUI, but they require different levels of skill.

• Thin skinning can be done via master style-sheets that can be accessed by name within the styles themselves. (This is how we handle fonts attributes as well.) An application can even allow users to make simple changes to their color schemes without any knowledge of the graphics system. A simple control panel, such as that used for Display Properties on Windows works quite well.
• Medium skinning changes a style's DRAW block. It requires an understanding of vector graphics and how commands and attributes are combined to achieve the desired effects. These kinds of skins will need to be done by GUI programmers or artists. To install such changes, new styles are defined with the newly created DRAW blocks.
• Thick skinning changes panel layouts. Layouts are not inherently difficult, but various special requirements in a design often lead to unusual exceptions that require deeper thought and greater experimentation. For well designed programs, changes to layouts should not be difficult; However, thick skin changes to style actors (interactors) are similar to style creation, and for all but the simplest cases will require a knowledgeable programmer.