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selowitch · Mar 8, 2004, 02:14 PM

Filemaker 7 is to be launched tomorrow. Hooray!

I'm just praying that it will:

Support Unicode.
Handle mixed italic-roman-bold text inside the same field.
Support rich text elements like smart quotes and em- and en-dashes.

MikeD · Mar 8, 2004, 11:37 PM

Where are you getting your info? I was just about to plunk down some hard earned money on filemaker 6. Any more info? Would it be updated on the FM webpage?

Mike

Originally posted by selowitch:
Filemaker 7 is to be launched tomorrow. Hooray!

I'm just praying that it will:
Support Unicode.

Handle mixed italic-roman-bold text inside the same field.

Support rich text elements like smart quotes and em- and en-dashes.

selowitch · Mar 9, 2004, 12:28 AM

Originally posted by MikeD:
Where are you getting your info? I was just about to plunk down some hard earned money on filemaker 6. Any more info? Would it be updated on the FM webpage?

Mike

Here is the article.

MikeD · Mar 9, 2004, 12:45 AM

Thanks.. Plus, I just saw it on the main macnn site.. sigh.. I have the forums in my bookmarks and usually just hit that before I even go to the news sites..

Mike

tooki · Mar 9, 2004, 12:52 AM

Originally posted by selowitch:
I'm just praying that it will:
Handle mixed italic-roman-bold text inside the same field.

Uhh, FileMaker has done that for a while, at least as far as letting YOU set text attributes within a field (to the point of often being annoying, since it preserves text attributes of pasted text).

Or do you mean something like letting a calculation field set different text attributes to different parts of the same result?

tooki

gator · Mar 9, 2004, 02:06 AM

Review from C|Net

http://reviews.cnet.com/4505-3513_7-...tml?tag=search

voodoo · Mar 9, 2004, 05:13 AM

Well it is noon on the 9th and still www.filemaker.com shows only Filemaker 6.

BZ · Mar 9, 2004, 07:40 AM

I have been using Excel to keep and manage membership data for a club and while the data seems to grow, Excel's ability to handle it does not.

Can anyone who uses Filemaker let me know if it can do..
- Easy to set up contact management with special fields and relations to events
- Ability to do a mail merge or be pulled from Word's merge ability (like Excel is)
- Interaction with other things like Apple's Mail, Addressbook, etc?

BZ

Maflynn · Mar 9, 2004, 07:48 AM

Originally posted by voodoo:
Well it is noon on the 9th and still www.filemaker.com shows only Filemaker 6.

I think filemaker is a U.S. company and its only 8:47 am est time. I would suspect you won't see anyhting until 6:00pm est. I'm not sure if they are a west coast or an east coast based company.

Mike

BZ · Mar 9, 2004, 07:58 AM

Up now!

http://www.filemaker.com/

7!

BZ

selowitch · Mar 9, 2004, 08:37 AM

Originally posted by tooki:
Uhh, FileMaker has done that for a while, at least as far as letting YOU set text attributes within a field (to the point of often being annoying, since it preserves text attributes of pasted text).

Based on my experience, that's exactly what it DOESN'T do. Also, if you try to retrieve FMP data via Lasso, such things as italics and bold mixed inside the same field do not survive, at least not when I do it.

selowitch · Mar 9, 2004, 08:56 AM

Anybody know if the damn thing supports Unicode? Please? God?

Truepop · Mar 9, 2004, 08:56 AM

Originally posted by gator:
Review from C|Net

http://reviews.cnet.com/4505-3513_7-...tml?tag=search

That's pretty favorable review.. is C|Net aware this is an Apple company?

selowitch · Mar 9, 2004, 09:27 AM

Originally posted by BZ:
I have been using Excel to keep and manage membership data for a club and while the data seems to grow, Excel's ability to handle it does not.

Can anyone who uses Filemaker let me know if it can do..
- Easy to set up contact management with special fields and relations to events
- Ability to do a mail merge or be pulled from Word's merge ability (like Excel is)
- Interaction with other things like Apple's Mail, Addressbook, etc?

