vsiegle

In my experience, if you are using Filemaker 9 on Windows XP and you have tried all of the optimization techniques and still have that unprofessional "flickering", "screen flash" or "slow redraw" problem then you may want to downgrade to Filemaker 8. This often results in an immediate improvement and in many cases completely eliminates the abnormalities. For what it's worth, Virgil

I just updated Advanced on XP Pro with no problems except that now no existing databases will launch with a double click. They will open from within FM. I have checked file associations and they seem to be correct. Any ideas, besides stay off the bleeding edge...... Just read the tech note (answer ID:5696)on Filemaker's support site and it solved the problem.

LaRetta, I submitted a problem report here at http://www.filemaker.com/company/product/problems.html. Everyone; Thanks for your input on this. If I get any response I will certainly post it to the board. I also have to say that I think FM is a great tool but like Steve I can't go as far as "free-spirited and magical". I can say that in my digital life I have known only one piece of software that deserved that praise and it was HyperCard!

I looked at my database and the "S" is fully displayed. I didn't notice that it was hidden in the pdf until you pointed it out. I was more concerened baseline. I have since tried this file on 2 other XP systems with the same result. Is this worth reporting to Filemaker and requesting an explanation?

I tried my son's iBook and the baseline is still in front of the text. LaRetta; Do you mean that when you select a color in the Borders/Baseline format that it still shows up as black or gray? The selection box is not intuitive. You must choose both the popup field and the check box to act on the baseline. I will be interested to hear how the feature holds up on your machines at work. Addict; I agree it is a disturbing feature but I have created a workaround for this "Feature" by using a duplicate field below the actual field. The duplicate field is formatted with the baselines and white text. It's clumsy but it works. Appreciate all your effort.

Here's the FM7 database file to test. I ran out of time before I could upload it. Had to recreate it. The font is Verdana 12pt. but the layering is the same in all fonts, Baseline.zip

Here is a .pdf printed directly from a single field database. The field is formatted with baseline in red. TestBaseline.pdf

LaRetta, That makes sense but I checked the Asian formatting and it was not selected. I have created a workaround by using a second duplicate field below the first. Formated with baselines and white text. The original, top, field has no baseline formatting. This will work until I can figure out what is going on.

Nothing that I can find in the Tech Articles about the problem?

I'm using version 7.0v3 Developer. Hopefully someone will chime in that has XP. On my way to the TAs

Lee, I have tried different fonts, sizes and databases with same result. We are talking XP here. Always the primary suspect :-)

Arial 10pt

Just formated a field with text baselines and was surprised to see that the baselines were displayed over the top of text in the field. Not a problem when the text and baseline are the same color but I need the baseline to be different and I certainly don't want the text obscured by the line. Any ideas?

The problem is not the number of fields. I don't need 200 fields, there are 200 fields because that is how many fields it takes to gather the information needed to create the quote. The problem is that the data is both text and numeric and the only way in FM to parse it is one item at a time. FM's report module would not solve the problem. The data would still have to be parsed. I have coded this database in several programs over the years incl; HyperCard, Helix, 4D, FoxBase, Panorama and probably a few others. All these data bases allowed me to write something like a "For Next" loop and act on the chunk of data (the concatenated list). That's all I need from FileMaker. This is one of the few problems that I have had with FM that I have not found a good solution for. I have yet to work with the custom functions. Maybe a solution exist there.

The solution is a construction quoting system. This part of the system allows a salesman to produce a quote based on the specifications entered on a worksheet. This creates an editable quote linked to the customer file. The script in question gathers the input from a worksheet layout in the worksheet table, makes the necessary calculations to price each item and post the concatenated data to the cost field in the quotes layout in the quotes table. A sister script gathers the input from the worksheet layout, makes the necessary calculations, writes a line item description for each price and post the concatenated data to the description field in the quotes layout in the quotes table. The description and cost fields are single text fields, side by side on the quotes layout, expanded to 3 pages long, set not to print. They have identical merge fields sitting on top, mirroring the input. This allows the fields to be edited and to expand and print properly. The script in place now works. What I am trying to accomplish is to reduce or eliminate the repetition of the "thousands" formula for each item gathered in the script.