Setting Preserve Identities to false (default)
false, widgets in Px pages do not have user-assigned names. The names of child slots are auto-generated by their parent components,
and those names are not visible to you, the user of the Px Editor. Let’s create the following example:
- With Preserve Identities set to
false, create a new .px file and open it in the Px Editor. - In the Px Properties side bar, create a
gx:Brushproperty named labelBackground and give it a value of lightGreen. For more details, see the How to use Px Properties section. - Add two labels to the Px page's CanvasPane. Give them the text "My Label One" and "My Label Two".
- Select both, right-click one, and choose Edit Properties. Right-click background and choose , and click OK.Both labels should turn light green.
- Save the Px Editor.
Notice that the labels can be seen in the Widget Tree. The differing text of the labels are shown, but they are otherwise indistinguishable. They are both Labels, so the name for both is just Label. - Right-click on one of the labels and notice that there is no Rename command. This is because with Preserve Identities set to
false, you cannot edit the names of widgets in Px pages.Let's take a look at how they are stored:
From the Px Editor menu, select Goto Source XML.
In the source XML, you see entries for your CanvasPane and its child Labels. Note that the <Label> tags are named
LabelandLabel1. With Preserve Identities disabled, widgets do not have user-configured names. Their names are auto-generated. The default behavior for auto-generating a slot name is to simply name it the same as its type with numbers appended for duplicates, so slot names for labels areLabel,Label1,Label2, etc. If you examine the <properties> section, you can see that these auto-generated slot names are also used to target the Px Properties.