Every time I'm required to use the GUI to develop a report parameter screen, it's just like starting over - another battle with the bewilderbeast!

It took me over an hour to align four radio buttons with images and labels below each, only to discover that these radio buttons have no relation to each other. Normally, in an HTML form, if you have two radio buttons with the same name, they are part of the same radio button set. In the HTML Composer, there appears to be NO name attribute for a radio button.

It seems like you have to add one radio button, then add values via the properties and settings - this creates a new radio button for each value. But these radio buttons are stuck together - you can't move one without moving the other.

This HTML gets generated:

<TR>
<TD noWrap>
<LABEL style="CURSOR: default" id=radio4_LABEL_0 for=radio4_0>
<INPUT id=radio4_0 tabIndex=57 value=xxx type=radio noinput="0" displaytext="xxx" name="radio4">xxx</LABEL></TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD noWrap>
<LABEL style="CURSOR: default" id=radio4_LABEL_1 for=radio4_1>
<INPUT id=radio4_1 tabIndex=57 value=yyy type=radio noinput="0" displaytext="yyy" name="radio4">yyy</LABEL></TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD noWrap>
<LABEL style="CURSOR: default" id=radio4_LABEL_2 for=radio4_2>
<INPUT id=radio4_2 tabIndex=57 value=zzz type=radio noinput="0" displaytext="zzz" name="radio4">zzz</LABEL></TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD noWrap>
<LABEL style="CURSOR: default" id=radio4_LABEL_3 for=radio4_3>
<INPUT id=radio4_3 tabIndex=57 value=aaa type=radio noinput="0" displaytext="aaa" name="radio4">aaa</LABEL></TD></TR></TABLE></SPAN>     

The name attribute is generated but does not appear in the properties window, though "unique identifier" does.

What the 55555 is going on?

Thanks,

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Francis Mariani,

I noticed that the GUI does not give much (any?) flexibility when it comes to aligning radio button options other than changing the "Columns" property and manually adjusting the width/height of the control itself to obtain an effect as close as possible to what one wants.

Changing "unique identifier" does not update the "name" property of the radio button either but the "id" of the enclosing SPAN tag.

It must feel so nice in Paris right now away from this GUI annoyance

Thanks for confirming I'm not just a crazy old coot. I'm working with v7.7.03, one would expect the software to be a bit more flexible. Why on earth is there a "column" property for radio buttons? What GUI concept is this based on?

That's beyond me ... not to mention the fact that it not so easy any more to manually add controls and "tie" them to manual parameters.

In theory it should work but I must been doing something wrong because no matter what I do, as soon as a click Run, the underlying .fex is not receiving all of the amper values I expect even though I can "see" that the control is linked to the parameter in the Parameters tab.

Solution? Go back to the .fex, add the parameter there (especially if it's supposed to obtain dynamic values) doing it with Report Painter, go back to HTML Composer, re-open the procedure and add the new controls/parameters as prompted ... then it works!!

Francis,

The reason for having a column property for radio buttons is that you can have the radio buttons
displayed in 1 column or in n-columns (see this screenprint).
If you look at the generated code, you can see that an HTML-table is created with rows/columns.

Cheers,

-Fred-

I can see the use-case for that feature, but I think it's more common for people to want to position those radio buttons themselves. That's even more true for checkboxes - usually you want just one single checkbox to turn a filter on or off.

The fact that there's a span-tag around those radio-buttons is just wrong. Span-tags are for inline grouping of content, not for block content. For blocks you're supposed to use a div-tag.

But don't go changing the generated spans into divs, oh no! If you do that, the launch-page stops working.

Yeah, the HTML composer is a frustrating beast if you know anything about HTML...

I figured out the columns thing - it does not help at all.

What if I required a radio button set where clicking on one activates a form object, clicking on the other activates another one?

And why does the radio button NOT have a NAME attribute in the properties window?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Francis Mariani,

I still need help with these radio buttons!

I added three radio buttons, they were named radio1, radio2 and radio3. I changed the name of the radio buttons manually in the code - there were three elements with the tag name="radio1" in the generated code for radio button "radio1" - the same for the other two. I changed this tag to name="POUTFMT" for all three radio buttons.

I'm not sure if I have to modify anything else, but it appears this isn't enough, because the radio button set is not behaving as it should.

I gave up trying to work with radio buttons my way and have conformed to the GUI's rigid rules.

My square sides are slowly being eroded - soon I'll be round and able to fit in.