Application setup: screens

Screens

Screens are the screen tabs aka panels or forms in Collections applications that contain fields and labels that display information from a record, allowing actual data input .

Throughout an application directory in the Application browser in Designer you may encounter screen files and screen references. It's important to separate the two kinds:

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Screen files (with the .fmt extension) have the following icon:

An application folder may contain screen files that are meant for use in that application only, but the presence of those files doesn't mean that they are actually linked to the application: they are just Collections screen files in a folder, and in current applications you will only find those screen files in the \screens folder.

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References to screen files have any of the following icons:

References to screen files are part of an application definition. You specify these references for data sources and/or methods or tasks in the tree view in the Application browser, to determine exactly which brief screens and which detail screens should be used to either display the Result set list, to display data from one record in the data source, or to display a task screen.

Screen documentation

In the Application browser, right-click a single screen reference (in a data source) or a single screen file in the \screens folder and select Create documentation in the pop-up menu to create documentation about that screen, or right-click the \screens folder (or another folder containing screen files) and select Create documentation in the pop-up menu to create documentation all screens in that folder. The View menu in the Documentation window offers several formats to convert the documentation result to, amongst which:

•	Mandatory Fields List (CSV).xsl lists all the mandatory fields on the screen(s) with their properties. It works on a single screen or on all screens in a folder.

•	Fields List (CSV).xsl lists all the data fields on the screen(s) with their properties. It works on a single screen or on all screens in a folder.

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Screen field group list (CSV).xsl lists any screen field group names. In modern Collections applications field group names only appear in the .inf's (which is where they belong), but in old applications field groups could have been assigned on screen as well (which is deprecated and causes problems when field groups are repeated). To search for such screen field groups in old applications you can use this documentation format. When no screen field groups are present, only the header of the table will be visible: Path,Description,Group,Type,Name,Tag.

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Screen Info - Comparison Mode - English Only (XML).xsl and Screen Info - Comparison Mode - Dutch Only (XML).xsl for screen comparison. These stylesheets create documentation for one or more screen definition (.fmt) files. The documentation has been optimized for the comparison of screen definition properties. It only lists texts and labels in a single language; the stylesheet name indicates which language will be listed. A screen comparison using this stylesheet therefore ignores differences in translations. Some properties that are irrelevant to a comparison are being omitted, namely:
- information on the creation of the documentation file itself;
- information on the Designer version used to create the documentation file;
- information on the location or dating of the .fmt file(s).