Palette

Screen Designer and Report Designer require a palette to visually add items to your DDS file. The palette contains categories of items that can be added to your DDS file. To add an item to the design area, select the item on the palette and click the location in the design area where the new item should be displayed. Alternatively, you can drag an item from the palette onto the design area.
Note: If you select an item from the palette and you decide that you do not want to continue with the operation, the Esc-key does not always reset the palette selection. Instead, right-click the design area to bring up the pop-up menu and click the Design page again. You can now move the cursor back to the palette and click on a different item to make a new selection.
The palette always shows only those items that are valid for the current context. For example, if you have not created a record yet, you cannot add any fields.

There are two forms of the palette: the Palette view, which resides outside of the Screen Designer and Report Designer editor, and an integrated Palette, which is located inside. The Palette view opens as part of the DDS Design perspective. If you are not working from within the DDS Design perspective, the Palette view might not be open. In this situation, Screen Designer and Report Designer use their own integrated palette. If there is insufficient space to display all items on the integrated palette, you can double-click the editor tab to maximize the editor including the palette and that way display more or all items. Double-clicking the editor tab again reduces the editor to its previous size.

The content and function of both the integrated palette and the Palette view are the same. To ensure that there is only one palette at a time, the integrated palette has some special behavior. If you open the workbench Palette view, the integrated palette closes automatically. If you close the Palette view, the integrated palette opens automatically. Like any other view, you can move the Palette view to a different location in the workbench, or you can even detach it and use it as a separate window.

To move the Palette view or the integrated palette, select its title bar, and drag it to a new location. You can also hide the integrated palette, so that you have more design space available. To hide the integrated palette, press the Hide Palette arrow button in the Palette's title bar.

This reduces the palette to a small margin and the Hide Palette arrow button changes its direction and changes its text to Show Palette. Hovering the mouse pointer anywhere over this small margin will temporarily display the Palette. You can then select an item and the Palette hides again when the mouse pointer is moved away. To show the palette permanently, press the Show Palette arrow button.


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