Formulator Field - Edit

  Description

    A field has a number of properties that determine its look and
    feel as well as its behavior. You can configure these properties
    in this tab. You can also use the TALES tab and the Override tab
    to associate dynamic behavior with field properties, though the
    Override tab is eventually to be phased out in favor of the TALES
    tab. Overridden fields will have their names be shown in square
    brackets.

    Which properties appear in this view depends on what kind of field
    you are editing.

    Each field has two sets of properties; widget properties and
    validator properties.

  Widget properties

    The widget properties determine the look and feel of the field
    that you see on the web page (which HTML code is generated for the
    field); i.e. what GUI *widget* you see.

    A very common widget property shared by all fields is called
    'Title'; all fields have titles -- the name you will see when the
    field is displayed on the screen.

    Another very common widget property is the 'Default' value of the
    widget. This is what will be filled in before the user changes
    anything to the form, unless you pass a value to the 'render'
    function; see the API reference for more information.

    Many widgets also have size information; the StringField for
    instance has a 'Display width' property which determines how large
    the field should appear on the screen, as well as a 'Maximum
    input' property that determines how much the user can enter
    (though this is independent from actual server-side validation).

    For some widget properties such as 'Maximum input' in StringField
    you can set the value to '0'; in that the HTML widget won't care
    how much the user inputs.
      
  Validator properties

    This set of properties determines how the field validates the 
    information that is submitted for this field.

    A very common validator property is the 'required' property. If a
    field is required, the field cannot be left empty by the user when
    submitting a web page. Validation in that case will result in
    failure.

    In case of the 'StringField', one validation property is called
    'Maximum length'; the field cannot contain more characters than
    that.

    For some validator properties such as 'Maximum length' in
    StringField, you can set the value to '0'. The validator will then
    not care how much the user entered -- there won't be any maximum.


