Future requests for TF

[eric]

I have been using TF for a few months now (I come from FMP) and am pretty happy with it. Also, the support is superb, as I had a few challenges getting my brain around the logic of TF. Thanks Brendan, for quick answers to even simple questions!

I have a few wishes and thought I post them here so maybe other folk can chip in if they also would like to see this.

1. The ability to make coloured buttons.
2. The ability to hide the Default Layout.
3. The ability to lock a specific layout against changes.
4. The ability to lock several fields in ‘layers’ in one go and to not have to do this individually for each one
5. When one has different Databases that have different sizes, once these are set to hold that size. Presently if one has one DB that’s 10*20 and one that is 20*20 when one opens the 10*20 after the 20*20 it goes to 20*20.
6. To have the maximum of the stored backups also work if you do not quit the application. IOW have the backups that are more than the to be stored allowed number deleted for example on closing the database. Or on doing a manual backup.
7. Have a backup option/function when closing a DB and not only on quit.
8. Backup control of how many get saved from each DB on quit in the same folder. Presently it is a maximum number for all databases.
9. Backup control that does not only happen on quit.

A long list, I know, and maybe ot much to ask. However why not ask, maybe it happens.

Thanks.

[Brendan]

Hi Eric,

Thanks for your feature requests. It’s always great to learn about what customers are looking to achieve with Tap Forms.

1. The buttons are generated by the system, but I believe in macOS Monterey there’s some new button styling functions that might work for that.

2. Ok.

3. I think 3 and 4 go together. You should be able to select all the objects on the Layers tab and lock them all at once. At the very least the spacebar should toggle the lock. I’ll look into that.

5. Sorry, but I don’t really follow what you mean by 10*20 or 20*20.

6. Manual backups are completely separate from the automated backup. Also each document can have its own separate Backups folder. You might want to set that up for each document so that each document gets its own X number of backups.

7. Ya, I should make this work when closing the window and not just when quitting the app. I’ll look into that.

8. As in #6, you can have a separate backups folder for each document.

9. Same as #7.

Again, I appreciate the feature requests.

Thanks!

Brendan

[eric]

Morning Brendan, thanks for the answers.

As to 3 I cannot get it to work. I am on 10.15 presently.

Thanks for the BU tips.

As to 5. If I set the size of a window of a DB, to a specific size so it looks nice. That seems to be the size that every other DB opens in. IOW I cannot set an individual window size for each DB. Am I more clear now?

[Brendan]

I was just testing the window size thing and it does seem to work for me. If I open a couple of windows, then resize them to how I want, then quit Tap Forms, when I re-launch Tap Forms, the two windows open up exactly in the positions and the sizes that I had set them to.

Maybe try a reboot to see if that fixes the problem for you and make sure you’re using the latest Tap Forms 5.3.22

[eric]

I just upgraded and rebooted and it seems to have solved the problem. thanks.

[Brendan]

Excellent!

[Helder Pereira]

Hi,

I too have a feature request, if possible:

– can TapForms 5 export to Excel with text formatting on? I.e. all the bolds, italics, underlining, etc. in the text and note fields being exported to excel .xlsx files. As it is now I think it only exports as plain text, without formatting. I think Access for example has the option of exporting with or without the formatting. Would this be possible in TapForms?

Thanks!

[Brendan]

Hi Helder,

Thanks for your feature request.

The Excel export library I’m using doesn’t handle exporting rich text unfortunately. When you format text in Tap Forms, it’s stored as an NSAttributedString, which is an Apple native rich text string with built-in formatting commands. In an XLSX file they use completely different codes to represent formatted data in an XML format.

Perhaps in a future update I might be able to get around to adding that, but this is the first time anyone has ever requested this feature, so it would be difficult to justify the time required to implement it at the moment. But perhaps down the road.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Helder Pereira]

Hi Brendan, thank you for your helpful reply, and for taking the time to respond.
This feature was essential for me as I use rich text in my records (bolds, italics, underlining, etc.) and I would need to export these records into an Access database on a PC (via Excel, in this case) regularly. Maybe an export directly to an Access database would be possible? Maybe not, but just asking!
Thanks again.

[Sam Moffatt]

One of the challenges with that is the Tap Forms rich text field stores data in Apple’s NSAttributedString format which isn’t particularly portable outside of Apple’s ecosystem. The other challenge is that the file format for Access, JET, doesn’t really have a good way of getting to it from the Apple ecosystem (I don’t think they even have Access on the Mac and it’s Windows only). Both of these make sense in so much as if you’re in those ecosystems it all works together.

The only thing I could think of feature wise long term would be a way of sync’ing data to an external SQL server from Tap Forms. I’ve thought about building one of these myself but it’d only do plain text for notes fields not rich text. Then from Access you could hook into that server but that’s a heavy solution to the problem.

[Helder Pereira]

Thanks Sam, for chiming in.

Yes, indeed Access only exists for Windows, not Mac. That is why I am using Tap Forms in my Mac but need to sync it with a Windows PC running Access. What I do is export the tables as Excel files, and have the fileds be exactly the same with the same name and traits, and then import this excel table into the access tables. It seems to work well – except for the rich text format. Maybe in a future update I hope.

Well, I don’t know much about programming but Access also can import/export from an SQL server, so what you suggest could be a solution also…I don’t know.

In any case, again, thank you for your input.

[Author]

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