How to Generate a Spacer Item in 10.1.3

Question

10.1.3.2 JDev, 10.1.3.1.26 JHS. Scenario: a two-column region where a couple items on the right need to have blank spaces between them so they line up with certain items on the left.
In 10.1.2 and before, we created non-base table VO attributes, set them as read-only and mixed them in with the input items. This generated a spacer item. In 10.1.3, we create non-VO attribute items but they take up less vertical space so the vertical alignment is difficult.
Is the best way to solve this to create a custom item template that is an objectSpacer tag instead of an inputText tag and attach that to the non-VO items? That seems like a kludge so I must be missing something basic.
Thanks,
Peter

Answer 1

Here's my solution:
1. Create a template called custom\item\form\formSpacer30.vm with the following contents:
<af:objectSpacer #ITEM_ID_IN_FORM() height="30" width="20" />2. Create an item in the group that is not bound to a Model attribute. The type is "textInput."
3. In the FORM_TEXT_INPUT template for that item enter "custom/item/form/formSpacer30.vm"
If anyone has done this differently or better, it would be of interest. My solution seems like a kludge. Also, it leads to an enhancement request to support the width and height properties of an af:objectSpacer. Currently, they need to be hard-coded into the template. If we had attributes like #HEIGHT_IN_FORM() and #WIDTH_IN_FORM() that translated the JHS def file attributes Height and Width to "height" and "width" attributes, you would not need to hard code the size in the template. At this point in my solution, you need to create separate template files for each different spacer size.
Peter Koletzke