What I found is that FoxPane form in the TaskPane project is causing the problem. What I am seeing, even though you go in to the form with Set Notify Cursor On, the foxpane form saves that value and set it Off However, on the Activate of the form, it restores the current Set("Notify",1) to the property, overwriting the original value of ON to OFF. So, this is one of the problems. The other problem is that even though Set Notify Cursor On is ON, I saw that SET MESSAGE TO need to be called just to clear out the Status Bar Message so that information could be seen.

What I did:

Create new properties in the cFoxForm class in the FoxPaneCtrls.vcx and set them in the LOAD Method

* this will set the property values on the beginning of the form and then set them 
* back on the destory of the form
THIS.cOrgEscape = SET("Escape")
THIS.nOrgSys3054 = INT(VAL(SYS(3054)))
THIS.cOrgUDFParms = SET("UDFPARMS")
THIS.cOrgNotifyCursor = SET("NOTIFY", 1)

In the DESTORY method, I reset those values that were stored in the load

m.cUDFParms = THIS.cOrgUDFParms
IF !EMPTY(m.cUDFParms)
   SET UDFPARMS TO &cUDFParms
ENDIF

m.cEscape = THIS.cOrgEscape
IF !EMPTY(m.cEscape)
   SET ESCAPE &cEscape
ENDIF
SYS(3054,THIS.nOrgSys3054)

m.cNotifyCursor = THIS.cOrgNotifyCursor
IF !EMPTY(m.cNotifyCursor)
   SET NOTIFY CURSOR &cNotifyCursor
ENDIF

*this is added becasue SET NOTIFY CURSOR ON just doesn't complete the process
*once I did this, I was able see the cursor name in the status bar
SET MESSAGE TO 

Ok, I have re-written this enough. This is what I am using and sticking with for now. If I make any other changes, I will post them here

Thanks and enjoy
Mark Moore