I’d love to get a reality check before I delve into this project. In the past, I wrote a relatively complex AppleScript solution that pulls data out of a (32bit) Filemaker database, massages the data in BBEdit, saves it as temp files, and then imports it into Adobe’s InDesign before outputting to PDF. It works for invoices, letters, contracts, and so forth.
My problem is that I upgraded to a Mac Studio running OS Monterey which doesn’t allow 32 bit programs. My Adobe InDesign license only runs on the new Mac Studio. My Filemaker database only runs on my old iMac Pro running Mojave. The computers are physically next to each other. They are connected by Ethernet to the same network. They can share drives using SMB. They can SSH to each other. I even have Apple Remote Desktop to allow me to share screens.
Anyone run into this kind of problem before? I’ve seen the System Preferences → Sharing → Remote Apple Events toggle which suggests that remote computers can send Apple Events to the target computer, but I’ve never done that. Is that a good place to start?
Although I’ve been AppleScripting since about 1998, I feel I’m a continually stumbling noob. Thanks very much for sharing your expertise!
Fascinating, I never heard of Node-Red before. But I don’t think it will work for my project. I think that Node-Red requires a Filemaker Server accessible using http:// or https://. My Filemaker client is not web-based.
It would also be daunting to embark on a new project in Node. I’d rather find a solution using my existing script, even if I have to split that script across two different computers.
Hey @Pipsqueak
I could see a “simple” (meaning, not requiring too much additional learning on your part) approach where you would turn on file sharing on your FileMaker mac. Share out a folder with say two folders in it, an “In” folder and an “Out” folder.
Your InDesign computer (presumably your “daily driver”) could have a script that would mount that file share location and “submit” a request to the FileMaker system. A script on the FileMaker system could monitor that “In” folder and when it sees the request, do the appropriate actions to pull the data required and put it in the “out” folder.
Your InDesign machine could then take the data from the “out” folder and bring it into InDesign as required for your desired output. Would be a bit clunky, but from the sounds of it, you already have all the knowledge to make something like that work. I would venture a guess that you could convert your existing script pretty quickly to make a solution like this work.
Alternatively, you could look at using Remote Apple Events. It’s been a long time since I’ve played with this, but in theory I believe the way it works is you can have your InDesign computer send an event to the FileMaker computer.