PowerBuilder ‘Gotcha’ – Autosize Height and strings (wordwrap doesn’t work)
So I have a datawindow which displays some information in rows about invoices for a customer. There is a ‘notes’ column which contains whatever the salesperson entered at the time of the order. Generally you would want to make sure the column in the datawindow for these notes is flagged with the autosize height property on and the band within which it is contained is similarly marked (so the user can see all of the notes entered). So far so good.
Now you submit your code to QA for testing and it is rejected; reason – only one line prints/is visible.
You spend your time double checking the field length, the autosize height property, the database table, etc. You re-run your test and, well, “it works for me”.
The issue is the auditor testing the application looks at the specs and sees that 500 characters are allowed in the notes field.
“Well, if that’s the case then I’ll just hold down the ‘A’ key until the space is filled up.”
Autosize height works like a simple word wrap. Without any formatting characters like spaces or line breaks it doesn’t know where to wrap. Have the auditor cut and paste ‘normal’ text (just like the end user would do anyway).
Updated March 2021
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