The project focuses on handling FMX (FireMonkey) Vector Styles, which are commonly used in Delphi applications for UI design. The key challenges faced include:
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Excessive Color Usage: Default styles often employ a wide array of colors, making it difficult to manage and maintain consistency across styles. This abundance of colors can lead to a cluttered user interface and complicate the design process.
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Diverse Feature Implementations: Different styles implement various features, leading to discrepancies and confusion when developing applications that rely on these styles. This variation poses a significant challenge when switching styles at runtime. If a selected style does not implement all the features required by the application, it can result in runtime errors, unexpected behavior, or degraded user experience.
To address these challenges, the project proposes the following solutions:
The project aims to streamline the colors used in FMX Vector Styles. By reducing the number of colors, we can:
- Enhance visual consistency across different styles, leading to a more cohesive user experience.
- Simplify the design process for developers and designers by providing a clearer set of colors to choose from.
- Facilitate better maintainability of styles, making it easier to update or modify color schemes in the future.
A feature matrix is created to provide a comprehensive overview of the features implemented by each style. This matrix includes:
- Features as Rows: Each unique feature supported by the styles is listed as a row.
- Files as Columns: Each style file is represented as a column.
- Presence Indicator: A binary indicator (1 or 0) shows whether a particular feature is implemented in a style.
This matrix serves several purposes:
- Clarity: Developers can quickly assess which features are available in each style, thereby avoiding potential pitfalls when switching styles.
- Comparison: It allows for easy comparison between styles, helping in decision-making when selecting a style for a specific application. This feature is particularly important when developers need to ensure that switching between styles at runtime does not disrupt the application's functionality.
- Documentation: The generated matrix acts as a form of documentation for the styles, facilitating better understanding and maintenance of the styles used within an application.
In addition to the feature matrix, the project also generates:
- Color Tables for Changed Colors: This provides a visual reference for any colors that have been modified in the styles, allowing developers to easily track color changes.
- Colormaps for Changed Styles: This feature helps visualize the relationship between different styles and their respective color mappings, making it easier to manage and implement style changes across applications.
To utilize the feature matrix generator:
- Input Directory: Place your FMX Vector Style files in the designated input directory.
- File Mask: Specify the desired file mask to filter which styles to include (e.g.,
*.Style). - Run the Generator: Execute the generator to create the feature matrix and any associated color tables or colormaps.
- Output Options: Optionally, save the matrix and color information as CSV or Markdown files for further analysis and documentation.
- Python 3.x
- pandas library for data manipulation
- Additional libraries as required for parsing FMX styles (e.g., your custom
FMXStyleparser).
This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.
- Thanks to the community for support and inspiration in developing this project.
- Special mention to the creators of FMX styles and the Delphi programming community for their invaluable contributions and resources.
- Potential integration of automated style validation to ensure that switching styles at runtime will not lead to missing features.
- User interface improvements for visualizing the feature matrix and color tables in a more intuitive format.
- Implementation of tools for optimizing color usage across styles dynamically.