>>>Having said that, are you suggesting here that I have suggested otherwise? To be clear about this, I think the VFP team indeed *has* acted very responsible. And I'm now trying to find out whether that will be case in the future also.
>>
>>If you want to know the truth, I think you were frustrated and blew at Aleksey, but you already gave proper credit to the VFP team so I suspect they understand. We are all on the same side.
>
>How come you think I was frustrated???? And how come you think I blew at Aleksey???? All I noticed was that Aleksey's initial response was inadequate. So I explained what I really expected from the answer and gave him another chance. He indeed responded again, but that time too the answer was not complete. So I invited him again. This time I get no reaction from him and I must admit that *this* is frustrating indeed.

It was the tone, Peter. You did sound a bit annoyed. May be my sound card, though.

The whole dialog went on the wrong foot. And the whole IMPORT command (aka Append from ... type {list of exotic types here}) is pretty much obsolete. I'd rather have it marked as obsolete in the help, kept for backward bla bla bla. There's no way that any app can keep up with the multitude of formats, and there's no need for that either - the manufacturer has the responsibility to provide a way for external apps to connect to its data, by either enabling automation, or providing ODBC driver or OleDB access. Or choosing to be just another obscure format :).