Insets for custom Synth look and feel

I'm implementing a custom Look & Feel 开发者_开发问答using Synth for my application - basically providing custom versions of SynthStyle, SynthPainter and SynthStyleFactory.

I am not using any XML, i.e. everything is done through the Java API. In general this is working just fine.

The best way to set appropriate insets is however proving a little tricky. I can see various options:

• Override getInsets for SynthStyle to return specific insets for each Region
• Apply a border to components using SynthStyle.installDefaults
• Set all insets to (0,0,0,0) and compensate in the painting methods
• Create new ComponentUI delegates

What would be the best approach and why?

Did you come to a decision on this yet? Here's my opinion on things...

Overriding getInsets() looks like a nice solution if you have a simple style with a small number of contexts. It should help keep insets consistent throughout your GUI with only one point of change needed.

Applying an empty border to components seems a little hackish for this purpose. If you need to apply a custom border to a component then you might inadvertently remove the empty border unless you override the setBorder() methods to use a compound border.

Setting all insets to 0 is unnecessary since they start at 0 already... I would be very scared at the thought of rewriting paint methods! That's generally done for adding finishing touches to components, not re-defining their entire boundaries.

I'm not entirely sure how creating a new ComponentUI would help, since that's mainly to do with sizing and painting (like the above).

I would try out option 1 first since it will have a global effect on your application, and then start working out what exceptions and contexts you want to put into it.