Maps define the appearance of your program's screens. They allow you to position text, edit fields and other controls (such as buttons and icons) on the screen in any colour and format you wish. Maps are introduced in the Introduction to DP4 here.
Maps are grouped into mapsets sharing a common mapset name or mapname. Each map has a different map number within the mapset. You can dind out more about how mapsets are used in QAB in Mapsets and QAB.
The table below summarises the various ways maps are used in QA Build:
| Screen Layout Map | An optional map, defined in the Program Summary, which determines the position on the screen of messages and other maps used by the program |
| Main Map | The main map for a procedure body, defined in the Screen Design or Form Design dialogs, provides a large part of the user interface in interactive and other screen based procedures and the layout of a form for printing in print procedures. |
| Multiple Choice Maps | These are used to display list boxes from which the user is invited to choose a value or record. They are set up in the various Table Processing dialogs. |
| Message Maps | Messages and remarks set up in Table Processing are also stored as maps. |
| Help Messages | Help messages (for fields on maps) are not actually maps themselves but are stored and edited in a very similar way. |
| Function Key Area Map | |
| Window Access Maps | |
| Multiple choice maps | |
| Word Strings | Word Strings are used to avoid the need for hard coding text into formulas. |
Each map can exist in multiple variants using numeric language codes: whenever a DP4 program runs it has a preferred language code (read from the user preferences) from which it will try to load its maps - if the map does not exist in the current language code DP4 will use the language 0 version of the map (you should always create this first).
As name suggests language codes are usually used to store different national language versions of a map (which is one of the advantages of using them in the first place). However you can equally well use languages for other purposes - you might use one language for creating a set of maps for running your application on a regular PC screen, and another set for running on a Handheld or Palm Top size screen. You could also create a set of maps with some fields missed out (for users with low security perhaps), or with extra help information for trainee users.
When you need to design a map, the Program Editor launches its companion utility, the Map Editor, which allows you to create the map (see Map Editing). This is usually done via either the Message Assignment Menu or the similar Map Assignment Menu.
You can also use the Map Editor to create help messages for each edit field (or any other control that may receive focus).