Field Setup/Control's "Other..." item for checkboxes

[barryfh]

Is the following scenario a feature or a design flaw in the dialog that displays when you include in a checkbox set the Field Setup/Control's "Other..." item to allow entry of other values?

The scenario involves using Find mode to search for or count records that contain an "Other" value in the checkbox set.

Disclaimer: I have used and believe I understand FMP's Constrain Found Set feature. Regardless, I think the following situation could be an artifact of the (mis)behavior of the dialog that displays when you configure a checkbox set to use the "Other..." item and you include "Other" values.

I have a field configured as a set of 14 checkboxes (note: a record in my database validly can have more than one of the items represented by these checkboxes). One of the checkboxes is the "Other..." item to allow entry of other values.

If one of the other 13 checkboxes is checked and I then check the "Other..." checkbox, the item represented by the former is automatically included in the dialog that displays.

If you later perform a Find on an "Other" value that you've typed into the "Other..." checkbox' dialog for a record that also has one of the other 13 checkboxes checked, FMP returns a "not found" message instead of finding the record(s) with that "Other" value.

This means that if you use Find to search for or count "Other" values, you have to know in advance whether that value appears in records in combination with other values for that field.

I think, instead, that the "Other" value should remain empty unless you type an "Other" value in it; i.e., it should refrain from automatically adding the values corresponding to other checkboxes that you've checked.

Again, the question is whether this scenario is a feature or a flaw owing to the design of the "Other..." checkbox whereby its dialog automatically includes values represented by other checkboxes in the checkbox set.

Thanks in advance!

[Ender]

Yes, when you click checkboxes and then click "Other...", you will see the previously selected items listed.

For a Find where you're doing an OR search, you should really use a New Request for each item anyway. When you do it this way, your Other items can be searched separately.

[barryfh]

Ender

Many thanks for taking time to reply.

When you say "yes," do you mean that it is a feature, or do you mean that it is a design flaw?

That really is my question for contacting FileMaker, Inc. and making an enhancement request vs. reporting a defect.

If it is a feature, I am puzzled as to why a user would want the "Other" values dialog to automatically contain any values other than "Other" ones.

[Ender]

It's the way it's always worked. I suppose the Other dialog doesn't know about the value list that preceded it. But come to think of it, I do think it would be better to only show values that are not in the value list.