The purpose of a property sheet (created with WIDGET_PROPERTYSHEET) is to enable the user to view and edit the properties of an object subclassed from the IDLitComponent class. (All IDLit* objects and most IDLgr* subclass from the IDLitComponent class.)
For example, a user may have rendered data as a surface. Using IDL’s iSurface tool, the user can select the surface and bring up a property sheet that lists all of the surface’s properties, including color, shading method, etc. To change the color, the user can go to the property sheet, select the color property, bring up the color picker, and select a new color. The name of the changed property is placed into an IDL event. It is in the processing of this event that the object is updated. An existing property sheet can be assigned a new component, which causes it to reload with the new list of properties and their values.
The following show how to use the property sheet widget with the iTool’s paradigm.