Greetings all. Perhaps a guru or two can throw me a bone or tell me this is impossible:

I've created a digital asset managment solution in FM5 that contains low-res thumbnails in container fields, as well as text fields for the metadata. There are three layouts for users to browse: gallery (thumbnails in 4 columns), list (larger thumbnail with some metadata, generic list view), and detail (generic form view, large thumbnail).

Here's the problem: the gallery view is currently setup using a list view w/ columns. Unfortunately, the user needs to be in preview mode to see these columns, else it appears as a list. But I'd like the user to be able to see the columns in browse mode. Any clues how to accomplish this?

I attempted to build fields CurrentRecordNumber and CurrentRecordNumberplusOne, plusTwo, etc. through plusEleven. These were calc fields, unstored, that are fairly self-explanatory. I then attempted to build self-relationships based on linking the CurrentRecordNumberplusOne field in the left side of the relationship to the CurrentRecordNumber in the right side. My goal was to place a portal for each of these 11 relationships so that the layout in browse mode would look like this:

CurrentRecord | CurrentRecord +1 | CurrentRecord +2

CurrentRecord +3 | CurrentRecord +4 | CurrentRecord +5

CurrentRecord +6 | CurrentRecord +7 | CurrentRecord +8

CurrentRecord +9 | CurrentRecord +10 | CurrentRecord +11

Of course, FileMaker will not allow you to have both sides of the relationship contain unindexed calc fields. But for this scheme to work, the calc fields must be unindexed.

Any ideas how I can get around this limitation and/or alternate solutions. Or is it just not possible?

Thanks.

Jason Weber

[email protected]

I.S. Manager

Highlights for Children, Editorial

I think you are working too hard. You don't need a portal. If you want three records displayed anywhere on the screen (this could be 5 or 50), create three relationships based upon three globals.

gRecordDisplayOne <--> Record No.

gRecordDisplayTwo <--> Record No.

gRecordDisplayThree <--> Record No.

Place the desired fields for each of these relationships anywhere you want on the screen. To display three records worth of data, set the first global to a Record#, the second to a Record# + 1, and the third to a Record# + 3. By appropriately setting the globals you can move through the reocords any way you wish (record up and down button, page up and down buttons, etc.).

This type of approach can be used to display records in any file in a matrix. I've used it for applications as complex 384 well microtiter plate data for genetic research, including transposing row and column data!

-bd

Honestly, I've never had the need to show multiple records on one layout (outside a portal) before. Thanks. I'm still having some trouble with FM complaining about fields (namely, the CurrentRecord field) not being indexed. I need this field to refresh based on the user's find/sort operations, so I'm still faced with that paradox (need the calc field to be unstored, but FM cannot build the relationship).

Am I missing something?

Thanks.

How would I display the columnar layout on a web page though?