Customizing The Bat! skin

In order to be able to customize The Bat!'s skin it is necessary to make the corresponding changes in the batskin.xml file.

This is an common XML file with a standard structure. It has to contain the following sections:
…

is outer level. Inside this section two optional sub-sections can be placed:

is used to give this customization file a description
Text is used to place a copyright notice

Then follow the mandatory sections:

… this sub-section is used to define a number of used bitmap files.
It must contain at least one bitmap entry:

Such entries will define what bitmap files will be used as source for the graphics.
The ID here is a unique user-defined ID for this bitmap to be referenced to later in the batskin.xml file; FILE is a file name of used bitmap file, supported formats are .PNG, .BMP, .JPG. In case of .PNG-file, alpha layer will be used for transparent areas. In case of .JPG-file the transparent areas will be defined by top-left pixel color – this color will become a “transparent” color. In case of .BMP-file, if source bitmap is 32-bit with alpha, alpha layer will be used to define transparency, otherwise top-left pixel will define transparency.
CROPX/CROPY/CROPWIDTH/CROPHEIGHT are optional integer values, which define used portion of the loaded bitmap. Sometimes source bitmap may be bigger than needed. This parameters allow user to crop the picture to the needed size when loaded, in a way similar to Photoshop’s “Crop Image” function.

The section follows another mandatory section:

… this sub-section is used to define sizes of glyph groups inside the host programme (The Bat!).

It contains entries like:

Such entries define sizes for different glyph groups used in host application. GROUP_ID values are predefined by host application and are listed in Appendix A.

Section define how actual glyphs are located in source bitmaps.

…

Inside this section following sub-entries may be placed:

Where BITMAP_ID should be the exact ID parameter value of one of the bitmaps in the section, GLYPH_WIDTH/GLYPH_HEIGHT define the size of the following glyph definitions.

One of the batskin.xml concepts is to locate glyphs in a virtual grid cells. It works as follows:
Picture 1.

Source bitmap is virtually divided into equal cells. Each cell may contain one glyph. References to glyphs are made using column and row numbers, starting with 0.
GRID_WIDTH/GRID_HEIGHT defines the grid cell size.
XOFS/YOFS define the offset of each glyph inside the grid cell, default to 0/0, if omitted.

This entry defines one glyph to be used in host application.
GLYPH_ID is an application-predefined value, listed in Appendix B.
COL/ROW is position of the glyph in current virtual grid.
XOFS/YOFS optional, overrides grid’s values for this only glyph.
GLYPH_WIDTH/GLYPH_HEIGHT optional, overrides definition of glyph size.

This entry defines one glyph from a separate file.
FILE specifies the source file name.
XOFS/YOFS is optional, specifies starting (top-left) point of the glyph, default to (0, 0)
GLYPH_WIDTH/GLYPH_HEIGHT optional, definition of glyph size.

  download batskin.xml

Appendix A.

Appendix B. 

  download batskin.xml