It’s Sorta a Value List Thing | FileMakerHacks

JONATHAN FLETCHER, guest posting on FileMakerHacks, has an intriguing post on sorting value lists:

Have you ever had a need for a value list that displayed a generated list of years in descending order? Have you ever had a client ask for a popup of dynamic characteristics or statuses in the order they are most often employed by the users?

Most FileMaker developers can remember times when they were asked to display a drop-down, pop-up or other dynamic value list in a particular sort order. And we have always had to say, “Naw, you don’t want that. Picker portals are way better!”…

The basic idea is to use a character that has little effect on the list other than forcing FileMaker to ignore its alphabeticity and display it in whatever order it’s provided. The Byte Order Mark fits the bill in that it is a zero-space, non-breaking character, totally invisible to the naked eye, yet still having a useful effect. 

Jonathan also combines three custom functions that allow you to sort any list the way you want, and an example file that starts with the basic and works it’s way up to the complex stuff.  Read it all.

via It’s Sorta a Value List Thing | FileMakerHacks.

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