Tivoli Service Desk 6.0 Developer's Toolkit Interface Designer Guide
The number of controls you add to a form is limited only by the size of the form. You can resize a form to allow additional space for controls.
Caution: If you resize a form during development, you need to save it with that same size. Otherwise, the form does not appear correctly to end users.
The process of adding controls to a form is the same for any control that you add to the form.
Each control has a property sheet with the following tabs:
The Base tab and Help tab properties are covered in the following sections.
The following table describes the Base tab properties common to all controls.
Property | Description |
Control ID | An ID that makes it easy for you to set the tab order. This is also how the control is referenced in a TSD Script program. |
Attachments | Attachments maintain the position of controls in a form when the form is resized. Attachments can either be fixed, where a control remains in a specific location on a form no matter what the size of the form, or percentage, where a control location moves in proportion to the size of the form. For more information on setting control attachments, see "Geometry Management." |
Size | Coordinates used to adjust the height and width of the control |
Offsets | Coordinates used with percentage attachments that set the amount of "buffer space" between the control and the form borders. For more information on setting offsets, see "Geometry Management." |
Hidden | Sets the control as hidden or visible. Select this check box if you want to define certain controls with permissions. For example, you might want to select this option if you want certain controls visible only to managers or supervisors. |
Disabled | Sets the control as active or inactive |
Synchronize Coords | Sets a fixed location for the control across multiple platforms |
Description | A definition of the function of the control |
From the Help tab, you can set properties for:
For more information on adding help to your application, see "Building Additional Features."
Each control has specific properties, in contrast to the properties common to all controls. This section describes the specific properties for each control.
The following table describes the specific properties for a button control.
Property | Description |
Button Label | The text that appears on the button. |
Image File | The path and file name that contains the image that appears on the
button. Note: If you specify an image to appear on the button, the button text you specify becomes a tooltip. |
Action | The action that the button should perform. The following are valid
actions:
|
Display Image Select | Select this box to specify an image file. |
Default Button | Determines if the button is already selected when the form is opened. |
The following table describes the specific properties for a check box control.
Property | Description |
Checkbox Label | The text that appears next to the check box. |
Initial Value | Determines if the check box is initially selected or not. Choosing true selects the check box. |
Style | Determines if the selected check box is circular or square. Square is the default if the box is unchecked. |
The following table describes the specific properties for a clock control.
Property | Description |
Clock Type | Determines if the clock has conventional twelve hour or military twenty-four hour display. |
Border | Determines the appearance of the border around the clock. The following are valid
borders:
|
The following table describes the specific properties for a combo box control.
Property | Description |
Sorting | Determines the sort order of list items. The following are valid sort
methods:
|
Type | Determines the selection type a user can make. The following are valid
types:
|
IME | Determines if the Input Method Editor (IME) is used to reflect local language characters instead of English. |
Initial Contents | Determines if an initial value displayed in the combo box. |
Starting ID | If you selected a default item to appear in the combo box, you must enter the ID in this field. |
Maximum Length | The maximum number of characters users can type in the combo box. |
The following table describes the specific properties for an text box control.
Note: Users can only type one line of text in a text box. Use the Multi-Line Edit control for more lines.
Property | Description |
Initial Value | The default value. If you do not type a value, the text box appears empty when the dialog box appears. |
Pattern Type | The following are valid, predefined pattern types, except for the Custom
option where you would design your own (for more information on patterns, see "Building Additional Features"):
|
Pattern ID | The pattern name. (Only available for custom patterns.) |
Maximum Length | The maximum amount of characters users can type |
Read Only | Determines if the entry field is read only |
Caps Only | Determines if entries appear in all capital letters regardless of the case the user uses |
IME Local | Determines if the Input Method Editor (IME) is used to reflect local language characters instead of English |
GMT | Greenwich Mean Time. The selection of this checkbox will automatically
convert a date or time to GMT. You must do the following to use this feature.
|
The following table describes the specific properties for a group box control.
Property | Description |
Group Box Title | The name of the group box |
Style | Determines how the title should be aligned |
The following table describes the specific properties for a hypertext control.
Property | Description |
Style | The formatting style in the hypertext box. The following are valid
styles:
|
Starting Text | Determines if any initial text should appear in the hypertext control. |
The following table describes the specific properties for an image control.
Property | Description |
Image File | The path of the file containing the image |
Border Style | Determines the appearance of the border around the image. The following
are valid borders:
|
Style | Determines the appearance of the image in the form. The following are
valid styles:
|
The following table describes the specific properties for a list box control.
Property | Description |
Sorting | Determines the sort order of list items. The following are valid sort
methods:
|
Horizontal Scroll | Determines if a horizontal scroll bar appears. |
Initial Contents | The default list items. You should rename these otherwise the default names appear in the list box. |
Starting ID | This box is read-only and reflects the contents of the Initial Contents box. |
Multiselect | Allows the user to select any number of multiple items in the list box in any order. |
The following table describes the specific properties for an MLE control.
Property | Description |
Horizontal Scroll | Determines if a horizontal scroll bar appears on the MLE. |
Vertical Scroll | Determines if a vertical scroll bar appears on the MLE. |
Caps Only | Determines if entries appear in all capital letters regardless of the case the user uses. |
IME Local | Determines if the Input Method Editor (IME) is used to reflect local language characters instead of English. |
No WordWrap | Determines if the user must use hard carriage returns to manually wrap text to the next line. |
Read Only | Determines if the MLE should be read only. |
Mandatory | Determines if users must type in the MLE. |
Maximum Length | Determines how many characters users can type in the MLE. |
The following table describes the specific properties for an MSLB control.
