Does anyone know how I would go about telling applescript which version of FM to open up. As far as I can tell, it opens up the version that was installed most recently, but I'm not sure if this is the case. Any help is appreciated.

After a bit more testing, it seems like applescript selects whichever version of Filemaker was last started, even if you point it to a different version. Any help on figuring this out is welcome.

Yes indeed, that's the case. I had so many versions of FileMaker Pro and FileMaker Developer on my machine (in both OS 9 and X) that AppleScript got confused. Now I only run X, so there's less problem. It always helps to have the application running first.

You can rename the application files themselves; but rename the earlier version that you will no longer be updating (updaters may fail if the app is renamed; I don't know).

The main thing I use AppleScript for is to open files with the correct password, especially when I'm doing something involves opening and closing repetitively. I create a droplet (application) to do that. Notice the password syntax is different in 7.

For pre-7:

on open (theFiles)

So what exactly does this step of applescript do:

Launch application file id "FMP7" launches an application whose ID (not name) is FMP7.

The ID is also known as the creator code. You can see this value if you look at the file for instance with Super Get Info.

In past versions of the Mac operating system, ALL files had a creator code and type code. Both codes are 4-character. Files in OSX do not necessarily have type and creator codes.