Screen Designer allows you to create and modify DDS display files. To open an existing display file for editing, right-click it from within the Remote Systems view or the i Project Navigator view and select Open with > Screen Designer.
Note: For performance reasons, it is recommended to open very large DDS files with the Remote Systems LPEX Editor, not with Screen Designer.
When Screen Designer opens for a DDS display file, the source is analyzed. This step has to finish before you can start using Screen Designer. An indicator at the bottom of the workbench with the label Parsing DDS model displays while this is running. If you edited your display file with CODE Designer before, information about record groups and indicator sets are also collected and stored in XML format as comment lines at the end of the source code. See Migrating from CODE Designer for additional considerations.
Information about screens and which records belong to a screen is stored in the XML at the bottom of the source. Even if you did not change the source yourself but you created screens or assigned records to screens, you need to save your source member at the end of the edit session to keep this information.
Select the Records tab in the Design page screen controls to select the record you want to work with and to display it in the design area.
Since screens often contain more than one record, you can define new screens and select which records belong to each one. To define a new screen, press the New button beside the list of screens. This creates a new screen with the name Untitled. Change the name to something meaningful by typing over the default name and either press the Apply button or press the Enter key beside the Name entry field.
In a second step, you now add records to this screen to simulate a group of records when the application runs. To add an existing record to a screen, select the Records tab, select the desired record in the Excluded list and press the Add button. This moves the record from the Excluded list to the Included list. For subfiles, you only need to select either the subfile record or the subfile control record and press the Add button to associate both with the selected screen. Repeat the above steps to add additional records. If you want to add a large number of records to a screen, it might be faster to use the Add all button and then remove the records that do not belong to the screen. To remove a record, select it in the list of Included records and press the Remove button.
To add a new record to a screen, select the screen in the Screens list, select either Standard Record or Subfile Record in the Palette and then click anywhere in the design area. A new record is added to the selected screen. Alternatively, a palette item can be dragged from the palette onto the design area. For subfiles, both, subfile record and subfile control record are added. Records are created with the name RECORDn, subfiles as SFLn and CTLn, where n is a sequential number. Type over the name in the Properties view to give your record a meaningful name. New records are automatically added to the All Records screen and to the screen that was selected when the record was added.
Adding fields to a record works in a similar way. Select the record you want to edit in the list of Included records so that it is displayed in the design area. From the Palette, select the field, constant, or help specification you want to add. Click in the design area in the location where you want the field to reside, or use drag and drop. Text constants are created and immediately placed in edit mode, so that you can immediately type the text. The field will also automatically expand if you type more characters than the default field can hold.
To modify the text of a text constant afterwards, click the field in the design area and either change it in the Properties view or click the field again in the design area to put it into edit mode. The field will again automatically expand as you type. To move an existing field to a different location, select it in the design area and drag it to the new location. While you are dragging the field, a pop-up tells you the current row and column number.
Adding a database reference field can also be accomplished using drag and drop. Select the database file where the field is defined in the Remote Systems view, right-click it and from the actions select Show in Table > Fields. This will display the Field Table view and populate it with the database fields. You can now select a field in the field table, drag it into the design area and drop it to create the entry there.
The Properties view gives you access to the detailed information about the file, records, and fields. The number and type of tabs available depend on the current selection. To work with the properties of the file, select it in the Outline view. All other entries can be selected from the Outline view, the Design page, or the Source page. To add a keyword, click the Keywords tab, select the keyword in the Available list and press the Add button. This adds the keyword to the Specified list and modifies the source accordingly. You can add multiple keywords at once by holding down the Ctrl key while making your selections. When selecting a keyword that has its own properties page, the Go to page button is enabled. Pressing this button will take you to that properties page.
Once you have created your screens using the Design page screen controls and finished editing your records, you have two choices to find out what your screens will look like when your application is running. You can either press the Draw records transparent button above the design area to check whether any fields overlap, or you can switch to the Preview page. First select the screen in the Design page screen controls then click the Preview tab. The Preview page screen controls can be used to select an existing screen, but not to create a new screen.