Form Designer #

The form designer is where you lay out pixel-positioned documents — invoices,
packing slips, statements, checks, labels — by placing fields on a page at exact
coordinates. It’s a real differentiator: instead of Photoshopping a logo onto a
fixed template, you actually design the document.

This page covers the field palette, the page model, positioning, and saving/sharing
forms. The data side (binding fields to columns, tokens) is in
Data binding and fields.

The field palette #

Each thing you place on a form is a field of a given type:

The page model #

A form definition carries the page setup — page size (e.g. Letter), orientation
(P portrait / L landscape), and the four margins (in mm) — plus default fonts
and colors for headings, data, totals, and filters.

There aren’t rigid “header / body / footer” bands you draw into. Instead:

• Single-render fields (Data, Text, Img, Line, Rect, company fields,
  PgNum, Ttl) are drawn once per page at their coordinates. A field’s
  display setting controls which pages: 0 = every page, 1 = first page
  only, 2 = last page only. That’s how you get a remittance stub on the last page,
  or a logo only on page one.
• Repeating fields (Tbl) draw one row per query result and paginate
  automatically, adding pages when the rows overflow.

So “header” and “footer” are really “first/every-page single fields above/below the
table,” expressed through coordinates and the display rule.

Positioning fields #

Every field has a position and size in millimetres:

• abscissa — X (distance from the left)
• ordinate — Y (distance from the top)
• width / height — the field’s box (0 lets images auto-size)

Plus per-field appearance in its settings: font, size, align (L/C/R), and
color. Lines carry a linetype (H/V/C) and length; rectangles carry border
(bshow/bsize/bcolor) and fill (fshow/fcolor) options.

Logos and images #

There are three image fields, for three situations:

• Img — a fixed image you uploaded (your letterhead graphic). It references a
  file under the Bizuno data images/ folder. If the file is missing, the form
  renders a visible red placeholder rather than failing silently.
• ImgLink — a data-bound image whose path comes from the query (e.g. a
  product photo per line). Accepts JPG/PNG.
• CImg — your company logo specifically.

Hi-DPI tip. PDF scales the image into the box you define (in mm), so upload a
logo at 2–3× the printed size for crisp output — a 30 mm-wide logo box looks best
fed by an image a few hundred pixels wide, not a 30-pixel thumbnail.

Page numbering across batched forms #

PgNum prints the page number. For batch printing — many invoices in one PDF —
PhreeForm supports page-group aliases ({nb1}, {nb2}, …) so each document can show
“Page X of Y” counting its own pages, not the whole batch. The aliases are
resolved when the PDF is finalized.

Saving, versioning, and sharing #

• Save writes the whole definition (all fields and their settings) back to
  common_meta as JSON, stamping last_update. There’s no built-in version
  history — save is a replace — so keep a copy before a big change.
• Copy a form to iterate safely: duplicate, rename, edit the copy, and leave the
  original untouched (see Custom forms).
• Export / import moves a form between installs as a JSON file — see
  Custom forms → export/import.

Related #

• Data binding and fields — binding fields to data and tokens
• Processors and formatters — shaping values
• Custom forms — copy, groups, import/export, troubleshooting
• Report engine overview