Hi Steve,
Thank you again. I will remember these comments. Even though I have
been playing around with FM for several years, with flat file
databases, I have never seriously thought about learning the deeper
aspects of FM until now. I have invested in the FM training Series
and FM9 and, hopefully, with the tutorials, the User Guide and help
from this list, I will become quite proficient in database
development. This is my retirement present to myself and, perhaps,
keep me out of trouble :-). Who knows, it may even lead to a
professional qualification some day. A goal to aim for.
S & F
Roger
On 13/09/2008, at 6:30 PM, Steve Cassidy wrote:
Roger
Terminology:
You 'create' a field when you add it to a table. The field remains
there unless you delete it from the table.
Once the field exists -- ie once you have created it and it is
present in the table -- you can add it to (place it on) any layout
(or not as the case may be; often times you may want a field that is
always hidden but that you use in calculations, scripts and so on).
Given that this is how it works, you can obviously remove a field
from a layout any time you like -- but you won't be 'deleting' the
field from the table. Think of a layout as simply a 'view' of a
particular table. You can show on a layout any or all of the fields
in that table, adding them and removing them at will.
I think that adding a newly created field automatically to the
current layout may be a preference. If it is, I always turn it off
'cos I always place fields manually. More control. Even if you do
set the preference, I'm not sure this automatic addition always
works -- I think you will have to be on a layout for which the
context is the table to which you are adding the field.
Also, I would advise that you stop thinking of a layout as a
'page'... That is going to lead you to more confusion in future. A
layout is a display of data from a table (or related tables). It may
be one page long or multiple pages long or a fraction of a page long
(depending on your printer and page setup as well as how large you
make the layout). Think of a layout as a screen or view, but not as
a page!
Steve
On 13 Sep 2008, at 11:17, rogeradams wrote:
My bad. You are quite right. The FTS manual did not specify that
you had to create the fields again on the layout from the status
bar which caused me some confusion. In the past, when I have
created fields in the define database field creation dialog box,
they have appeared in the database layout page where I could
position them wherever I wanted so I expected the same when I
created these two fields.
