Form Studio Settings
The Form Studio Settings allow you to configure default folders for saving your projects, and to set the parameters for recovery saves. You can also assign default styles to your form's elements, switch on or off various types of logging, and control the frequency for when snapshots of page thumbnails will be taken.
Default Save Location
Allows you to specify the default folder to be used as the root folder under which your projects will be saved. Individual projects will be saved below this folder in subfolders named after the projects they hold. The default shipping folder used is:
C:\Users\<username>\Documents\NDL Software\Form Studio\Projects
If you want to use a different default folder, you can change it using the Browse button, 
, to the right of the option, to navigate to and select your chosen default save folder.
The default folder specified here will be used if you don't specify a different folder when saving a project. If you want to save to a different folder than the default folder, you can use the Save As option to save your project, which allows you to specify a folder of your choice. Existing projects opened from a different root folder will continue to be saved to their original location, if you save the project using one of the Save options rather than Save As.
The Studio remembers the last folder used to save or open a project and automatically uses this folder for the next save or open rather than the folder specified here. After closing the Studio, the next time you load it, it will return to using the default folder specified here.
If you change the default folder, make sure you have permission to write to the folder specified.
You can reset this option back to its default by right-clicking on it and choosing Reset to Default.
- If you are running Form Studio as an administrator, you won't be able to access network folders from within the Studio. This is a Windows security restriction aimed at preventing unauthorised access to network folders.
The options within this category allow you to enable or disable recovery saves, and to control the frequency of those saves. You can also specify a location into which any backed-up copies of your project will be placed. As discussed beneath the Recovery Save Location drop-down, below, if recovery saves is enabled, Form Studio will maintain a temporary copy of your project, which is retrievable, should you be unable to save it for any reason.
In some situations (especially within resource-constrained environments) reducing the frequency of recovery saving or disabling it altogether, may improve performance.
Within each recovery save operation, numerous file reads, writes, creations and deletes take place, which could impact upon performance, particularly where spinning HDDs have been deployed, or where antivirus software must scan every file change. Having the ability to reduce the number of recovery saves or being able to turn the option off altogether where they are not required can help to alleviate resource-related and other issues.
The Enable Recovery Saves option lets you turn on or switch off recovery saving. When the checkbox is checked (ticked), recovery saving is enabled. When the checkbox is unchecked, recovery saving will be disabled. Checking or unchecking the Enable Recovery Saves option takes place immediately within Form Studio. For new installations of Form Studio, or where a new form is being created, the Enable Recovery Saves option will be enabled by default. Once the option has been turned off, this will be retained until it is turned back on again. Likewise, where the option is turned on, it will stay turned on until it is turned off.
The Recovery Save Frequency option is a mandatory field, within which the time between each recovery save can be set (in milliseconds). For new installations of Form Studio, or where a new form is being created, a default value of 1000 milliseconds (a single second) will be applied. If you change this value, the new value will be retained until it is changed again.
Form Studio maintains a temporary copy of your project, whilst you work, so that it can be recovered should you be unable to save it for any reason. When you load the Studio, it checks to see if there are any temporary copies available and, if so, offers you the opportunity to recover them. The temporary copies are deleted after a successful save.
By default these temporary copies are saved under:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp\Form Studio\Recovered Projects
The Recovery Save Location option allows you to change the default folder used to hold these temporary files. Use the Browse button, , to the right of the option, to navigate to and select the required folder.
If the default save and recovery folder specified here is physically deleted, e.g. using Windows File Explorer, it will automatically be recreated the next time the Studio attempts to save a temporary working copy.
If you change the default folder, make sure you have permission to write to the folder specified.
You can reset this option back to its default by right-clicking on it and choosing Reset to Default.
- If you have unsaved projects available for recovery and you do not recover your projects when asked, the temporary files remain and you can recover them from the File ➝ Open menu later. In this situation, the Open menu will have a Recovered option, below the Browse option. Click on this option to recover your project(s). The temporary copies are deleted after a successful save.
If this option is selected, when you add an Element to a form for the first time within a project, one or more default styles for that Element will automatically be created and added to the Styles gallery on the Ribbon's Home tab. The default style(s) will be applied to the Element. Subsequently, if you add another instance of this Element to the form, the default style(s) will once again be applied to the Element.
If this option is not selected, the default style(s) will not be created when adding an Element to a form for the first time and no style(s) will be applied to Elements when they are dropped onto the form.
In either case, you can create new styles and edit existing styles and apply these styles to Elements manually within the Element's properties. For more information refer to the
Logging Category
These options allow you to configure the Form Studio logging facility. This log records or outputs messages providing information about what is happening whilst you are using the Form Studio itself, which may be useful in diagnosing problems were you to experience any whilst using the Studio. Log messages can be written to a text file, output to a third-party monitor program or both. You can turn both output types on and off independently, using the options provided here and specify different levels of logging for each.
The logging level affects the type of messages which are added to the log, for example you can restrict the log's output to only the most serious errors, or to all errors (serious and less serious) and warning messages or you can choose the debug or trace levels which provide more detailed technical information about what is happening in the event that you were to experience problems whilst using the Studio. For a guide to the information output by each level, hover your mouse pointer over the options to display a tooltip listing the trace levels and a brief description of each one.
By default this logging is on and the messages are written to file.
The Console logging level setting enables 'console' logging and allows you to specify the level of logging required. This type of logging causes Form Studio to output log messages such that they can be captured, displayed and stored by third-party monitors such as Microsoft's DebugView.
To turn this type of logging on, select one of the options from the drop-down list, other than Off, which turns console logging off. Selecting an option in the list will log messages which fall within the level selected and all other levels which are above it in the list.
This option enables and disables a separate log which reports on the Forms Studio's logging process and may be useful if you were to experience problems with logging from Forms Studio. We do not recommend enabling this logging unless asked to do so by NDL's Technical Support Team.
If asked to enable the logging, select one of the values, Audit, Debug or Trace from the drop-down list. The logging will start immediately. Remember to reset the option back to Off, which will turn this logging off, when you have finished as this log file can get very large.
The log is written to the following file:
C:\Users\<username>\Documents\NDL Software\Form Studio\Logging\nloglogfile.txt
Once you have finished with the logging, you can delete this file.
This option enables logging to a file.
To turn this type of logging on, select one of the options from the drop-down list, other than Off, which turns logging to file off. Selecting an option in the list will log messages which fall within the level selected and all other levels which are above it in the list. By default, this logging is on at the Trace level.
Allows you to specify the name of the file in which to store the log messages, and its location, if file logging has been enabled in the File logging level option above. By default the log is written to the following file on your local PC:
C:\Users\<username>\Documents\NDL Software\Form Studio\Logging\logfile.txt
If you want to change the folder used, click on the Browse button, , to the right of the option, to navigate to and select your new folder. The file itself will still be called logfile.txt, only the folder will change.
You can reset this option back to its default by right-clicking on it and choosing Reset to Default.
Thumbnail screenshot wait (ms)
This option affects the drawing of the page thumbnails on the Pages tab of the Project Explorer Pane. The thumbnails are created in the background and then a snapshot is taken to be displayed in the Pages tab. This option determines the amount of time, in milliseconds, to wait before the snapshot is taken. If the thumbnails are displaying as blank images, try increasing the value specified here.
The default value is 1000 milliseconds.