Developer’s Guide
Table Of Contents
- Chapter 1 Getting started
- Chapter 2 Using FileMaker Developer features
- Chapter 3 Using the Developer Utilities
- Overview of preparing your solution files
- Modifying database solution files
- Considerations for a runtime database solution
- Binding databases into runtime database solutions
- Saving and reusing Developer Utilities settings
- Converting and upgrading solution files
- Removing full access privileges from databases
- Chapter 4 Distributing runtime database solutions
- Chapter 5 Customizing database solutions
- Chapter 6 Creating custom layout themes
- Chapter 7 Developing third-party FileMaker plug-ins
- About external functions
- About the example plug-in
- Installing, enabling, and configuring the example plug-in
- Description of the FMExample plug-in’s external functions
- Using the example plug-in
- Customizing the plug-in example
- Requirements for writing external function plug-ins
- FileMaker messages sent to the plug-in
- Avoiding potential Mac OS X resource conflicts
- Providing documentation for your plug-in
- Registering your plug-in
- Appendix A Feature comparison of the runtime application with FileMaker Pro
- Index
50 FileMaker Developer’s Guide
XML editors expect these characters to be coded as character
entities:
Using the character instead of the character entity results in an error
from the XML editor. However, FileMaker Pro and FileMaker
Developer do not reinterpret character entities. Values in the
THEMENAME element will appear exactly as typed. You can avoid
the problem by using a text editor to create your themes or by
ignoring the error from the XML editor. Your theme names will
appear as you write them in the New Layout/Report assistant.
If you’re planning to use your themes on Windows and Mac OS X
platforms, use the HINT attribute to ensure that upper-ASCII
characters (such as the accent mark) appear correctly on both
platforms. For more information, see
“Valid values for theme
attributes” on page 53.
Removing elements from theme files
Theme files contain multi-line elements for fields, field labels, text,
and every part in a layout. Each of these elements contains other
multi-line elements and single-line elements. You can remove any of
these elements, but you must remove the entire element, which
includes everything inside the element’s start and end tags and the
start and end tags as well.
FileMaker Developer will use default values for any elements you
remove. See
“Specifying default values for themes” on page 55.
A single-line element, such as the PEN element, begins with <PEN
and ends with
/> on a single line:
<PEN COLOR="#000066" PATTERN="2" SIZE="0" />
A multi-line element has start and end tags on separate lines:
<BORDER>
</BORDER>
To remove a multi-line element, delete the start and end tags and all
elements contained within them. For example, to remove a multi-line
BORDER element in the Blue_gold.fth file, delete all three lines:
<BORDER>
<PEN COLOR="#000000" PATTERN="2" SIZE="1" />
</BORDER>
XML elements for layout parts
An FMTHEME element can contain any of the following multi-line
elements to describe the parts in a layout. Each layout part element
contains additional elements to describe the background fill, text,
field labels, and fields in the layout part.
Elements for layout parts can be listed in any order within an
FMTHEME element in the XML document. However, if two
identical elements are listed (such as two BODYPART elements),
FileMaker
Developer will only use the attributes for the last one in
the list.
Character Coded as
ampersand (&) &
less than (<) <
greater than (>) >
apostrophe (‘) '
quote (“) "
This multi-lined
element is used To describe this layout part
<TITLEHEADERPART>
</TITLEHEADERPART>
Title header — appears only once at the top
of the first screen or page.
<HEADERPART>
</HEADERPART>
Header — appears at the top of every screen
or page, except the first one if there’s a title
header.