>I'm involved in creating a commercial VFP application and I have been asked by the sales dept to give them a tool to answer the normal Foxpro question (I thought Microsoft killed FoxPro). I have info from MS web site, but I thought maybe someone else has already come up with a generic script to reply to this comment.
>
>This needs to be a scripted paragraph that any sales professional can memorize and spit backout.
>
>If no one has one, I would be glad to post mine when completed.
>
>Thanks,
>
>John Brooks

Here is the sales spiel I have given ..
it is a great "half truth"

"didn't Microsoft Kill Foxpro?"

"you are correct
Microsoft did discontinue foxpro" ,

( you might add in here "in the same way Computer Associates 'discontinued' Clipper")

but they created
Visual Foxpro which is a member of a tool suite that includes Visual C++ and Visual Basic. Microsoft's goal is to integrate all of the members of Visual Studio under a single IDE(i realize this is a pipe dream) and is fully compliant with all of Visual Studio's Active X and COM object standards.
(this ain't true but it is Fox marketing's company line)

Visual Foxpro runs all "legacy" Foxpro applications and it also runs an object oriented language version of the original Foxpro language.
Visual Foxpro's object model is robust and feature packed making it an excellent tool for RAD development.

I realize that mentioning that VFP is "FULLY" compliant will create some false expectations but i say "Sell first" and "ask questions later"
:)

Once you convince someone to go with VFP you can usually direct the development in such a way as to avoid any of the known pitfalls of dealing with Active X objects.

The business owners i deal with know nothing about these matters and don't even really want to talk about them in any depth.

as an aside here are some other things you can say :

if they ask more probing questions tell them that "something" had to radically change about Foxpro as it moved from DOS to Windows 3.1 to Windows 95.

Is there ANY product that could move from these 3 operating systems without going through a radical redesign?

HTH ,
Dave.