The Nedj Nedj databases 7 Supplementaries 7.6: Keys / 7.7: Buttons

7.6 Keys

There are several small fields called ‘key’, including {key} itself, {key general} and {key entry}, as well as {key omni} that is sometimes encountered.

These are fields for any temporary use. For example say you were looking at a group of fields to do with ‘elephant’, and wanted to do a search on something else. Perhaps you want to look up ‘rhinoceros’ and then come back to the ‘elephant’ records. You could type, say, ‘ele’ into the {key} field (or any identifier at all that you would remember for a moment or two), and then copy this into all the ‘elephant’ records in your ‘found set’:

Fig. 7.61 Entering a reminder into the {key} field at right

In FilemakerPro the means to do this is the keystroke combination cmnd-= (command + equal sign). This produces a temporary display as shown:

Fig. 7.62 How to copy from one field to all similar fields in a found set

By hitting ‘replace’ the following is the result:

Fig. 7.63 All {key} fields now feature the inserted reminder ‘ele’

A subsequent search for ‘ele’ in the {key} field will immediately bring back this exclusive set of records. The other {key ...} fields are to enable several such temporary collections or sets of records to be kept track of independently of each other.

Afterwards, to tidy up if you wish, it is a simple matter to delete all entries in any of the {key} fields.

7.7 Buttons

There is a group of buttons that take you instantly to other screen layouts

Fig. 7.71 Buttons taking you to some of the other screens

These are just four of about ten layouts in the database, although some of these are minor variants the one of the other and might be deleted, while others might be developed further should the need arise.

The first, SRCH, is the basic Overview screen, called ‘search’ for that is where the searches mostly take place.

‘Narrow’ is a layout with supposedly narrow columns. These columns are mostly off-screen to the right, but can be readily accessed by sliding the view so they appear on the screen.

‘Multi’ is the overview screen with 42 insertion positions in the glyphs panel, as seen in Fig. 2.21 earlier.

‘1 Line’ is a non-display layout with each record taking up a single line. It features many of the fields, which resemble columns on being viewed.