The following describes the conventions the GUI Designer uses when generating code:

Absolute Positioning

The GUI Designer uses absolute positioning in all of its generated ABL code. You must take this into consideration before building your application.

ABL offers two alternative syntaxes for positioning objects within frames:

  • This syntax allows you to place an object at a specific location within a frame. This syntax supports absolute positioning. That is, you position objects at a specific X or Y location, or at a specific COLUMN or ROW.
  • This syntax supports relative positioning. That is, you place objects relative to each other in a frame using offsets.

For more information about these two types of syntax, see ABL Reference and OpenEdge Programming Interfaces.

Absolute Field References

When referencing database fields, the GUI Designer does not fully qualify the database field names with their respective database names. If you want database field names to be absolute (specifying the database name, the table name, and the field name), you can override the default by selecting the Qualify database fields with database name check box in the AppBuilder properties page (Windows only) page.

Character Units

To specify object dimensions and positions, the GUI Designer uses character units. You can override this default on an object-by-object basis within the object's advanced Property Sheet. The alternative to character units is PIXELS.