Making DW Radio Buttons and Check Boxes look disabled

An effective GUI quickly communicates to the users  how they can interact with the current window.  For most datawindow edit styles, PowerBuilder supplies its developers with the means to visually show if  it is available to accept user input.  Unfortunately, if you are working with an older version of PB,  how to show  a disabled check box or a radio button is a  puzzle.  Here is how I deal with this issue.

Setting the RowStatus

If you have worked with PowerBuilder for a while, you have learned that setting the status of a row is not always a straight forward procedure.  I have created a handy utility which will simplify this process.

Update Status Flags

ItemStatus actually holds two pieces of information at once:

• New/Not New
• Modified/Not Modified

DataWindow Script Techniques

How do I set a property for an entire column?

Modify(“shft_id.visible = 0”)

Modify(“shft_desc.protect = 1”)

InterDataWindow Communication

RowsCopy

RowsCopy will copy the contents of one datawindow/datastore to another. The RowStatus flags for each row will be NewModified!

Row Selection

GetSelectedRow(long)

Reports the number of the next highlighted row after a specified row in a DataWindow control or DataStore object. Argument is the row after which you want to search for the next selected row. Specify 0 to begin searching at the first row

Printing a DataWindow

Print Events

• PrintStart
• PrintPage
• PrintEnd

In the PrintPage event, a RETURN 1 will skip the next page to be printed.

Groups and Grouping

How do I dynamically change a group property?

ll_color = RGB(200, 200, 500)

dw_1.Modify(“DataWindow.Header.2.Color=” + String(ll_color))

dw_1.Modify(“DataWindow.Trailer.2.Height=500”)

Exporting Data

How do I write the contents of a DataWindow or datastore to an ASCII file?

Dw_1.SaveAs(“<file name>”, TEXT!, false) // Last parameter suppresses column headings.