Neat! That updateInterface snippet looks like a prime use case for an onCleanup function, to restore the originalLnF no matter what, such as if any of the code errors or the user Ctrl-C’s 🙂

@Eric, indeed so. However, I usually prefer not to use onCleanup since it is only available in R2008a onward. Instead, I tend to use simple try-catch blocks, which are backward compatible all the way back to Matlab 6. As recently ^[18] in the EigenVector blog, there are still plenty of users out there who use non-recent Matlab releases. So in general, unless there is a very good reason otherwise, I try to make my code as backward-compatible as possible. Luckily, most of the newish Matlab constructs have equivalent backward-compatible constructs so I am able to do so without much effort.

Nice write up. I’m studying something similar here at Fort Lewis College. It’s always helpful to
learn new stuff from fellow writers and collect expertise
from new sources. I’d like to incorporate some of this material
on my own blog (if you don’t mind). And of course, I’ll put up a backlink to your site at undocumentedmatlab.com on my own page. Kudos for posting.

Very interesting, thanks! Just a small suggestion: To make you code cross-platform, in the file JTattooDemo.m you could change the line:

javaclasspath( {folder, [folder '\JTattoo.jar']} );

to:

javaclasspath( {folder, [folder filesep 'JTattoo.jar']} );

because in GNU/Linux the file separator is “/” and not “\” 🙂

@Digna – I normally use ‘/folder/file’ format for compatibility (this works on all platforms), it was simply an oversight in this case… – thanks for pointing it out

Yair, Thank you so much for this. I just want to how to use the Jtattoo LnF’s UIcontrols in making a new GUI in matlab. I have only experience making GUI in matlab by using matlab GUIDE. Is it possible that I can change the design of the UIcontrols in matlab GUIDE? How can I do it?

Thanks.

@Kilojoules – of course you can – read here: ^[19]

Somewhere I have a fundamental misunderstanding of how to access third-party .jar files. This *seems* straightforward enough to me, but it doesn’t appear to work:

 
hFig = figure;
hc = uiflowcontainer('v0', 'Units', 'norm', 'Position', [0.1 0.1 0.8 0.8]);
h1 = uicontrol('String', 'One', 'Parent', hc);
javaaddpath ./JTattoo-1.6.10.jar;
m = javax.swing.UIManager();
oldLF = m.getLookAndFeel;
newLFName1 = 'com.jtattoo.plaf.aero.AeroLookAndFeel'; % This one fails!
newLFName2 = 'com.jgoodies.looks.plastic.Plastic3DLookAndFeel'; % This one works!
m.setLookAndFeel(newLFName1);
[j2, h2] = javacomponent(javax.swing.JButton('Two')); 
set(h2, 'Parent', hc);
m.setLookAndFeel(oldLF);

I expect to see two buttons, each with a different look and feel. However, I’ve tried every iteration of accessing the jtattoo LaF’s and can’t seem to set them. The .jar shows up when I type ‘javaclasspath’, so I think it should be accessible. This same error occurs regardless of which LaF I try to access from the JTattoo library, as well as any other 3rd-party library. However, if I use ‘newLFName2’ above, things work nicely.

So, I suspect I’m not understanding how to access the 3rd-party classes correctly. Any advice for a beginner?

@HAC – JTattoo LNFs cannot be used like simple LNFs. Take a look at the source code of the utility to see how they can be used.

Ah, that explains it. Thanks, Yair. Perhaps other LNFs (weblaf, PgsLookAndFeel, etc.) are the same way as well.

[…] like to welcome repeat guest blogger Karthik Ponudurai, who has previously written here about the JTattoo look-and-feel, and about integration of Java controls’ events with Matlab callbacks. Today, Karthik […]

Hi Yair,
Thanks for the post. You can also do a lot to customize the appearance of each LaF by using the public ‘setTheme’ method, which accepts a java.util.Properties object (the full set of customizable properties can be found ^[20]). This works well the very first time you set a particular LaF for a figure in the current MATLAB session. However, it seems that if you change some of the properties, and then build another figure with that same LaF, only a subset of those changes are actually registered. For example, if I set the ‘menuSelectionBackgroundColor’ and ‘menuBackgroundColor’ properties for the GraphiteLookAndFeel, only the ‘menuSelectionBackgroundColor’ property change has any subsequent effect. So far, restarting MATLAB seems to be the only fix. I’m currently using 2013a on a mac OSX system. Any thoughts would be appreciated!
Cheers!

Hi Yair,
I’ve seen the demo but when I adapt it into my gui code gcbf is not recognize.
How can I resolve it ? Can you give me a simply implementation in gui