Property | Description |
Ascending | Automatically sorts new data entered into a table in ascending order. |
None | Allows you to use the MSLB control without any property settings. The default property setting. |
Horizontal Scroll | Allows you to scroll horizontally to view data outside the viewable are of your screen. |
Multiselect | Allows you to randomly select multiple entries. |
Initial Contents | Allows you to select values displayed the first time the list box is opened. |
Starting ID | A variable that serves as the handle for an item. This variable is used to identify initial contents values. |
The following table describes the specific properties for a radio button set control.
Property | Description |
Radio Button Set Title | The title of the group box that surrounds the radio buttons. |
Initial Selection | Determines (by number) if a button should be initially selected. You must enter a value to indicate which radio button will be selected (for example, 1 for the first button, 2 for the second button, etc.). |
Button Labels | The default radio button labels. You should rename these otherwise the default names appear in the radio button set. |
Title Position | The alignment of the group box title. |
Style | Determines if the radio buttons have a vertical or horizontal orientation. |
The following table describes the specific properties for a slider control.
Property | Description |
Scale | The following are valid scale options:
|
Orientation | Determines if the slider has a vertical or horizontal orientation. Horizontal has values appearing from left to right, while vertical has values appearing from bottom to top. |
Snap | Determines if the slide rule moves to the nearest scale mark. |
Labels | Titles of scale marks for UNIX only. The number of labels must the identical to the number of ticks. |
This section describes the specific properties for a subform control. You should use sub forms in place of frequently used controls in forms. For example, if you have three buttons that appear as a group in several forms, instead of adding the three buttons to every form where they should appear, you can create one sub form control that contains the three buttons and refer to the subform control in each form. In other words, you create the buttons once for use in several forms.
Sub forms can also be used for grouping sections of a form to aid in geometry management. For more information, see "Geometry Management."
The following table describes the specific properties of the Sub Form tab.
Property | Description |
Subform Title | The title of the sub form that appears in the border. |
Form ID | The location of the file containing the sub form. |
Border Style | Determines the appearance of the border around the sub form. The
following are valid borders:
|
This section describes the three specific tabs for a table control: Table, Columns, and SQL.
The following table describes the specific properties of the Table tab.
Property | Description |
Sorting | Determines the sort order of table items. The following are valid sort
methods:
|
Horizontal Scroll Bars | Determines if a horizontal scroll bar appears on the table |
Multiple Selection | Determines if users can select more than one item at a time in the table |
From the Columns tab, you can set the following column heading and size properties for your table.
The following table describes the specific properties of the Columns tab.
Property | Description |
Name | Name of the column in the database |
Heading | Name of the column the user views on screen |
Width | How many dialog units, horizontally the column should contain. Note: Up to 32 dialog units (4 horizontally and 8 vertically) can make up a character cell. A character cell is composed of a single character, alpha-numeric or symbol. |
GMT | Greenwich Mean Time. The selection of this checkbox will automatically
convert a date or time to GMT. You must do the following to use this feature.
|
From the SQL tab, you can set the following record limit and SQL statement properties for your table.
The following table describes the specific properties of the SQL tab.
Property | Description |
Record Limit | The maximum amount of records your table should contain. |
SQL Statement | Any SQL statement can be typed in this box. |
The following table describes the specific properties for a text control.
Property | Description |
Label Text | The title of the text box. |
Horizontal Position | The horizontal alignment of the text inside the text box. |
Tree controls let you create a hierarchy structure that can be expanded or collapsed. For more information about the various tree controls available in Tivoli Service Dest 6.0 Developer's Toolkit, see the lrtree.htm file.
To set control properties:
To add a control:
Note: You can apply exact sizing to controls using the Base property tab.
When you add a control it has two default attachments. Both attachments are fixed as the default, meaning that the control is in a set position on the form and will not move, regardless of how the form is resized. You can change attachments so a control moves proportionally when the form is resized by setting them as percentage attachments.
Attachments are set in the attachment editor, shown below the control palette. Fixed attachments are represented with solid lines, while percentage attachments are represented with dashed lines. For more information on attachments, see "Geometry Management."
To set attachments:
Note: You can add attachment lines to all four control sides by pressing shift as you add the control to the form.
Note: Before moving a control make sure no controls are selected on the control palette.
To move a control:
Note: You can move multiple controls by pressing the shift key and clicking each control to move and dragging them to their new location.
To copy a control:
To resize a control:
Besides sizing controls manually, you can use the pop-up menu to size them to the active control. The active control is the "standard," or the control that defines alignment for other selected controls. The active control is identified with a different color than the selected controls.
To size a control:
To align controls:
As you add controls to a form you may find that the placement of some controls may obscure or completely hide other controls, especially when the form is resized smaller. You can find controls using the pop-up menu.
To find controls:
As you add controls to a form you may find that the placement of some controls may obscure or completely hide other controls. You can bring smaller controls in the front of larger controls using the pop-up menu.
To bring controls to the front:
Use the Send to Back menu command only with the group box control. The group box is a visual device that encloses a set of related options or controls. The group box must appear behind the controls, otherwise it would hide them.
To send a group box control to the back:
Note: You can also bring a partially hidden control to the front again by choosing "Bring to Front" from the pop-up menu.
To delete a control:
Tivoli Service Desk 6.0 Developer's Toolkit Interface Designer Guide