BZ

All these things are possible with FMP 6/7. The question is, what do you consider to be "easy"? It really depends or your background, experience, and time available. What is easy to one is impossibly difficult for another.

BZ · Mar 9, 2004, 09:58 AM

Well, I have built databases (from a unix command line) in PostgreSQL, so I am thinking that a GUI app like FM7 would be something I could handle.

I would like to know how much data schema design I need to do to start.

BZ

Originally posted by selowitch:
All these things are possible with FMP 6/7. The question is, what do you consider to be "easy"? It really depends or your background, experience, and time available. What is easy to one is impossibly difficult for another.

tooki · Mar 9, 2004, 10:27 AM

Originally posted by selowitch:
Based on my experience, that's exactly what it DOESN'T do. Also, if you try to retrieve FMP data via Lasso, such things as italics and bold mixed inside the same field do not survive, at least not when I do it.

I know that FileMaker Pro has (since at least version 3, the first one I used) preserved "styled text" (the official name for the Mac's original internal text format for styled text) on pasting, and it gets saved that way. If the application that was the source for the text didn't supply "styled text", then of course only plain text would get pasted in -- chances are that's why you didn't see it. But you can test it yourself by changing the formatting of text within a record. Even within one field, you can apply any standard text styles you want: font, size, bold, italic, underline, etc on different parts of the text.

I wouldn't necessarily expect something like Lasso to preserve formatting, since HTML doesn't allow the user to set text styles in a web browser text box.

It does appear that FMP7 allows "calculation-based formatting".

tooki

-Q- · Mar 9, 2004, 10:52 AM

Originally posted by BZ:
I have been using Excel to keep and manage membership data for a club and while the data seems to grow, Excel's ability to handle it does not.

Can anyone who uses Filemaker let me know if it can do..
- Easy to set up contact management with special fields and relations to events
- Ability to do a mail merge or be pulled from Word's merge ability (like Excel is)
- Interaction with other things like Apple's Mail, Addressbook, etc?

BZ

It can definitely do the first two. We've used FM Pro to manage our MUG database for 10 years now. As for interaction with Mail and address book, I'm not sure what you mean? There's no way to drag a contact in address book to FMP and have it create a new record, if that's what you mean. But that may be available in 7.

selowitch · 12:06 PM

Originally posted by tooki:

I wouldn't necessarily expect something like Lasso to preserve formatting, since HTML doesn't allow the user to set text styles in a web browser text box.

Sure, but it would be nice if they could figure out a way to achieve that effect, by inserting / and / tags automatically where appropriate, for example.

It does appear that FMP7 allows "calculation-based formatting".

That's a very good thing.

selowitch · Mar 9, 2004, 12:05 PM

Now I'm drumming my fingers waiting for the e-mail containing the link to download the demo of FMP 7. *Sigh*.

hldan · 03:58 PM

The real shame is that the screenshots of FileMaker Pro 7 on Apple's websight are shown in Windows XP as well. Doesn't help to increase the excitement much but at least it's Mac software.

Love Calm Quiet · Mar 9, 2004, 07:05 PM

Screen shots from XP? Kind of cool. Think of it as a Trojan horse way Apple secretly gets into unsuspecting 'doze environments.

tooki · Mar 10, 2004, 12:42 AM

Originally posted by selowitch:
Sure, but it would be nice if they could figure out a way to achieve that effect, by inserting / and / tags automatically where appropriate, for example.

That would be horrifically against FileMaker's goal of being user-friendly. I sincerely hope they wouldn't even entertain such a thing.

tooki

selowitch · Mar 10, 2004, 08:01 AM

Originally posted by tooki:
That would be horrifically against FileMaker's goal of being user-friendly. I sincerely hope they wouldn't even entertain such a thing.

I think you misunderstand my intent. I'm not talking about doing this within Filemaker itself, just doing it on import to another format.