Processing a Form 

Each form consists of one or more pages. The first page in the tree is the start page. With the start page processing of the form starts. Processing of a page (that is, of the respective nodes) is executed in the sequence determined in the tree.

If a page is processed (filled) and processing of the form is not finished yet (if not all texts or data are displayed), the system processes another page. The page used as next page can be determined statically during the form definition (Next page) or dynamically at runtime (manual page break).

A particular page is repeated until form processing is finished.

Main Window and Subwindows

Each page contains one or more windows. The system takes the formatting rules for the texts and data in a window from a Smart Style (see also Smart Styles). The texts are included depending on the data in the way that is determined by the output control. Each window points to an output control.

All windows of one page must have different technical names. However, each window can occur on several pages. If a window occurs on several pages, it always points to the same output control.

You can flag one window as main window. It must be flagged as main window on all the pages on which it appears. All other windows are called subwindows.

Processing a window means processing the assigned output control. Processing of a window on one page ends as soon as the window is filled. For the main window, processing of the output control is interrupted at this point and resumed right there as soon as the main window is processed again on a subsequent page. For subwindows, processing of the output control starts again at the beginning if the subwindow is processed again on a subsequent page.

The main difference between a main window and a subwindow thus is that the contents of the main window, which is determined by the output control, can be distributed to several pages (flow text, automatical page break for texts and data). This is not possible for subwindows.

Processing of a window can be connected to conditions (only on the first page, not on the first page, and so on). If such a condition is false, processing of the window is suppressed entirely on the current page.

Output Control

The output control of a window describes how the contents of the window are composed and formatted in accordance with the given data.

The output control is defined by the nodes in the hierarchy structure (tree), whose root node is the window. The nodes of the tree have different types and different attributes, respectively (type of processing, number of successors, and so on). You can assign output options and conditions to each node.

Processing an output control means processing the successor nodes of the root node in the sequence in which they appear in the tree. Processing of a node consists of these steps:

  1. If a condition is assigned to the node, the system first evaluates this condition. It it is false, the system does not process the node including all its direct successors.
  2. The system executes the action assigned to the node (for example, displaying a text in the window, processing program lines, and so on).
  3. The system processes the direct successors (children) of the node in the tree. The sequence in which they are processed (sequentially from top to bottom, at certain events, alternatively, repeatedly) depends on the type of node.
  4. If output options are assigned to a node, these output options apply for any output in the window which is described by the node and its successors.

You can use these conditions when processing a node:

You can determine the following output options: