Search Results for 'script'

[Wynne Brown]

Hi Brendan,
I’m brand-new to Tap Forms, and so far, I’m very impressed — thank you for the thousands of hours you’ve put into it!

I’m trying to create a catalog of paintings by an 1880s artist and will eventually have about 300 records. I’ve created a form using the default layout with 12 fields of various types, including Text, Date, Checkbox, Notes, and Photo.
For the Text fields, I’m limiting the text to just a line or two.

In some cases, I need to add a description of as many as 200 words, so I’ve chosen to use the Notes field for those. In the single-column list view, they look just fine. But if I try to print the form or save it as a PDF (I’m working a new-ish Mac laptop, running OS 10.13.5), only the first six lines show up.

Am I doing something wrong? Should I be using a custom layout?

My apologies if I haven’t explained this very clearly … and thank you again for creating a program that’s SO close to perfect for what I need!

Cheers,
Wynne

[Victor Clarke]

Hey Brendan

Firstly thanks for your quick answers. I was about to give up on TapForms, as the two different fonts in one table was vital to me (mixing English script and Ancient Egyptian in one table without the two different fonts is not a good look).

However I found a work around. I basically created two tables, one for the column I need in English script and one for the table I need in Ancient Egyptian, and put them beside each other in the custom layout. Didn’t align perfectly initially, but by playing around with the font I selected for English script, I was able to find one that created rows of the same height, and now they align perfectly. So far so good (I still have to do a couple of other smaller tables for the page, but they should be much easier, as all in English script, and only a few rows long.

A couple of formatting questions:
. Is it possible to hide the header in the table so it doesn’t print the field names?
. When I create the table, it by default puts a line between the header and the values. I don’t want that (as it is inconsistent with my format for the other fields I have on the page). Is it possible to hide that line. I have tried to do so by creating a text box and putting it over it, which sort of works, put not great (can’t seem to go as far out to the right as the table).

And a bonus question (I am expecting the answer to be no!). I am using this to create an appendix for a PhD to put in all the data (large number of pages), with one page of data per person. All my other tables in the PhD (which are created in Tableau if you know it) are formatted so that every second row of the table is shaded light grey ie you have one row of text with no background, and one row text with a light grey background. It would be nice for my data pages to have the same format (but it is not essential). Is there a feature I am missing in TapForms that does this?

Regards

Victor

(ps I am expecting to be able to get this to work, in which case I will subscribe to the paid version – I am currently on a trial version.

pps – when I signed up I thought it said the trial was for 30 days, but it seems to have only given me 10 days?)

[Brendan]

Hi Mike,

Unfortunately at the moment that won’t work to display an empty value instead of 00:00. The reason being is that in order to return an empty value rather than a 0 value, you would need to set the Result Type to Text and return the empty string if a field value were empty. And by doing so you lose the ability to format your duration in terms of HH:MM. In Tap Forms 5.3, which I’ll have ready by the time Mojave and iOS 12 are release, will have a new Script engine in it whereby you can use JavaScript to write Calculation fields which gives you far more control over the output than the current Calculation field.

[Brendan]

Hi Mike,

Welcome back to Tap Forms! Although they’ve done some great things in Ninox, I do feel their UI is quite odd and not very “Mac like”. I’m not sure what they use to program it, but it feels like they might be using some cross platform system. Not sure. Tap Forms is all Mac, all iOS.

I’m also working on some AppleScript support too. Just the basics for now. Mostly for being able to execute a custom JavaScript built inside Tap Forms to be executed from an external AppleScript. It’s going to be really great.

Thanks!

Brendan

[Brendan]

No, it’s not possible yet to extract non-aggregated data from a Table field.

But in Tap Forms 5.3 I’m adding a new JavaScript engine which would let you pick out any row of a Table field and get any of the values you like.

Thanks!

Brendan

[Brendan]

I haven’t written AppleScript support into Tap Forms, but it shouldn’t matter for this specific function.

tell application "Tap Forms 5"
	quit
end tell

I just tested the above and it works fine.

[Reinis Ikass]

Hi,

I would like to write an AppleScript to automatically quit TapForms each evening – so that the backup process is automated.

Is it possible and can anyone give me pointers to what the script should look like?

Thanks in advance!

[Sydney Sauber]

Hi Brendan,

Here are some pix of 4 records in TapForms and the same set of 4 in FileMaker Pro 13. The TF record set was exported in CSV.

I didn’t bother to map the fields since the point is showing that the multiple windows allow one to use the application more to work with the record details.

I can open as many windows as I want, they can be resized, they can be cascaded and anything can be in them.

My work around for TapForms has been to put data in a “Notes” field, that way I can open multiple ‘Notes” fields from different records. The drawback is…it’s a notes field, so things like concatenation or other calculations won’t work in it.

Learning how to program FM and learning how to make it look like I want takes sooo much time. I haven’t done it.

TF was recommended by a former FM programmer in his blog post (Tim Dietrich) about Leaving FileMaker. One thing he mentioned was alternatives he found promising and the fact that FileMaker seems to be moving toward becoming less end user programmable and more dependent on developers to serve end users. He said it was prohibitively expensive for small businesses or other people who work for themselves.This is what drove me into TapForms arms! He described me perfectly. All the things FM makes users learn how to do, TF has quietly done behind the scenes so we can do very complex things with databases we build ourselves. This is becoming more and more rare on a LICENSED product, which is not subscription — Rented and/or Online.

