Hi People,

The AutoLabel feature of the IBO controls has an Option setting which
makes the label Bold for mandatory fields. At the moment this works
by simply checking the IsNullable setting of the column (and then it
also checks if there is a DefaultValue available).

I am considering is changing this so that it also checks the ReadOnly
and Required properties of the column.

By adding the check for ReadOnly or (not Required) we can exclude
additional columns from being bolded in AutoLabel. I often set a
column to readonly to prevent it from being included in the update,
letting the server trigger processing take care of the value.
Similarly you can use the NOTREQUIRED column attribute to allow server
trigger processing to take care of setting certain columns rather than
have IBO insist that a value is entered.

The change would introduce an unexpected "feature". In search mode
all columns return ReadOnly=true, so in search mode no labels are
bold. In some respects this is OK, since nothing is really mandatory
in search mode, but since the labels show bold even Browse mode I am
not certain I like the inconsistency.

I could avoid this by only using the Required check but this means
additional Fields* properties settings in some cases that I didn't
really want.

I could also avoid the problem by only returning mandatory in
dssInsert and dssEdit modes, having the fields always have a plain
label in non-editing states. I think I like this option better.

Any thoughts, comments or objections to me making this change to
AutoLabel?


Geoff Worboys
Telesis Computing