Creating Skins

So far this page contains a few thoughts randomly scattered around as I (centipede) learn how to create skins. It may be worth a reading though.

What the artist should know about programming CEGUI

If you are more of an artist than a programmer, and you intend to make skins for CEGUI, but have practically no experience with how to program it then all those definition files (imageset, scheme, looknfeel) and other things will be wildly confusing. You need to have a basic idea of how the code works before things will make any sense, but once you do it all seems so naturally logical. The reason this wiki-entry has been written is that the author is right in the transition from foggy confusion to perfect clarity, and he wants to put his experience into writing before he becomes a silent member of the crowd of people who thinks these matters are so obvious that they hardly need to be expounded upon. If you are wise, you will add your thoughts and experience too.

The programmer lives in the C++ world whereas the artist lives in the XML world. They are brought together in the Look-plugins: FalagardLook (and previously TaharezLook and WindowsLook). It works a bit like the Model/View paradigm. The Core library is not at all concerned with how things look. It is only interested in behaviour: What state is the button in right now, and what would happen if the user moved the mouse away while keeping the button pressed etc.

(PLEASE EXPAND ON ALL THIS AS NECESSARY!)

Let us

Look'n'feel notes

It took a while for me to figure out the role that <Child>, <NamedArea> and <StateImagery> plays and how they were (and were not) connected to each other.