Building a form with the custom form style

When an InfoMaker user using the style library creates a new form, all custom form styles display in the Form Style box in the New Form dialog box:

The sample shows the New Form dialog box. Three Data sources display at the top: Quick Select, Sequel select, and query. Form Styles display beneath. Two custom styles, Maintain corporate data and view corporate data, display with the same generic icon. Also displayed with unique icons are the form styles Free Form, Grid, Master / Detail One - to - Many, and Master / Detail Many - to - One.

Custom styles display with a generic icon.

InfoMaker users simply select a data source and a custom style to start building a form based on your form style. You should provide documentation to users of your form styles.

Understanding inheritance

When users build a form, they are working with a window that is a descendant of the window that you built for the form style. That is, the form style window you built in PowerBuilder is the ancestor, and the form window used in InfoMaker is the descendant. This means that if you change the form style, the changes are picked up the next time users work with a form using that style.

For example, you can add controls to the form style and have the controls display automatically when users later open existing forms using the style.

NoteCaution Be careful: do not make changes that invalidate forms already built using the style.