By default, TatukGIS software saves all user-formatted layer visual design features — colors, styles, labels, fonts, symbols, etc. — to the corresponding TatukGIS project (*.ttkproject) file. This behavior occurs if the project is composed of one or multiple layers.
TatukGIS products also offer a labor-saving option to save a layer's visual design properties to a layer style (*.ttkstyle) file for re-use in certain situations:
- When added to new projects, layers with a corresponding .ttkstyle file automatically load visual design properties previously saved to its .ttkstlye file. Note that each layer and its corresponding .ttkstyle file must share a common name ‘[layer name].ttkls.ttkstyle’ and folder.
- Visual layer property settings may be shared among entirely different layers by copying and renaming the .ttkstyle to match the name of the different layer, and placing the .ttkstyle file in the folder with the layer file.
Note that layer style (.ttkstyle) files can be created as read/write or read-only. The read-only option is appropriate in most situations, such as when a layer with a standard visual design is used in many projects and/or distributed to many users. Then, if a user later edits the visual properties for that layer, the additional changes are recorded to the project file. If the .ttkstyle is read/write, any subsequent changes are saved to the .ttkstyle file (instead of to the project file). In the event of conflicting visual property settings, information in the project file for the layer is prioritized over the .ttkstyle file when rendering the map.
The layer style (.ttkstyle) file was introduced in Developer Kernel 11 and Editor/Viewer 5, replacing the previous use of *.ini files for this purpose. The Editor/Viewer 5.3 (and subsequent versions) seamlessly upgrades, upon saving, old .ttkgp projects to the new .ttkproject format. If any layer(s) in the old project has design properties stored as *.ini files, the design properties from the *.ini files are saved to a newly created .ttkstyle file for the layer. (This behavior will be introduced in future months to the DK 11.)
See the explanation of the TatukGIS .ttkproject file in KB10831.