- Forms Designer Glossary

BPSL

The Business Process Specification Language allows you to formally specify PROIV business components and their inter-relationships that, together, constitute a complete business application. A BPSL source file consists of several sections. Each section consists of various kinds of clauses. Some of these clauses are optional and some are required.

BPSL forms the neutral basis for exchanging business application component specifications among tools participating in the open PROIV Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Source specifications are declared in an ASCII readable, industry standard, BNF form so that it may be processed by standard parser technology.

Canvas

The canvas is the work area within the Forms Designer where all function form modification occurs; the canvas and the current form always occupy the same area. A form is painted on a canvas. Enlarging or reducing the canvas automatically enlarges and reduces the contained form.

Although a canvas is sizable, its default size is a 24x80 surface that acts as the full screen area occupied by the application during deployment. A canvas may be resized from a 1x1 cell to the maximum row and column size coordinate limits imposed by the current terminal.

When a form is smaller than the current size of the easel frame, it appears on the easel frame in the position and area assigned by its anchor coordinates.

Forms exceeding the current size of the easel frame automatically display scroll bars so all 'form' real estate is reachable. When the easel containing the canvas is enlarged beyond the current display maximum the remaining easel workspace is hatched and greyed out. This signifies it is unreachable. In addition, a rectangular ‘frame’ automatically appears, marking the boundary of the maximum display area.

Individual forms of a function are reachable using tabs appearing on the bottom of the easel client area.

All sub-forms associated with a function automatically appear as a tree structure in the Subform Browser window to the left of the canvas. All checked subforms appear on the canvas concurrently. Although a Canvas may be toggled between GUI and green screen interface representations without re-retrieving the function’s parts list, and both views support positioning changes. Both GUI and green screen controls appear in the same row/column coordinate space since they share a single layout definition.

Control

A control is the smallest unit of resource requiring positioning in a user interface. It maps to a PROIV element. A control may or may not be interactive. Each control knows how to acquire and save its own properties as defined by the property BNF declaration.

Current PROIV controls are Button, Icon, ListBox, ComboBox, RadioGroup, PagingArea, CheckBox, EditBox, Box, VerticalLine, HorizontalLine and StaticText. A PagingArea control must exist in a PROIV specification before it appears on a form within the Forms Designer and cannot be added during Form Design operations.

Control Palette

The Control Palette is responsible for providing a graphic control directory from which a developer can select, drag and drop a control onto a form during modification. The Control Palette is currently segmented into two tabs: (1) static and (2) dynamic. Dynamic controls are EditBox, ComboBox, ListBox, CheckBox, RadioGroup, Button and Icon (bitmap). Static controls are Button, Icon, VerticalLine, HorizontalLine, Box and StaticText.

Dynamic Node

A dynamic node in the Subform Browser maps to a logical screen variable declaration within PROIV. It is responsible for numbering all variables (data bound controls) referenced in a logical screen within a function. The order of these variables explicitly declares the order they are processed by the application at run-time.

Easel

The Easel is one of the primary Forms Designer windows whose client area is split between the Subform Browser on the left and the remaining screen area on the right. The canvas is always positioned within this area and usually completely covers it unless the easel is expanded larger than the 24x80 display. If a form covers the entire easel frame, it covers the entire user’s screen during deployment.

There may be multiple easels in a Forms Designer session, each associated with a different function. Controls and sets of controls may be moved and copied between easels using copy and paste operations, or drag and drop services.

Field Browser

The Field Browser is responsible for presenting a list of PROIV fields from the application repository so that you can select a field and associate it with the currently selected control. Like the Function Browser, the Field Browser allows developers to search for fields using partial field names. A known field name can be entered manually and retrieved. A developer can also use predefined queues, categories and files to aid in the search for a specific field. Once a field has been selected it can be dragged and drop on any existing field level control which will bind the field to the control.

Form

A form is a container for one or more subforms. A form maps to a PROIV window, which is a top-level logical screen (LS) that has assigned display coordinates. A function may have multiple top-level logical screens and therefore multiple forms; a top-level screen is one in which the screen is not cleared (no CRT clear) when the associated LS is exited. Each form within a function appears on a separate horizontal tab at the bottom of the easel client window.

Frame

A frame represents the maximum viewable design space for the current terminal declaration of the application. It is usually a 24x80 row/column display space that stays anchored to the top left corner of the easel client area. It is the real estate within which the actual canvas/form floats when a form is smaller than the whole 24x80 space. It allows the designer to see the position of such a popup window relative to the entire deployed screen. When a form is 24x80, it covers the entire frame, making the frame, canvas and form coincident. If the easel is expanded to a size larger than 24x80, the frame boundaries becomes visible since the easel client area contains unreachable space as described in canvas.

