inserting info into next available lines/repeating fields

[kelehear]

I know this is going to be rudimentary for you folks,so I’ll apologize in advance…

I’m a sole proprietor, running a small audio production shop.

Until this year, I’ve used HyperCard (Mac platform), which uses a scripting language very similar to “lingo”, the scripting language in

Macromedia’s multimedia authoring application, Director.

Here’s my situation:

At present, I have Filemaker 6 for Macintosh.

In my “Projects” record set, I’ve two multi-line fields:

”Description” which holds what services or goods are being sold, and

“Elements”, which holds the prices for those goods or services.

Buttons are shown on the right side of the page that trigger scripts.

One script asks “How many hours”, meaning studio time,

then puts the time that you enter in the dialogue box, and places that information

into the next open line of the ”Description” field, (example: line 3)

then puts the monetary value of that time into the corresponding

line of the “Elements” field (line 3).

Could someone point me to some information that shows examples of how a script FM 6

can look at a multi line field, select the next open line of that field, and place information there?

In Hyperscript, I’ve used:

”put the number of lines of fld “Description” into numlines

put infoThatIWantOnThatLine into line numlines + 1 of fld “Description””

Thanks in advance,

Jack

[fmsavey]

How about

If (IsEmpty ( GetRepetition ( desciption, 1 ) ) )

Set Field [description] =

If (IsEmpty ( GetRepetition ( desciption, 2 ) ) )

Set Field [description] =

What is important here is that when you specify the "Set Field" you also specify the corresponding repetition number which you can do when you view list of field names. Repeat the above for as many repetitions that you have defined. The above would go through all the repetitions until it finds an empty one. You would then need to pass that repetition number to the elements field when you set that field. There is more to do but maybe this will help a little.

[T-Square]

Or set up a relational structure and eliminate the repeating fields altogether. Each project has many time slots, each of which can be computed and built into an aggregate. Create a separate database (Slots) that has ProjectID, Date, hours, Price at least. Join the two database files by projectID and create a portal on the Projects layout. Adding a new Slot can be done on the layout itself.