Dynamic Background Colors in SmartForms

Situation :
Our outputs have some background colors for important fields to have better visibility. This works fine for the normal printout. But, when send a SmartForm Output as a FAX, output comes with a BLACK background wherever we have the background color. And this makes the output unreadable (BLACK font with BLACK background). 

Possible ways to handle the problem:

• Don't send a FAX: This is not feasible, as some customers would like to have there forms as FAX

• Create a clone of the existing forms and remove the background color and call them whenever we have to send as FAX: This doesn't make sense because this will lead to more maintenance; change to the primary form leads the change to the clone form.

• Find out some way to remove the background color dynamically: This seems to be the best choice, but next question is how to do it. 

Solution:

I had debugged the SmartForm function modules over and over to get the point where it sets the background color, borders etc to the output and what I found, there is only main internal table, with deep structure, which handles everything to generate the layout for the output.

I have started with creating a test Smartform. I created some tables lines with background colors. Than I made a coding node in the SmartForm and tried to change the internal table, which holds the entire layout related information, with help of field-symbols to remove the background color and BINGO - I got the background color removed.

With Background Color:

Without Background Color:

SmartForm:

Download the uploadable .XML file of test SmartForm from here. Save this file as ZTEST_NP_DYN_BGCOL.XML. To Upload, go to tcode SMARTFORMS and upload this file from Utilities > Upload Form.

The Main logic which handles the dyanmic coloring is inside the Smartform under window DUMMY. 

Driver Program

This is the driver program for SmartForm:

*&---------------------------------------------------------------------*  *& Report  ZTEST_NP_SF_DYN  *&  *&---------------------------------------------------------------------*  *& Test Program to test the dynamic background color in the  *&  Smartforms  *&---------------------------------------------------------------------*  REPORT  ZTEST_NP_SF_DYN.  DATA: W_FM_NAME TYPE RS38L_FNAM.  * Selection Screen  SELECTION-SCREEN: BEGIN OF BLOCK BLK1 WITH FRAME.  SELECTION-SCREEN: BEGIN OF LINE,                    COMMENT 1(20) L_SF_NM,                    POSITION 35.  PARAMETERS:       P_SF_NM TYPE TDSFNAME DEFAULT 'ZTEST_NP_DYN_BGCOL'.  SELECTION-SCREEN: END   OF LINE.  SELECTION-SCREEN: BEGIN OF LINE,                    COMMENT 1(20) L_ITEM,                    POSITION 35.  PARAMETERS:       P_ITEM  TYPE I DEFAULT 5.  SELECTION-SCREEN: END   OF LINE.  SELECTION-SCREEN: BEGIN OF LINE.  PARAMETERS:       P_BG_COL AS CHECKBOX.  SELECTION-SCREEN: COMMENT 3(35) L_BG,                    END   OF LINE.  SELECTION-SCREEN: END OF BLOCK BLK1.  * Initialization  INITIALIZATION.    L_SF_NM = 'Smartform Name'.    L_ITEM  = 'Number of Item'.    L_BG    = 'With Background Color'.  * Start of Selection  START-OF-SELECTION.    CALL FUNCTION 'SSF_FUNCTION_MODULE_NAME'      EXPORTING        FORMNAME           = P_SF_NM      IMPORTING        FM_NAME            = W_FM_NAME      EXCEPTIONS        NO_FORM            = 1        NO_FUNCTION_MODULE = 2        OTHERS             = 3.    IF SY-SUBRC <> 0.  * MESSAGE ID SY-MSGID TYPE SY-MSGTY NUMBER SY-MSGNO  *         WITH SY-MSGV1 SY-MSGV2 SY-MSGV3 SY-MSGV4.    ENDIF.    CALL FUNCTION W_FM_NAME      EXPORTING        NO_ITEM          = P_ITEM        I_DYN_BG         = P_BG_COL      EXCEPTIONS        FORMATTING_ERROR = 1        INTERNAL_ERROR   = 2        SEND_ERROR       = 3        USER_CANCELED    = 4        OTHERS           = 5.    IF SY-SUBRC <> 0.  * MESSAGE ID SY-MSGID TYPE SY-MSGTY NUMBER SY-MSGNO  *         WITH SY-MSGV1 SY-MSGV2 SY-MSGV3 SY-MSGV4.    ENDIF.

How to run this program: