mscholtz

FYI, circumstantial evidence (i.e. very cursory testing) leads me to believe that this has been fixed. Deleting a field doesn't appear to alter scripted import mappings. If anyone knows otherwise, please still let me know.

I know that in FMP 5/6, if you had scripted an import, then subsequently deleted one or more fields from the table (file) you were importing into, you ran the risk of having your import mappings messed up. (It seemed to be that the script remembered the mappings based on the creation order of the fields, rather than a hard reference to the fields themselves. So if you deleted a field that was created prior to one of the mapped fields, everything would get 'moved up one notch'.) My question is: does this still happen in FM 7/8? Or has this been fixed? I could go test it myself, but can someone save me the trouble? Thanks very much!

I'm developing on Windows, but client will be on Mac. I've noticed that the tooltips seem to appear much more slowly on the Mac as opposed to Win. This is true even for tooltips that are straight text, so it's not about calculation speed. Anyone know why this is the case? And any way to speed it up? It's a problem because they take so long to appear that users are moving their mouse away, thinking no tooltip is coming.

Thanks, comment. The reason is that the checkboxes need to be visible or not on a child record-by-child record basis (hope that makes sense), rather than being applied uniformly to every record displayed. In other words: I need to be able to display a list of records, whether in a portal or in a list view. And then each record needs to offer the checkboxes or not, based on other data in the record. I think I'm going to go with the list view. There will be other drawbacks to that move that I haven't gone into here, but I'm pretty sure it's the lesser of two evils. Thanks, everyone.

Thanks for your reply, that's a clever trick, but this isn't at all what I need in this case. I'm really thinking that the answer to my question is no, but if anyone knows otherwise, please let me know.

I'm pretty sure what I want here is not possible in FMP, but thought I'd double check. I've got a checkbox field that is conditional. Depending on other fields, it'll sometimes show some options, sometimes others. In addition, I want it to sometimes offer no options - in other words, it should sometimes be blank. I can get my value list to be empty when it should be, but then the checkbox field, instead of being blank, shows a single checkbox labeled "no values defined". I take it there's no way to avoid that in this case, without using a layout trick like selectively hiding the field using a portal? (I was hoping to avoid that because the field in question is already IN a portal, and I'd rather not switch this layout to a list-view unless absolutely necessary.) Thanks! M.

I'm experiencing what seems like a strange bug. I've got a layout that has a tab panel w/ two tabs, and a script that determines which of the tabs to activate, using Go To Object. This works fine. However, the script then continues to manipulate the window somewhat. Through debugging, I've found that the "Show/Hide Text Ruler [Hide]" step is causing the tab panel to revert back to the default tab, in those cases where the other tab had been selected. This happens whether or not the text ruler is actually showing when this script step runs. Is this just an obscure bug? Anyone else seen this?

Hmm, actually on my machine that isn't true, which is why I didn't suspect a tooltip. The variable updates as soon as the cursor moves over the object, long before the tooltip fires. I've verified this w/ the Data Viewer. Good trick, although it still won't work for me because I can't make my buttons repeating fields. (And you're just going to have to trust me on that one, Daniele. It's not worth it to discuss the reasons.)

OK, I give up. How does that work? How does $button end up = the # of the repetition clicked? I don't see where the variable is being set.. there's no script setting it, no calc. Do tell.

The forums just ate my longer, somewhat more eloquent response. As substitute, I'll just say: thanks for the replies, but I really do want to ask my original question, even in light of the considerations above. Thanks for any further responses.

I know this is an old topic, but I'd think you might want to do this with a script. Clicking on the portal would set a global field to the id or name of the permission. Then in your table that holds assigned permissions, have a calculated container field that will show the graphic if the permission is equal to the global.

Thanks, Vodka! That's basically what I was looking for. I thought about writing a function myself, but I guessed this was something someone else had already done. Thanks again!

I've got a portal in my app that's a selector - user clicks on a row, and that determines what is displayed elsewhere on the screen. I've got now problem making this work in general. My question is about visuals for the selection portal itself. Normally I might go with the native portal highlight, or script a container field in the protal to change the background. However, some rows in the portal will already have a different background color, as this is used as a visual metaphor in the app (for newness). Not open to suggestions to change that. So I need an alternate method of highlighting a row, that doesn't involve the background color. I'm looking both for technical advice, as well as general UI/visual design advice. What would look good, first of all, that also wouldn't be too hard to create. Thoughts I've had include: * a bold line around the selected item (probably by using a slightly larger container field behind the one that's already there) * changing text to bold or another color * icon (although I think this wouldn't be noticeable enough) Who's got some bright ideas? Thanks!

I think I figured this out. The calculation for record permissions seems to allow you to reference a global. So I can just set the global when the FE opens, reference it in the calc, and all should be fine. I don't know why I assumed this wouldn't be possible. For some reason I assumed that the calc for record-level permission would have to be "stored" (i.e. referencing stored fields in that table only). The only limitation I foresee is that I won't be able to let users have both FE's open simultaneously. But that's probably not a big stumbling block.

