Graphical User Interface

SAP Smart Forms provide a graphical user interface that helps you create and maintain the layout and the form logic of a form: the SAP Form Builder. You need neither have any programming knowledge nor use a Script language to adapt standard forms. Basic ABAP programming skills are required only in special cases (for example, to call a function module you created or for complex and extensive conditions).

To edit any objects required to create a form, you use tools that can be accessed from the SAP Smart Forms initial screen (transaction SMARTFORMS):

• To maintain a Smart Form you call the SAP Form Builder.

• To maintain form styles (for paragraph and character formats) you use the Style Builder.

• To maintain reusable text modules you use the text module maintenance.

  The SAP Form Builder plays a central role with creating forms. It consists of:

• Form Painter for creating the layout of a form,

• PC Editor for entering texts and fields into output areas,

• Navigation tree for maintaining the form logic,

• Table Painter for creating templates and tables,

• Form check.

The screen capture shows the three different areas of the SAP Form Builder: To the left the navigation tree (hierarchy structure of a Smart Form), in the middle the maintenance screen, and to the right the Form Painter.

If you select a node in the tree, the system updates the maintenance screen and highlights the corresponding window in the Form Painter. You can also select a window in the Form Painter; the system then highlights the corresponding node in the tree.

In the tree you determine the hierarchy of the form logic (see also Form Logic: Introduction) while in the Form Painter you determine the layout. This means that if you move, for example, a window within the tree, this does not affect the layout of the Smart Form.

The SAP Smart Forms initial screen is the starting point for maintaining forms, styles, and text modules:

1. Choose transction SMARTFORMS. The dialog window SAP Smart Forms: Initial Screen appears.

2. Select Form, Style, or Text module, depending on which object you want to create, display, or change.

3. Enter the name of the object.

4. Choose Create, Change, or Display.

   Depending on the radio button you selected ( Form, Style, Text module), the system branches to the Form Builder, the style maintenance (transaction SMARTSTYLES), or to the text module maintenance.