A screen generator, also known as a screen painter, screen mapper,[1] or forms generator is a software package (or component thereof) which enables data entry screens to be generated declaratively, by "painting" them on the screen WYSIWYG-style, or through filling-in forms, rather than requiring writing of code to display them manually.
[2][3][4][5] 4GLs commonly incorporate a screen generator feature.
[8][9] The earliest screen generators were character-based; by the 1990s, GUI support became common, and then support for generating HTML forms as well.
Some screen generators work by generating code to display the screen in a high-level language (for example, COBOL); others store the screen definition in a data file or in database tables, and then have a runtime component responsible for actually displaying the form and receiving and validating user input.
Examples of screen generators include: