Screen Painter Concepts 

The Screen Painter is a ABAP Workbench tool that allows you to create screens for your transactions. You use it both to create the screen itself, with fields and other graphical elements, and to write the flow logic behind the screen.

In older documentation, screens are sometimes referred to as dynpros. This is short for "Dynamic Program", and means the combination of the screen and its accompanying flow logic.

Screen Painter Architecture

You use the Screen Painter to create and maintain all elements of a screen. These are:

Screen Attributes

Describe a screen object in the R/3 System. Screen attributes include the program the screen belongs to and the screen type.

Screen layout

Screen elements are the parts of a screen with which the user interacts. Screen elements include checkboxes and radio buttons.

Elements

Correspond to screen elements. Fields are defined in the ABAP Dictionary or in your program.

Flow logic

Controls the flow of your program.

Two Screen Painter Modes

The Screen Painter has a layout editor that you use to design your screen layout. It works in two modes:

Both modes offer the same functions but use different interfaces. In graphical mode, you use a drag and drop interface similar to a drawing tool. In alphanumeric mode, you use your keyboard and menus.

Graphical mode is available only on MS Windows 95, MS Windows NT, and Unix/Motif platforms.

To activate the graphical mode, choose Utilities ® Settings in the Screen Painter, then select the Graphical layout editor option.

 

Creating a Screen: Basics

  1. Create a screen in an existing program and define its attributes.
  2. Design the screen layout and define the attributes of the elements.
  3. Write the flow logic.

Basic Principles