Here’s what I can see with FM. And if I could do it in TF, I would feel comfortable deleting FM 13. Right now, I would have to create a workflow of exporting data from TF to FM to see the data. It’s the opposite of what many of your customers are doing, they go from FM to TF. But they must not be looking at record details (like images, long text passages…) from multiple records simultaneously.

Here they are.

Thanks for thinking about it.

Attachments:

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[Brendan]

Hi JBB,

No, the COUNT method is not redundant because it excludes empty values. So you could have different results for different fields. If you insert a Number field, then you get other options such as TOTAL, MIN, MAX, and AVG.

I’m working on Tap Forms 5.3 which will have a new Script field which lets you write JavaScript code to fetch values from Link to Form fields — along with many other things. So you will be able to do what you want, but not until 5.3.

Thanks!

Brendan

[Manuel Drews]

Well, thats good to hear!

Yes exactly, i imagine something like a little rules builder with
boolean operators which can change the appearance of entries (colors)
depending on Values.

I’am very excited about your scripting engine and the prospect
that the feature may be coming after a few releases.

My compliments for your great work – Tapforms is by far
the best and reliable Database Builder on the Mac!

Many greetings from Germany,

Manuel

[Brendan]

Hi Manuel,

Thanks for the clarifications.

Your English is perfect. I didn’t even realize it wasn’t your native language :)

Much better than my French, which is the only other language I even know a few sentences in. :)

So you mean set the background colour of the record depending on some values in the database.

It may be possible to do that with my new scripting engine. But it might not make it into the first release of that. I’m focusing more right now on manipulating the data rather than affecting the look of the output.

Thanks!

Brendan

[Brendan]

Hi Maxasara,

Tap Forms was not designed as a team oriented database app. I know that some people use it that way, but if you need the ability to control permissions and user access levels, then I would suggest AirTable which is a subscription service which might be helpful for your needs.

Thanks!

Brendan

[Brendan]

Hi Manuel,

Thanks for the feature request!

Right now the only conditional formatting available is on Number and Calculation fields which will display the result in red if the value in the field is negative.

But what exactly do you want to see coloured? You mention the Client should e coloured red or green or whatever. But what does that mean? The field label? The background colour for the record’s row in the list view? The Client’s first name and/or last name field?

I am working on adding the ability for customers to program scripts into Tap Forms to do various things. So far it’s just about calculating results or populating and updating the database, but I could see it being extended to allow for adjusting properties of the objects displayed themselves based on some logic and values from other fields in the record(s).

Thanks!

Brendan

[Tony Moss]

Many thanks for your incredibly rapid reply, Bendan. I confess that about 10 minutes after submitting my post I did manage to get the child form to work, and include the totals per Parish as required. However, I’ve no idea how I did it, and I’m still failing to repeat my success with other data totals from the parent form.

The parent does indeed have separate fields for Males and Females, populated with 1 or are blank as relevant. Both are plain Number fields in the parent form, and the Total Males/Females fields in the child are set as Calculation fields, but with no formula included. As I said, foe some reason when I added the Total fields to the child layout the link just worked! (Not since, though on another linked form – see below!)

These other data totals I’d like are intended to go on a second linked form (created with Parish Names and linked O.K.) and the data fields in the parent are set to 1 or blank as appropriate. Being a bear of very little brain, I’m not too sure from your explanation as to on which form these calculation fields you refer to should be created – could you help here? Also, you mention the “Count” function – I expected to see this in the function list, but couldn’t find it, otherwise I’d have given it a try first!

The inclusion of a scripting facility will be brilliant. I’m very familiar with FileMaker Pro’s built-in scripting – use it a great deal – but the thought of Javascript, about which I know nothing, fills me with trepidation. Be interesting to give it a try, though, and will enhance Tap Forms tremendously.

Thanks again for your help thus far – I’m so impressed with Tap Forms that I’ll certainly be purchasing a copy when the trial period expires, as a really useful back-up to FileMaker Pro.

Tony

[Brendan]

Hi Tony,

Thanks for giving Tap Forms a try for your friend!

What you could do is create a Calculation field which generates a total of the sub-field in the Link to Form field. I’m not sure if you have your Gender field separate or combined though. If it’s combined as a single field to contain all genders, then what you may need to do is create another 2 Calculation fields. One for Males and one for Females. Or perhaps 3, one for Other. Then you could return a 1 if the Gender field is Male and 0 if it’s not. Then for the Female, return 1 if the Gender is Female and 0 if not. The same for Other. Then on the parent form, add a Calculation field for each gender that totals the calculation field you added to the Link to Form field’s form. The net effect of that is to get a list with separate counts for Male, Female, and other.

Your formula for the Male count field on the parent form might look like this:

COUNT::Parent Forms::Male

That would effectively count up the number of 1 values for each of the Male sub-records.

I hope that makes a bit of sense at least :)

In an update I’m working on I’ve added the ability for you to write scripts either at the Field level or the Form level that would let you have much greater control over the resulting value. With the new Script function you would be able to just loop through all the child records, adding up each of the genders and returning a single result that contains the counts of each gender, perhaps like “Male: 20, Female 10, Other: 5”, and so on. Version 5.3 will have that function. You use JavaScript to write the scripts.

Thanks!

Brendan