Function

A function is the smallest, invocable, unit of business work. It consists of visual and non-visual elements. Currently, the Forms Designer only processes the visual elements, although many non-visual characteristics can also be modified via property sheets associated with various function components. A function acts as a container of visual parts that will be sent to the Forms Designer for editing and placement. Once a function is chosen, the canvas uses the function’s name to request its parts from the stream broker so that a painting session may begin. After you have acceptably arranged a function’s visual parts, they may be saved by sending it through the stream broker to the application repository.

Function Queue

A function queue is a list of functions constructed via a filtering rule declared by a developer. There are three types of filtering rules: (1) partial name, (2) category and, (3) function. A function queue may also be populated by selecting individual functions and placing them in it. Function queue’s reside on the host machine designated for the project and are visible and sharable by all developers. The Forms Designer only uses function queues that exist for the selected project; it does not create or maintain them.

Static Node

A Forms Designer static node maps to a PROIV format. A static node within the subform browser is always painted before any related subforms. Static nodes position their elements relative to the current form (row and column coordinates of a format are form row and column coordinates). A static node contains non-enterable text controls at run-time. These controls may be static text literals or text values substituted in one or more variables at run time. Static nodes are frequently used to group heading text that remains locked on the screen while the data below it scrolls as the user pages up and down (similar to spreadsheet title locking).

Paging Control

A paging control is a composite control that contains one or more standard controls which repeat some number of times and is contained in a paging subform. A paging control maps to the visually repeating portion of a PROIV paging logical screen. It reflects the 1:M relationship between a parent record and its related children, i.e., customer and related invoices. As in PROIV, a paging control has two modes: (1) normal and (2) expanded. The normal mode displays a single line for each child entry while the expanded mode opens that line to multiple lines.

Paging SubForm

A paging subform is a subform that may contain one or more standard controls and must contain a paging control. A paging subform maps to a PROIV paging logical screen. An example is a paging logical screen containing a total field (one control) and a paging control. Any control outside the paging area is considered an absolute positioned control, which uses coordinates of the form and not the paging control.

PROIV Element

A PROIV element is the smallest visual item handled by PROIV. Elements are: editbox, text, , Icon, bitmap, combo box, listbox, check box, radio group, box (named group boundary), vertical line and horizontal line.

Property Sheets

A property sheet is a Forms Designer component responsible for showing and maintaining all properties associated with a specific control. It is a separate window that floats inside or outside the Forms Designer workspace and has a variable number of tabs depending on the properties and categories supported for a given component.

When properties of a control are not editable, they appear greyed out. Whenever a group of controls have been selected, the property editor will display their common attributes for editing. Any common property with more than two states will be greyed out but may be edited, resulting in all selected controls being reset to the new, same property value. The property sheet is not a dockable control.

If a set of identical visual objects is selected, their individual property values can be changed by changing the value of one instance.

Subform

A subform maps to a PROIV logical screen that doesn’t have a coordinate specified (it is not a popup window and appears embedded in a parent form). Since a logical screen area can have many fields, a subform may have many controls.

In native PROIV, subforms usually take up the entire 24x80 form surface although their visual contents may appear in smaller ‘blocks’ on the canvas. There are no restrictions in controls movement or general painting operations with the 24x80 area.

In SL, each subform maps to a group definition that eventually maps to a logical screen during SL gen. Since SL groups have strict boundaries, they are visually shown on the screen surface and controls may not be moved outside them. Subform boundaries may be resized (shrunk and stretched) to accommodate needed real estate.

A subform is a displayable area inside a form on which an application’s controls reside for the purpose of grouping and operating on these controls as one unit, for example, the control set is a data structure of some type. There is no visible indication for a subform boundary during painting since each subform covers the entire form real estate. A subform maps to a PROIV logical screen area.

User Interface Parts Stream

The user interface parts stream is a visual parts list in motion. It constitutes the visual portion of the PROIV Business Process Specification Language (BPSL).

The current user interface parts stream consists of three fundamental language clause types: (1) header (2) body and (3) trailer. A clause is composed of one or more of the following terms: keywords, identifiers, strings, integers, user names and passwords. The header describes the stream’s session level properties such as project name, project version, user id and total stream size (length). The body contains the entire user interface for a specific function. It consists of a nested series of uniquely identified forms, subforms, panels and controls. Each of these objects describes its stock and extended (PROIV specific) properties plus any proprietary (3rd party) properties necessary to accurately render the object. The trailer marks the end of a function user interface stream.

Workspace

The Forms Designer workspace is responsible for providing a graphic shell, which is the reference window for all painting services such as session connectivity to a host, function parts painting, , control selection and control property editing. These services are reachable via a combination of menu items, Active X objects and a dockable toolbar. The workspace organizes all painting activities for the application developer and is the main window for the Forms Designer application object.

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Topic ID: 530022