>>>Why rewrite and port to a platform (be it Lianja or anything similar) that is a niche platform? For that matter, why rewrite at all? Your goals seem to be for a more modern interface, not a rewrite of your entire app. With something like FoxInCloud you can convert your VFP to HTML/JS/CSS and still maintain the ability to develop in VFP or HTML/JS.
>>>
>>actually having locally installed apps on tablets for medical is one of the larger markets IMO.
>>You don't want to be dependant on WLAN and Browser speeds when making rounds,
>>replicated and often synched local data sound MUCH better.
>>
>>> The only long term major not going anywhere platform right now is HTML/JS.
>>
>>Which Lianja conviniently supports as well. Coding the GUI in JS in Lianja might be the wisest way to stay "installed" and/or "browsered".
>>If vfp was still developed, FoxInCloud might be more of an option, but as vfp cannot reach ARM devices natively...
>
>"If vfp was still developed,..."
>Probably Lianja won't be in a few years either. They are a pretty small company, after all.

Yes they are. The danger of them not being able to finance next versions leaving me looking for the next platform is clearly there. Planning to write at least new GUI code in another scripting language mitigates that risk more than 50% IMO.

OTOH: they survivied for quite some time in the Unix/bigger iron world and are trying now for a growth market. And with the ability of different script languages all the packages available in PHP,Python and Javascript you can use *all* the packages developed for those languages (Big plus compared to Win/WebDEV), as these are included at source code level, you are minimally ahead of Dotnet/Xamarin, where some packages are not runnable in Xamarin due to not ported/freed stuff.

So they leverage quite a lot of foreign brain power - their main task is to make sure a local db engine layer is available for cursor and SQL handling, which I see as the vfp strength missing elsewhere, and the common GUI stuff. As they leverage a very common kit and web practices,sounds a lot like the thing missing from python, JS, Ruby and Java as well, as android branched away in the GUI area.

>
>The safest bet is to go big: like Microsoft or Google OR go Open Source.

I am not one of the MS bashers when it comes to supporting vfp - I realize that they carried it for quite some time.
But MS is no longer the growth area and neither are desktop/laptops. I hope they will have the same longevitiy
as big iron has (meaning that every flat and every company should have at least one server running desktop tasks)
the information at your fingertips is clearly with android and iOS (weak pun intended). I even hoped to stay with MS either through the vfp-dotnet-compiler or via (silverlight and Ironpython), even when Silverlight for Symbian was not even a dog - it was a dead dog.
But neither Oracle nor MS has *currently* any real traction in Pad/Phone area.

Also promising tools often went comatose within a year when bought up by big companies.
IMO the safest way is to go with the company having tools usable on largest share of software needing devices in 5 years ;-)
I underestimated xPhone growth, perhaps overestimate xPad growth.

> Small proprietary software tool companies that try to do it all are sooo last century.
Yupp, if they do everything themselves. I described above that Lianja does not.
I hope that most of Lianja consists of:
- glue code to access other all script engines with their memory spaces and rules
- existing Recital DB-Engine/SQL parser/C helper code
- Webview/Qt GUI output options

and stop myself whenever I want to ask for another feature if it is not squarly in the area i think is needed for enhancing the sweet spot I myself define as SQL-able, tableudatable() and buffered cursorengine including helper functions.

As I had thought about implementing a simple SQLite based cursorengine myself based on existing/abstracted data access interfaces in python, (not as daunting as you might think, as more than 2/3 is already finished in shipping quality by both tools) I applaude them for leveraging their own existing dbf/Recital local engine and going 2 steps further in GUI and opening up languages.

regards

thomas