widget logic help

I am working with the requirement screens.
On a screen it calls a form.
The form is a list, before it calls the form it puts a hyperlink to add a
new role.
I am working on ListRequirementRoles.
I want to change the behavior so if there is a role it does not have the add
role, and if the list is empty it displays the hyperlink.
This is pretty easy in ftl. I spent all day tryong to get a working method
using the requirementscreens.xml
When I check for the list
<entity-one entity-name="Requirement"
value-field="requirement" auto-field-map="true"/>
<entity-and entity-name="RequirementRole"
list="requirementRoles">
<field-map from-field="requirementId"
field-name="requirementId"/>
</entity-and>
using
<condition><not><if-empty
field="requirementRoles"/></not></condition>
I can display the widget or the failed widget, but the failed widget does
not seem to have any of the values set in my actions.
I could do it on my form (added a second form called new role), but if it
did not use a list type I could not seem to see the list, if I made it a
list, but there were no records I could seem to get the hyperlink to show
up.

Just thought I would ask if any of you experienced folks have the syntax to
get one row out of the roles entity so I can have a non list form and check
a value to say display hyperlink?

I am going to do it in FTL for now, as I know the syntax, but thought I
would ask for next time.
Maybe I completely do not understand compare in general, or use when on the
forms. I would of thought I could just do some compare to say if I am going
to show the hyperlink on the screen and would not of needed an additional
form etc.

Joel Fradkin