Form item dependencies in grids

Form items interact with each other in terms of width, according to the front-end widget size.

This example illustrates how form items are dependent of each other inside the grid.

GRID
{
  [a      ]
  [b      ]
}
END

This .per implies that form items a and b start at the same position and have the same size, whatever a and b are.

This rule could lead to very different results, especially when a large widget is assigned into a small number of cells.

Example:

LAYOUT 
GRID
{
[a|b   ][f     ]
[c|d]   [e     ]
}
END 
END 

ATTRIBUTES 
CHECKBOX a = formonly.a, TEXT="A Checkbox"; 
EDIT b = formonly.b; 
EDIT c = formonly.c; 
CHECKBOX d = formonly.d, TEXT="Another Checkbox"; 
EDIT e = formonly.e; 
EDIT f = formonly.f; 
END

The grid will be computed regarding characters cells in the form definition:

Figure 1. Grid layout

Figure 2. Grid layout with checkboxes

Then the minimum size of each widget and the layout is computed.

Cells (0,1) and (1,3) contain a checkbox; these checkboxes will enlarge columns 1 and 3.

Figure 3. Enlarged columns

Because the EDIT field "c" is defined to have the same width as checkbox "a", it will be much larger as expected.

Figure 4. Resulting form

To avoid this visual result, you must assign a realistic number of grid cells for each form item.

GRID 
{ 
[a        |b  ][f     ] 
[c|d          ][e     ] 
}

Even if the grid area is wider in the source form file, the real graphical result will be smaller.

Figure 5. Resulting form