Chapter 4: Property Management 69
iTool Developer’s Guide About the Properties Interface
of visual objects (default line style, colors, etc.), and default properties for file
readers, and file writers.
How are Properties Displayed?
Any iTool object can have properties. Properties are always displayed via the iTool
property sheet interface, which uses the IDL WIDGET_PROPERTYSHEET function
to present property names and values in a columnar display. The way the property
sheet interface is displayed to iTool users depends on the type of object for which
properties are being displayed.
• For visualization objects (any graphical item that appears in the iTool
window), the property sheet can be displayed by double-clicking on an item in
the iTool window, by selecting Properties from the window context menu, or
by selecting Visualization Browser from the Window menu.
• For operations, the property sheet can be displayed by selecting Operations
Browser from the Operations menu.
• For system preferences, the property sheet can be displayed by selecting
Preferences from the File menu.
Setting and Retrieving Property Values
iTool property values are set and retrieved like all object property values, via
SetProperty and GetProperty methods. See “IDLitComponent::SetProperty” and
“IDLitComponent::GetProperty” (IDL Reference Guide) for details, but remember
that your own object classes will be responsible for implementing these methods and
handling the actual property values. See the chapters in “Using the iTools Component
Framework” for examples of GetProperty and SetProperty methods.
Property Data Types
While object properties can contain any value that can be stored in IDL, the iTool
property sheet interface (based on the WIDGET_PROPERTYSHEET routine) will
only display properties of nine predefined property data types. (See “Property Data
Types” on page 71 for descriptions of the predefined types.) In addition, the property
sheet interface allows developers to build and associate a separate widget-based user
interface that allows iTool users to specify data values of any IDL data type. User-
defined property values are discussed in “User Defined Property Types” on page 73.
