Possible to globally set data colors from child tables?

[Marilyn Wallace]

I am planning to develop a style sheet to have uniformity in the forms created in an application.

I will be using a number of sets and would like to color code the data in the fields on the forms to correspond to the table from which the data comes.

Is there a way to globally assign each table's data a unique color rather than having to color code each form field by field?

Thank you!

[Tom Cone Jr]

Marilyn, I don't know of a way to assign colors to tables. Perhaps others will have better suggestions for you, but I will sometimes use frames in my forms, giving each frame a different color and no border. By grouping fields from a particular table within a single frame a consistent color scheme for that "table" can be maintained. Much easier than field by field if you see what I mean.

--tom

[Tim Kiebert]

Marilyn, I don't know of a way to assign colors to tables either.

But look a bit deeper into style sheets. Once you set up and save a style sheet for the over all look of the form you can then go and customise that style sheet further using the 'Manage Styles...' button on the stylesheets dialog.
In the dialog that opens (called Manage Styles) click the button on the right of the form that says new.
It will open up a dialog that says New Style.

Choose a class. ( Mine defaults to a type in field)
Give it a name. In your case you might call the style the same or similar to your table name.
Set any parameters you might want.

Repeat for all the styles you want. (one for each table)
As you will see you can set up styles for all kinds of objects/controls in the class dropdown.

Back on the form highlight the items you want to format(of the same kind ie fields or labels)(in your case all the fields from the same table), right click and choose 'Styles'.
Pick the style you want and presto.


It was quite a while ago that I played with the style sheets when I first was learning A5. Now thanks to you I rediscovered some of the features just in time to start using them a bit. :)

[martinwcole]

I really like the idea. I have occasionally thought about it, too. And, I think it might actually be possible. But I think it would have to be done after the fact.

there would be a complex xbasic script that would open each form in design mode, get all the objects, and set their properties, based on the underlying table they were based on. Or it could also be code that fired at the oninit event, but would fire every time the form opened and therefore degrade performance.

I haven't tackled this one, but I've done similar things, where for example I want all forms to have certain code in the onkey event. If I were guessing, I would guess a project like that would take a solid week to produce on a trial and error basis.

I may try it sometime, but for now its way down on the list of priorities.

[Marilyn Wallace]

Thanks

Tom, Tim, and Martin -

Thanks for your suggestions. Looks like I'll have to play with it a bit. I was hoping there was a 'magic bullet' out there, but it doesn't seem so.

Thanks.

Marilyn