At 2008-09-24 23:29 +0100 Steve Cassidy wrote:
Struggling to understand what you are looking for here... Could it be that script parameters are what you need?
Steve - apologies for delayed response. Yes, script parameters would do what I want, but (as in the example offered by Forbes), there is a level of indirection that I felt I should be able to avoid.
That is, in order to activate the required script, I have to store some identifier in the record. That identifier then has to be interpreted by the (top-level) script in order to identify which of the other scripts is to be performed.
I just hoped I could store a script "name" (or pointer?) in each record and then execute that script without further interpretation.
Instead, what I have to store is a cypher that I choose to identify a script, and that cypher has to be decoded by the top-level script before it can be used.
So, as I said in reply to Forbes:
On 24 Sep 2008, at 22:49, Rowland & Wilma Carson wrote:
In the script there is something like: if number = 1, do script "print newsletter labels" if number = 2, do script "generate renewal forms" if number = 3, do script "lapse members unpiad for this year" and so on..
This would certainly work fine, but the top-level script is not really general-purpose. When a new task comes along, not only do I have to prepare a script to actually execute the task, I also have to add another "if number = N" to the top-level script and associate it with the new task-doing script. Not a huge imposition, I agree, but it would be less error-prone and elegant if one could just store a script ID somehow in a field and eliminate the top-level script entirely.
Of course, in the ideal world, the developer figures out all the possible tasks before delivery and the user never comes back and says, "that's great but I wonder if you could just add a couple of things ..." :-)
I recognise that maybe I am doing unusual things here, for which there may not be much call, and so nobody at FMP thought such a thing might be wanted. But then I use FMP for things like solving the wind triangle for VFR flight planning, so maybe I am just odd.
regards Rowland -- | Wilma & Rowland Carson http://home.clara.net/rowil/ | <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ... that's Rowland with a 'w' ...
