Form Designer Advanced Features

   Composer This topic is related to Transact Composer.  |   Form Builder |  v4.3 & Higher   This feature is related to v4.3 and higher.

Overview

Besides the Wireframe tab of the Form Designer, there are:
The Bulk Editor tab The Artifacts tab The Data Model tab The XML Source tab The Localization tab
These do not provide further functionality than that already given in the Edit Properties dialogs and panels, but instead organize the parameter and settings of the form into tables. Some of these allow parameter settings to be changed and can be more convenient than going in and out of numerous Edit Properties dialogs for the fields and nodes on the form. The tabs provide an alternative and more comprehensive view of the parameter settings of the form than the atomic and fragmented glimpses afforded by going through the properties of a large number of individual form widgets.
There are at present some limitations: you cannot now alter the settings for the same type of parameter on a number of form elements. But, the ability to be able to survey the setting on, for example, all the Composer scripts within the form is a vary valuable facility.

Bulk Editor

In the Rules Property Set listing, you can select "Script Based" under Visibility, Edibility and so on, and then use the "Edit" button that appears in the row to bring up the "Script Editor", a very convenient way to access this dialog.

Property Sets

The form's parameters are arranged in Property Sets, which belong to the Organization. You edit, and create
new, property sets in "Workspace -> <Organization> -> Administration tab -> Property Set tab".


This the only place in the UI that you can create a new set. However, you cannot at present configure the new set. You must configure it in the Bulk Editor of one of the forms in the Organization, using the Edit Property Set dialog from the "Configure" link at the top of the Bulk Editor page. Here you select a property from the Property List (which just like Widget Palette in the Form Editor) and then double-click on the Property you want in the Property Set. The property then appears in Property list in the lower half of the Edit Properties Set dialog. You can change the wording of the heading of the resulting Property Set column in the Bulk Editor

Artifacts Tab

This lists, and allows you to download, files associated with the form. Here is a partial list of the files:
<form name>.xls
A spreadsheet of all the form elements and their properties, including the Nuts & Botls
<form name>.xml
The form definition in XML.
<form name>_info.properties
A text file giving listing the creation date, time and time zone, and the previewtechnology.

Data Model Tab

The left-hand panel gives the various bindings (bound, unbound, relative, absolute) of the fields in the structure; the right shows the field's position in the data hierarchy. Select a field in one of these two panels and it will be selected in the other panel.
Double-clicking on a field in the left-hand panel will also bring up a dialog with the Data-related panels to be found in the "Edit Properties" dialog, though conveniently grouped into a "Data Model tab" created for this part of the User Interface.
The hierarchy depicted in the right-hand panel is the data hierarchy. In Composer, the data hierarchy is for the most part a reflection of the form's structure. This means that the data structure of the field bindings within a block is, for better or for worse, similar to the way the fields relate according to layout and block groupings. It is beyond the scope of this document to show how to change these relationships without altering the layout structure of the form itself.

XML Source Tab

This tab is an editable display of the XML definition file of the form. You can (provided you the rights to do so) save you changes, or you can rollback the last edits you have made to the code. Only do this if you are sure of what you doing; otherwise you can do serious damage to the form.
The XML frquently has Character Data ("CDATA") blocks, which are code that is passed straight through the
XML parser without it reading the block (which it would not understand in any case). CDATA here is used, in the main, to pass JavaScript fragments.

Localization Tab

This is explained elsewhere in theguide.
Transact Composer User Guide and ReferenceAccess & Security