I can't seem to figure out how this would work. It may be simple, but I'm not seeing the way forward. The setup: One backend (data) file, with two different front-end (UI) files, both connecting to that same back-end. The two FE's in effect are two separate applications (they'll almost never be used simultaneously by the same person, and many users will never use both) but they share certain data. Let's call these FE's App A, and App B. In particular they both use a table (Households) as a primary data element. The wrinkle is that each app should have access to only some of the records in this table. App A will have access to most, but not all, of the Households, while App B should only see those that are engaged in a particular process. At any time, an App A Household could start that process, at which time it needs to start being accessible to App B. There are of course many ways to make something like this happen. But it seems the simplest would be to use Privilege Sets to control the access. My thought was to add 2 flag fields to the Households table, with each one indicating access for one of the FE's. Then use custom record privileges to control View/Edit access based on those flags. The problem: record-level privileges have to be set in file the table resides in, in this case the back end. So I can't have different privilege sets in each front end. And we'll in general be using external authentication on Mac OS, so I don't want to set up separate accounts to be used for each front-end. Given all of the above, is there any way to do this using privilege sets? Basically I want the permissions to behave differently depending on which front-end is being used, even though the account for the back-end file is the same. Hopefully this makes some sense. Thanks for any help!

Is there a good way to combine two lists (in the sense of the List function, i.e. a CR-delimited list of text values) and also de-dup them? Order doesn't matter. So if I started with: blue red yellow and green blue red I'd want to end up with blue red yellow green I can combine the two with the List function, but that doesn't remove the duplicates. And no, it wouldn't be super easy to put these into a ValueList, I know that would de-dup. I'm guessing the answer is a custom function. Anyone got one like this? Thanks!

What do you mean? Are you still talking about repeating fields, or some other method? Thanks!

Hmm, clever, but in this case that won't work. The buttons can't be repeating fields. Anyone else know of a different way to do this?

Is there any way that a click on a button can pass the object name of that button to the script that the button runs? It would be OK if this is done as a script param, or some other way. As long as I don't have to enter the object name again as a hard-coded script param. Thanks! M.

I'm not so sure it's possible anymore either. It used to work this way in FMS 5, but maybe not anymore. However, you'll see by reading the text below, that I cut/pasted from the help file in the FMS 8 for Windows management console, why I suspected that it was possible. Maybe FMI just needs a little more careful editing on this help file?

I'm probably missing something obvious here... FMS 8.0 on Win won't seem to follow shortcuts to open db's. The help file and admin guide says I can put shortcuts to databases in the default Data/Databases folder, and it will open those files. It doesn't. No errors in the log, so it appears to be not even attempting to open them. If I put the same files in that same default folder (the files themselves rather than shortcuts) they open fine. Same thing if I add their current location as the alternate default folder. But I'd rather use the shortcut method if I could get it to work. Thanks for any help...

One of my files (and various derivative copies of it) are intermittently not showing up in the Window manu. I'm well aware that hidden files are behind the "Show Window>" menu item, and these aren't there either. Anyone else seen this? A sign of corruption, possibly? (God, I hope not.) Or is there some non-bug non-corruption reason this would happen? It occurs no matter whether the window in question or another window has the focus. If I spawn a new window from one of the files with the problem, the new window inherits the disease. This doesn't happen all the time. When I first open these files they show in the menu as normal. Then at some point they disappear. Haven't yet been able to pinpoint when it's happening or what I was doing right before it happens. See screenshot for evidence I'm not crazy. TIA!

Thanks, everyone. This has been very eye-opening. Most of the considerations brought up here (IWP, ease of backup, user accounts, worries about locating corruption, etc.) don't really apply to me or concern me. But I'm glad they're on the table for the community at large. Brian C, I think you have made the most compelling case for success with the SM. And I definitely hear you that if you have a large amount of data, you never want to have to do a full-fledged import migration. Been there, never want to do that again. My projects (including my current one) tend do be "large" in terms of table and UI complexity, but aren't destined to contain GB's worth of data. They're fairly highly-engineered, but not high-volume. So on one level the SM isn't as essential a time-saver for me as it sounds like it is for you. Server crashes don't happen often (knock wood) and it wouldn't take me too long to recover from one. But I am still curious, for you and Genx and anyone else out there who have done a lot of SM apps: have you ever experienced any problems that seem to relate to SM? Have you seen any bugs such as the one in the link in the original post above, or this one: http://fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/169734/post/175338/hl// which I suspect has to do with SM as well? Do you see any drawbacks to it, other than the extra development time?

Genx, I could imagine doing things that way if my apps were being served (as native FMP) over WAN. Given that's not the case, I personally would never do things the way you describe. Trading a little bit of speed, and the separation, for the need to distribute new clients out to every workstation when an update occurs? Ugh! I'm not trying to talk you out of it, just not what I would do. But I'm still hoping to hear from someone who has found consistent success in the separation model for its more traditionally touted benefit; i.e. has been consistently able to make needed changes to the front-end without having to add/change calcs in the back-end. Thanks for the link to that other post, some helpful stuff in there. Thanks, all!

I've got a question for you pros out there. If you've been using the 'separation model' for your apps, how successful would you say it's been? Here's the context of asking this question: I've used the SM in various apps, and most of the time I've ended up questioning whether it was worth it. It takes longer to develop, runs a little slower, and personally I've found it to be buggy in certain ways (see http://fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/183087/). Moreover, the professed benefit doesn't seem to actually come up very often. The whole reason to do SM is so that you can implement updates to the front-end without having to mess with the back-end. But since so many field calcs need to be in the back-end, and for me inevitably most any update ends up needing to change at least one field calc, I end up usually needing to update both halves. So there goes the benefit, right? I'd be curious to hear whether others think it's been worth it for them. Thanks!