I know Filemaker has been this way ever since it was introduced:

When a script is running, I can't go work in another window within my solution. I have to wait for the script to finish running before I can access any menu options or do anything in other windos. Is there any way around this problem, i.e. to get scripts to run "in the background" rather than monopolizing my entire FMP environment?

Does anyone know if Filemaker, Inc. has plans to change this behavior in a future release?

Thanks.

No, and probably won't happen.

On a Mac, you can run uultiple copies of FM Pro at the same time (rename one app) if you have a second license of course. One copy can host the file and share it.

What are you doing that takes so long? Is this on Server? Other logged in users can continue happily while you are running your script.

I have a script that uses the PopIt mail plug-in to check an email account that routinely receives several hundred messages per hour.

The script downloads emails (via POP3) at a rate of about 1 message per second. It can take several minutes to check email, and far longer if the database has been shut down overnight and messages have accumulated in the queue.

I'm not really expecting or looking for a solution to this particular problem; I'm just complaining a little that this type of blocking I/O should have been eliminated in FMP at some point in the past as part of a general modernization of the code. It's very "OS-9-like" and seems archaic and unnecessary. Almost everything else in OS X can be multi-threaded & multi-tasked, why not scripts running within FMP.