FIX_COLUMN can be useful when you have a lots of fields in the field catalog and you want to make sure that some of the key fields are always visible, for example sales order number and position or posting document number. When you setup the value of this field to ‘X’, then the column(s) will be always visible. While scrolling the fields after the last field which has this flag will be moving left or right.

It is important to remember that it is not enough to say that for example 3^rd column should be fixed. You must set this flag to all fields up to the last one, that should be fixed in order this setting work correctly.

Figure 61 ZDEMO_AIN_CL26 Setting FIX_COLUMN

Just make sure that you do not setup too much field like this, as it can happen that on small screens users will only see selected fields and nothing more.

When you’ll run the ZDEMO_AIN_CL26 program, you can see the behaviour of the FIX_COLUMN field. If you have wide screen, please resize the SAP GUI window, so the full grid is not visible.

Figure 62 ZDEMO_AIN_CL26 Field catalog fixed on AIRPFROM field

Figure 63 ZDEMO_AIN_CL26 Field catalog fixed on AIRPFROM field

EMPHASIZE allows you to change the colour of the whole column if there is such need.

This field can be filled with following values:

• Space - this means you use the standard behaviour of ALV grid
• ‘X’ – you use standard emphasize (default colour)
• ‘Cxyz’ – where:
  •  ‘C’ is a character that notifies ALV grid that you will use specific colours
  • x – contains one of the following colour numbers:
    • 0 - background colour
    • 1 - blue
    • 2 - gray
    • 3 - yellow
    • 4 - blue/gray
    • 5 - green
    • 6 - red
    • 7 - orange  
  • y – is saying if the colours are intensified (‘1’) or not (‘0’)
  • z – is saying if the colours should be inverted (‘1’) or not (‘0’)

Figure 59 ZDEMO_AIN_CL25 Emphasize set for columns

Figure 60 ZDEMO_AIN_CL25 Results of column colouring

If you are familiar with the WRITE statement, then probably you know the EDIT_MASK addition which allows us to do formatting of the output in two different ways, you can apply the same to the EDIT_MASK of field catalog as well.

1. Using Conversion-Exit, for example ‘==ALPHA’, where ‘==’ sings represents the information that we’re using conversion-exit, and the next 5 characters are reserved for the conversion-exit name.
    
2. Using manual mask, where you can use following possibilities:
    
   1. Each underscore character (‘_’) in the mask will be replaced by the characters of the source field
       
   2. ‘LL’ on the beginning of the mask means that the underscore characters of the mask (“_”) will be replaced starting from left side, for example mask ‘LL__:__’ for value 123 will be displayed as ‘12:3 ’.
       
   3.  It’s also default setting for the mask so no need to use it in fact.
       
   4. ‘RR’ on the beginning of the mask means that the underscore characters of the mask will be replaced starting from the right side, for example mask ‘RR__:__’ for value 123 will be displayed as ‘ 1:23’.
       
   5. ‘V’ in case of quantity or amount fields is a place where the sign of the number should be displayed, for example mask ‘V__,__’ for number -1234 will be shown as ‘-12,34’.
       
   6. Any other characters will remain unchanged, means you can also build some extraordinary outputs, for example mask ‘Flight Number is: ____’ for the SFLIGHT-CONNID field will bring following result: ‘Flight Number is: 0017’.

Figure 53 ZDEMO_AIN_CL24 hardcoded edit_mask

When you set this field to ‘X’ then data will be display without using convertion exit that is assigned to the reference field. This setting works when you have REF_FIELD and REF_TABLE filled in fieldcatalog or when CONVEXIT field is filled. This setting is useful when you want to display internal values that are stored in database.

Figure 51 ZDEMO_AIN_CL23 Language with Convertion Exit

Figure 52 ZDEMO_AIN_CL23 Language without Convertion Exit