Autoforms: Development Talks

 jstaniek, ccpasteur: july 2005

See also: Forms embedded inside Kexi: Autoform

Table of Contents    Reusable components      Wizard's pages    Autolabels      Other constraints      Low priority constraints      Problem with layouts and autolabels      Questions

Reusable components ^ toc

Wizard's pages

We can reuse some wizard pages from LookupColumnWizardDocs.

Autolabels

Let editor widget be a widget which can contain editable data that usually needs a text label so user can know what (database) field it represents. Most common editor widget types can be:

• line edit, text editor, combobox
• radio button, checkbox (see question Q1 below)
• slider
• etc...

We're going to implement autolabels as a pair label+editor_widget glued together.

There're two types of autolabels:

• horizontal (more commonly used)

 [autolabel][editor]

• vertical

 [autolabel]
 [editor   ]

In fact, autolabels are not specifically tied to autoforms -- they can be used in any form type, but we have found them especially useful for creating autoforms, where labels, as other widgets, are always generated automatically.

Other constraints

• autolabel has always editor widget set as its buddy
• either autolabel and editor widget is selectable, and each of them provides/displays it's own set of properies. Note, this is a special case within Kexi Form Designer.
• if "widgetType" property is set to "Auto" and "dataSource" is empty, the field should have present unbound "Text" editor. Thus, on inserting (design time), autolabel will look reasonably.
• On inserting, label's text should be set "Auto Field %1" text, not something like "please select valid data source". The label should be immediately in inline editing mode, just as ordinary labels are.

Low priority constraints

• within the Object Tree panel, autolabel+editor is displayed as a parent-child pair, as shown below. Thus, a user looking at the Object Tree panel can see a difference between a widget without an autolabel and a widget with autolabel attached. She is also able to select one of them by clicking on a tree item, or select both.

 +[editor name]
   [autolabel name]

• autolabels reuse boolean "addColonToAutoLabels" form's property. The property is not yet implemented. It should be also added to global Kexi Project's settings. The default for new projects should be true.
• when used in design mode of ordinary form, widgets with autolabels inherit "autoLabelsMode" form's property. The possible values are { Horizontal (the default), Vertical }
• on design time, it should be possible to:
  • remove autolabel without removing its editor widget
  • remove editor widget without removing assigned autolabel
  • use a popup menu commands "autolabel->add", "autolabel->remove"
  • use a popup menu commands "autolabel->assign" if there's regular label and editor widget

Problem with layouts and autolabels

• Horizontal autolabels have problem with label's width when groupped within a vertical_box layout or vertical_flow layout or grid layout:

• Vertical autolabels have problem with label's height when groupped within a horizontal_box layout or horizontal_flow layout or grid layout:

Proposed solution is to set the same arbitrary width for every horizontal autolabel (or height for vertical autolabel) within a layout column (or layout's row, accordingly).

Questions

Q1: (jstaniek) This may be longer term TODO, but what about autolabels attached to checkbox/radiobuttons? I guess it can be usable to support well aligned autolabels for these widgets too, for instance ([x] stands for checkbox, (*) for radiobutton):

 [name:      ][line edit   ]
 [option1:   ][x]
 [option2:   ][x]
 [select1:   ](*)
 [select2:   ]( )
 ^            ^
 |            |
 well         well
 aligned      aligned
 labels       widgets

Without using autolabels for checkbox/radiobuttons for above exmample we could have:

 [name:      ][line edit   ]
              [x][option1  ]
              [x][option2  ]
              (*)[select1  ]
              ( )[select2  ]
 ^            ^
 |            |
 NOT SO WELL  well
 aligned      aligned
 labels       widgets