Search Results for 'script'

[Rob F]

Hi Brendan,

Thank you. I’ve had a go customising my first lay-out but I can’t seem to get the field names to populate through with the fields, i.e. “Name” field just has the box within which to write the name, but no “Name” descriptor to the side of it?

Thanks for your patience :)

Rob

[tropical_sheep_farmer]

I have been rethinking how I constructed some of my TapForms Forms in light of some changes to how I have to collect/report/output some of my data.

There are some .xls spreadsheets I am required to fill in for an annual report that come from a gov’t agency. Then I have my records. What is the best way to get help with this kind of problem? Should I upload the spreadsheet forms and screenshot one of my TF records? Or try to describe the situation?

I feel like there may be places where I’m not using TF to its fullest extent, instead relying on pick lists and manual entry for item description/pricing/units/inventory/notes etc. where maybe I should be creating a whole set of records for each item in the pick lists that includes the pricing, thus tying those data points together and then relating the records/drawing them into a table for the monthly and annual report forms I have to fill in.

I am wondering if I can get the calculations to work to the point where I can recreate the gov’t forms in TapForms and do the output all in one go. They are ultimately submitted as PDF forms, so no need to wind up with an .xls file.

I could use a bit of help figuring out the best approach. At the moment my records are mostly redundant. What would be helpful to include in this thread to get some advice?

[ArsAstronautica]

Hmm. Not a bad idea. I can write a small shell script to swap the two.

Only question is, is the “Use iCloud setting” stored there in that folder? I’d rather not confuse TF trying to sync two different DBs!

BTW, I may just store the records in iCloud any way. I’ll see how large the files actually get.

[ArsAstronautica]

Currently I have all my TF data in iCloud, which is working very well!

I am thinking about cataloging a manuscript collection and using TF to do it, since it would be the most useful tool to do so in. Now this collection will result in a database potentially larger than I want for it to be in iCloud. I am wondering if there is a way to select a set of records/forms not to be kept in iCloud. I know I can turn off iCloud, but that’s not what I mean. Some data in iCloud, some not. There currently does not seem to be a good way to do that.

And no, this is not really a feature request.

[Ducky Q]

Hi,

I have created multiple pick list:
Picklist 1:
10. Option 1
14. Option 2
30. Option 3.

Picklist 2:
1. Easy
3. Medium
5. Difficult

So the pick list has a number (weight) follow by the descriptions for easy reference. So the entry is not just “numbers” but include “text”.

I want to create a calculator that add/multiply the numbers. e.g
[Picklist 1] + [Picklist2]

Is there a way to make picklist return “numbers” even thought it contains “text”?
So, while the display looks like “10. Option1”, but when the user select this, it will be “10” in numbers.

While I can change the display of the PickList as decimal, my calculated fields still shows zeros.

Sorry, if it is not clear, I will try to explain it again.

Cheers,
Ducky

[David Butenhof]

This is the most recent topic I can find on importing linked forms, so I’m going to reply here. (Simple logic.)

I’ve been looking for quite a while for a Bento replacement. Actually, I was looking long before FileMaker dropped Bento. What I wanted was an iCloud sync-ed database that would work on my Mac, my iPhone, and my iPad to keep everything up to date. I never really found anything that met the basic requirements. The closest was probably the venerable old HanDBase; but it doesn’t do cloud sync (which I’d find much more convenient than local WiFi sync), and the Mac client is primitive, ugly, and despite recurring promises virtually unmaintained for years.

And then today I almost accidentally found a recommendation for TapForms.

After spending some time today playing with the Mac demo (thanks for that, by the way!) and reading the forum and documentation, I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re almost there. I think I could use TapForms as I’ve used Bento, with only a few minor inconveniences… and with many advantages (including, not least, supported software, which is always nice).

Except that moving my data from Bento to TapForms would be unacceptably complex without the sort of import infrastructure being discussed in topics like this.

I never tried to use related Bento databases, because I didn’t like the UI. I think your UI for linked forms is a little better, though perhaps still not quite perfect. But my solution in Bento, which did just what I wanted, was the “simple list”. So now, to migrate, I need a solution for simple lists.

You don’t have such a concept, and that’s fine — I’d be satisfied with your linked forms. The challenge comes in converting thousands of Bento records with simple lists into a set of TapForm linked forms — and until that can happen, I’m stuck with Bento.

I can import the Bento data in CSV form. Obviously it’d be convenient if TapForms could just read that format and create the appropriate linked tables; but I’d be happy to write some Perl or Python to massage the data into an appropriate set of separate CSV files — which of course requires that I be able to define the SQL foreign keys that link the tables.

Although that leads me to a possibly more immediate question, since a topic from several years ago seemed to suggest that you’re using sqlite underneath. How sensitive is TapForms to which aspects of database & table structure? Would it be feasible for my hypothetical Python script to tear apart Bento’s CSV export and build a set of tables directly that TapForms would transparently “adopt” as if you’d created them?

(Whether or not I get an answer, when I have some time I’ll probably poke around to find your sqlite files and look inside them to see what I can figure out; but some hints would be appreciated and could be the key to selling a Mac, iPhone, and iPad version of TapForms… because if I can get the Mac demo looking the way I’d like, I’d be ready to go “all in”.)

[Tom Winter]

Hi Brendan,

Thanks for the detailed reply, it was indeed very helpful and pointed towards the solution to my problem.

I was too brief in my description of the problem in my first email, I didn’t want to send a two page essay on the subject. To clarify…

After deleting the app from my iPhone and reinstalling, I could finally see all of the registered devises, but only 7 of the 24 records in 1 form were down loaded. None of the 400+ records in 7 other forms ever appeared on my iPhone, even after 24 hours. Oddly, changes made on my iPad & Mac did appear on my iPhone, but none of the missing records. The fact that my iPad & Mac continued to function flawlessly made me think something was corrupted on my iPhone, but probably not in Tap Forms. So…

I deleted Tap Forms from my iPhone, turned of “Documents & Data”, and shut down (press the off button and swiped to “Power Off”). Then rebooted, turned on D&D, downloaded TF Lite, installed the upgrade, and enabled iCloud Sync. All is functioning properly now.

Thanks for your help. It’s a nice piece of software. Keep up the good work.

Tom

[Brendan]

Hi Josh,

1. You can adjust all the fonts for the labels and values, but not individually. You can adjust the font colour of individual fields, so you could use that to distinguish your more important fields. For example, red fields are the most important, etc.

2. I believe what you are wanting here is what Bento called Related Data fields. In Tap Forms they’re called Link to Form fields. It’s where you can link one form to another via a special field type. Tapping on a Link to Form field type will let you connect your records together in two different ways. One to Many and Many to Many. Rather than going into the details about that here, I’d like to refer to you the manual for the Mac version which gives a good description of the difference and pretty much works the same way as the iPad version (other than the obvious different looks between a Mac and iPad app):

http://www.manula.com/manuals/tap-zapp/tap-forms-mac/2.0/en/topic/relationships

Thanks!

Brendan

[John Martin]

I use a couple of small free utilities that let me paste plain text in any application.

The free Plain Clip is a tiny application that removes formatting from text which is on the clipboard. It includes additional options such as, for example, removing line breaks so text wraps normally. It’s available here: http://www.bluem.net/en/mac/plain-clip/.

Plain Clip can be run as a standalone application that removes formatting from whatever text is on the clipboard, which you can then paste as unformatted text. I use a small free keyboard manager that runs Plain Clip whenever I press Command-F1 and then pastes the text uses Command-V. I get unformatted text with a single keystroke in every application! Spark is available here: http://www.shadowlab.org/Software/spark.php.

Note: To run Plain Clip with Spark, you have to set it up as an AppleScript action. The Plain Clip page notes you can also call it from a text expansion utility such as TypeIt4Me.

— John Martin

[tonyt]

Thks Bredan
Got your shot!
I have been running NOScript on Firefox and it stopped me posting a file!
Here goes again…..

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

[Tom Copeland]

An interesting aspect of the iPad’s Stage Properties records is that, even though the words in the various fields do not show up, a search can be done, and the results are correct, whether the word searched for appears in the “Item” field or the “Location field.” I have not tried the “Description” field. But all that one actually sees in these searches is a row of pictures and a good many blank records, the ones lacking pictures.

[Brendan]

Hi Will,

Tap Forms Mac has not been integrated with AppleScript. You could theoretically query the database file directly. It’s just an SQLite file. But that would require some knowledge of SQL.

[Will McCourt]

I understand, thank you for the response! Is there a way we can automatically have TF export a csv file to drop box? Let’s say I wanted a script to do this every 4 hrs. Is this possible?

[Brendan]

Hi Tom,

Those .tiff files didn’t work on the upload.

However, I think the problem is that your file has no references to the photo file names:

Picture<photo>,Item<text>,Where<text>,Description<text>,Other<text>
,Adding Machine,?,”Mechanical, with buttons and lever”,
,Barrel,Calvin Center,”small, wood, with metal rims”,Calvin

The first comma in your data row tells me that the photo field has no value associated with it. Tap Forms won’t be able to match the photos you copied into the Photo field without the file name being in the CSV file.

Try putting the file names of the photos into your CSV file before importing your CSV file.

For example:

Picture<photo>,Item<text>,Where<text>,Description<text>,Other<text>
Photo-1.jpg,Adding Machine,?,”Mechanical, with buttons and lever”,
Photo-2.jpg,Barrel,Calvin Center,”small, wood, with metal rims”,Calvin

Now that’s assuming your photo file names are “Photo-1.jpg” and “Photo-2.jpg”. You should substitute she the correct file names of course.

Let me know if that works better for you.

[Tom Shannon]

Thanks, Brendan.

I’m quite enjoying the program. If you don’t mind it, I would like to suggest that a few keyboard shortcuts be added. The reason may not be obvious. I’m an AppleScript guy and, although Tap Forms doesn’t support it, one easy thing you can do with any program is simulate keystrokes. If it has a keystroke or a menu item you can automate it.

A good example of something that would benefit from menu access is iCloud sync. This, of course, allows you to set a keyboard shortcut yourself or to use AppleScript to access the menu.

A good example of something that could use a simple keystroke: when editing a form you can highlight fields with a series of tabs but, for instance, you can’t currently open a note field after the icon is highlighted.

Assuming you are using XCode, this seems like a relatively simple addition that would enhance the program.

Keep up the good work,
Tom S.