2.6 How to Put on the Style

Styles can be viewed as a request to the transform to do something in a particular way. This is distinct from changing say a template property or a multiplicity, where the transform will do what you say, if it's legal and throw an error if it isn't. If the transform understands the style it will use it as best it can. Sometimes, the rendering of a style may change from release to release of the transform. If the style is not supported it will still be accepted into the model, but the default style will be used instead.

In RSA this makes little difference, as the styles will normally be constrained as dropdown values for several style properties, such as displayStyle or accessStyle. However, even then you could add a new style of your own using extraAttributes: style=.

When first creating the model, it is often simplest to leave most styles off and set them later. Some of the styles on attribute should be considered even on the first attempt. dbStyle may need to be set, if you need to connect to a legacy database, and setting the displayStyle on fields gives a better feel for how a page will work.

Application styles:

columnStyle	the number of columns that single fields are displayed in on a general page.
menuStyle	the style of the application menus (How to model menus)

Entity styles:

style

The style of any maintenance page group; can be set to "tab". Passed up to the maintenance dataview.

Dataview styles:

style

The style of any maintenance page group; can be set to "tab".

Attribute styles: (all passed up to the maintenance dataview field apart from dbStyle, and so only affect maintenance screens).

dbStyle	how the attribute is represented as a column.
accessStyle	how (or whether) the field is displayed. accessStyle = hidden is different to hidden = true, which also stops the attribute being used within the application data structure.
labelStyle	whether the label is displayed
displayStyle	different styles are available for different types. textbox covers all types. text, textarea, password are for Strings; dmy and combo are for Dates; checkbox is for booleans; and dropdown is for Strings and numerics. dropdown should be used in conjunction with a choices constraint - at the attribute of dataviewField level to give a fixed value dropdown box (a blank being valid if accessStyle is not required).

Dataview Field styles: (see Dataview Fields Representing Screen Data)

accessStyle	how (or whether) the field is displayed. accessStyle = hidden is different to hidden = true, which also stops the attribute being used within the application data structure.
labelStyle	whether the label is displayed
displayStyle	different styles are available for different types. textbox covers all types. text, textarea, password are for Strings; dmy and combo are for Dates; checkbox is for booleans; and dropdown is for Strings and numerics. dropdown should be used in conjunction with a choices constraint to give a fixed value dropdown box (a blank being available if required = false).

Relation End styles: (all passed up to the maintenance dataview ends, and so only affects maintenance screens).

accessStyle	Can request readonly. Similar to attribute, but hidden is not required as it is handled using displayStyle = noshow. Readonly doesn't work perfectly with some display styles, but the data is never changed.
displayStyle	styles only work with particular multiplicities (see How to Model a Basic Page for details)

Dataview End styles:

accessStyle	Can request readonly. Similar to attribute, but hidden is not required as it is handled using displayStyle = noshow. Readonly doesn't work perfectly with some display styles, but the data is never changed.
displayStyle	styles only work with particular multiplicities (see How to Model a Basic Page for details)

Page/WizardPage styles:

accessStyle	can request readonly. Currently only available with no functionStyle. (functionStyle will override.)
functionStyle	(see How to Model a Basic Page for details)
menuStyle	tlr menus allow certain page menu levels to be displayed on the left or right hand side. This feature may not be available in later releases.

Event/WizardEvent styles:

displayStyle	Normally, events render as buttons at the bottom of the screen, select events being an exception. Setting the displayStyle as inline prevents this. It is also used to create buttons at the end of a row on a list page.
functionStyle	functionStyles on events work in tandem with functionStyles on pages. (see How to Model a Styled Page with Styled Events for details)

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