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Unidata IDV Workshop for version 6.3 > Java Developer Topics > Display Controls

5.6.0 Overview of Display Controls
The ucar.unidata.idv.DisplayControl interface defines the API through which all data are displayed. There is a base class ucar.unidata.idv.control.DisplayControlImpl that provides a set of base services. A DisplayControl generally has a data depiction and a control window for modifying or interacting with the display. There are a variety of DisplayControl implementations:

Creating Display Controls

The IDV uses the ucar.unidata.idv.ControlDescriptor class to create set of DisplayControls-s. The set of available DisplayControls-s is defined within the controls.xml resource file.

This file has the form: 

  <control
     id="wxtextdisplay"
     categories="wxtext"
     class="ucar.unidata.apps.example.WxTextDisplayControl"
     description="Weather Text Display"
     label="Weather Text Display"
     displaycategory="General"
     properties="windowVisible=true; displayName=Weather Text Display;"/>
The ControlDescriptor class parses the XML and creates a set of ucar.unidata.idv.ControlDescriptor objects which hold this information.

So, you're probably wondering how you can create your own DisplayControl. You need to make a subclass of DisplayControlImpl and override the following methods:
  1. the no arg constructor - for persistence
  2. doMakeContents - make the GUI
  3. init(DataChoice) - sets up the initialization.

 


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Unidata IDV Workshop for version 6.3 > Java Developer Topics > Display Controls