Filemaker + Frontier + OSX

[Nick Cahill]

First, the problem is probably 10.2.2. Apple broke something in 10.2.2; 
my copy of Frontier stopped doing apple events, too, and I had to go 
back to 10.2.1. There's a new beta which is supposed to fix the 
problems with 10.2.2.

I also haven't been able to use getData effectively. Even under 10.2.1, 
I found it crashed or was unreliable. So instead I use:


delete(request[all]);
create (request);
setData(window[1].request[1].cell["Archive"], curImage);
find (window[1]);
dbRow = getData (record[first])

It's slower but it works.

But let me also echo your frustration. For me, Frontier's interaction 
with other programs, mostly Filemaker, via Apple Events is one of its 
main attractions and essentially my prime use for it. But it's always 
the first thing to break with every change in OSX or Frontier. That's 
obviously not always Frontier's fault, but it's a real drag. For the 
relatively small tasks I am doing, it's not a big deal that Filemaker 
find requests slow down the process, but that would be different if I 
were doing large batches. I can't test the suggestion that the fault is 
Filemaker's, because I didn't feel like writing an applescript which 
would duplicate what I'm doing in Frontier to see if it was more 
robust. If someone else could verify that it's Filemaker's fault, maybe 
Filemaker would be persuaded to fix it.

Good luck,

Nick Cahill




On Monday, December 9, 2002, at 06:03  AM, Tom Spivey wrote:

> I'm a little bit frustrated about the poor feedback regarding the 
> problems
> with scripting Filemaker from Frontier with Jaguar.
>
> I understand that there are not very many users left that do use 
> Frontier
> that way, but if there is any information you can provide - please 
> help me.
>
> From the first version of OS X, I have tried to run one my customer
> solutions on OS X. Since the native scripting did not work I ended up
> running more and more pieces in Classic, which is not what I wanted.
>
> In an earlier post the problem I read that
>
>> I think you're problem is this part: "record[cell[1] == curImage]". 
>> It has
>> been my experience that FileMaker doesn't properly handle "whose 
>> clauses"
>> (AppleScript term for what you're trying to do) in Mac OS X
>
> but I don't think that is true, since I can perform such a script from
> AppleScript.
>
> With Frontier, if the frontmost window is not the queried database all 
> goes
> wrong. (German) Filemaker support denies any problem with that.
>
> Also, using "FileMaker find requests" slows down the whole solution and
> requires the use of semaphores to block other requests, whereas the 
> complex
> get operation does not.
>
> Enough said, if you have any suggestion please let me know...
>
>
> Best regards
>
>
> Tom Spivey
>