Form items

The concept of form item includes all elements used in the definition of a form.

Definition

A form item can be an input field such as an EDIT field, a push BUTTON, a GROUPBOX, or a TABLE container. A form item can also be an element of a TOOLBAR, TOPMENU, and ACTION DEFAULTS definition.

Form item types

A form item is defined by its type, called a form item type. For example, a form field can be an EDIT, or a COMBOBOX. A form layout container can be a GROUP, or a GRID. A toolbar item can be an ITEM or a SEPARATOR.

For a detailed description, see Form item types.

Form items in grid-based containers

In a grid-based container such as GRID, form items (typically, form fields) must be defined with a form tag in the LAYOUT section, bound by the tag name to a definition in the ATTRIBUTES section.

The form tag defines the position and length of the form item, while the appearance and the behavior of the form item is defined by a set of attributes in the ATTRIBUTES section:
LAYOUT
GRID
{
   [f1            ]
   ...
}
END
END
...
ATTRIBUTES
EDIT f1 = customer.cust_name, ... ;
END

Form items in stack-based forms

In a stack-based container (STACK), form items (typically, form fields), are grouped and arranged in a given order, that will define their position in the stacked layout. The appearance and the behavior of the form item is defined by a list of attributes in the stack item definition:
LAYOUT
 STACK
  GROUP
    EDIT customer.cust_name, ... ;
  END
 END
END

Satellite form items

Other kinds of form items are defined in the section it belongs to (for example, an ITEM element of a TOOLBAR definition).