Portals

[Context: HL Kit … Basic Concepts and Terminology … Visual Building Blocks]

Overview

Portals are the finest level of control within a visual presentation. They provide access to individual fields within things and picks. Fields are hooked up to portals, thereby allowing the user to view and/or modify the contents of those fields. For example, a "label" portal could be associated with the "damage" field for a weapon, thereby allowing the contents of the field to be displayed to the user via that portal. If an "edit" portal were used instead, then the contents of the field could potentially be modified by the user.

Each of the different types of portals is summarized in the sections below. Complete details on each portal type will be found within the Kit Reference section of this documentation.

Label Portals

Labels are the simplest type of portal and allow the display of information to the user. There are different types of label portals, depending on what the label contains and how it is to be displayed to the user. Literal labels display fixed text, field-based labels show the contents of a specific field, script-based labels synthesize their contents via a script, and title labels present their contents with special formatting for use as a title.

Image Portals

Image portals enable the display of images to the user, and there are different types. Literal images display the same image always, field-based images show the image specified by a field, user images present the image selected by a user, and reference images allow a user-added image to be adapted dynamically at run-time (such as using the character portrait on the Tactical Console).

Edit Portals

|Edit portals enable the user to edit the contents of a specific field. Simple edits provide direct editing of a numeric or text field, while date edits offer structured editing that ensures the contents of the field always subscribe to specific rules (e.g. four digits for year, two digits for month, etc.).