[las_users] Extreme customization of the current LAS user interface...

[Roland Schweitzer <Roland.Schweitzer@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I advise you not to spend a great deal of time and effort making 
customizations of this kind.  First of all, there are already extensive 
facilities built into LAS that allow installers to organize data 
collections in to arbitrary hierarchies 
<http://www.ferret.noaa.gov/mail_archives/las_users/fu_2006/msg00083.html> 
and to create a custom display 
<http://www.ferret.noaa.gov/mail_archives/las_users/fu_2006/msg00083.html> 
associated with any or all of the nodes in the hierarchy 
and automatically display them in neat little blocks of hierarchical 
text 
<http://www.ferret.noaa.gov/mail_archives/las_users/fu_2006/msg00083.html>. 
The GODAE Modeler's Intercomparison 
<http://www.ferret.noaa.gov/mail_archives/las_users/fu_2006/msg00083.html> 
site is a good example of how the standard tools can be used to create a 
highly customized display of both categories (the opening page) and 
variables (any of the sub-links from the opening page).  Before 
undertaking any modifications to these components make sure it's not 
already possible to achieve the results you want with these tools.

If it turns out you need even more flexibility, as promised here's some 
information on how to create more extreme customizations: 
http://ferret.pmel.noaa.gov/LASdoc/serve/cache/96.html

A final caveat, we're working on a new user interface.  When the new 
version comes out your code will have to be modified to use the classes 
we create that fish this information directly out of a memory 
instantiation of the XML config files instead of a mySQL database.  
We're not trying to preserve the interfaces that interact with the 
database in the new code that interacts with JDOM XML objects, so you'll 
have some rewriting to do.

Roland