>Hi Ed,
>
>I'm not about to insult anyone and least of all you!
>
>I remember saying that many languages will lead to mediocrity in *most* people, but I think I was always careful to say that there are some people who can handle it all and do so real well. I also think I have said directly to you that I am amazed by your depth of knowledge.
>

No offense taken - I meant it as hyperbole. My real intent was to get across the idea that there are an awful lot of people in the VFP community who are capable of functioning in multiple languages, and more who, given a bit of a push, might well find that learning a significantly different language that fills the gaps in VFPs abilities as a development platform would really benefit; it would give a different perspective on VFP, both from seeing what it does poorly, and from the standpoint of seeing where it really shines.

Of more importance is the idea that people learn something about the platforms they run on. A solid understanding of the Win32 environment, and interfaces like COM/DCOM/ActiveX, would help people determine how to exploit the operating environment to a better extent. We're pretty far removed from the nitty gritty Windows stuff with VFP; understanding how it works, and how VFP functions differently, gives many people a different perspective on what VFP is good at, and where it falls short. And understanding the direction that the Windows platform is moving in helps establish firmly what rols VFP can play in an overall aautomation solution, and this points up very neatly many of the decisions made by the VFP Development team.

>>>Hi Charlie,
>>>
>>>I have no trouble at all with what you've said here, but I do want to elaborate a little on "Make VFP all it can be 'cause that's all I want,".
>>>
>>>This is a VFP forum. And it is (at least somewhat) independent of MS. Where better to express one's wishes and concerns regarding the "direction" of VFP???
>>>
>>>I have acknowledged that there is far more to the world than VFP and that much of the world is rushing to the Web and other recent facilities.
>>>I see real strength in VFP in general, but I see that strength being watered down severely with a focus on mid-tier to the exclusion of all other aspects of the language.
>>>I have said that I am happy to see VFP progress toward a mid-tier position, provided that it is not done to the exclusion of other parts of the language.
>>>
>>>Recently, George T. said that I insulted the VFP Team by saying that I'd believe that they are serious about keeping VFP viable as a 1-/2-tier solution when I see it happen. I wonder how else I am to interpret the fact that at least 3 known VFP 5.0 GUI bugs of a serious nature remain in VFP 6 despite statements at last DEVCON that 'they fixed countless bugs including lots that had been in the product from FPD/FPW days'???
>>>

Again, we aren't the only people plagued by the changes in the IDE and the behavior of the UI in the latest version. The VB 6 community in particular is not a group of entirely happy campers; many of them have gone back to VB 5 to regain a level of product stability (hmmm...sounds familiar) while waiting for their development team to address their issues. We're not in the trenches with the VB guys, and their horror stories may not have reached you yet. Everything in the VS 6 environment has had teething problems.

I'd be happier if we had some concrete feedback on what's being done to fix various problems in VFP 6; I'm not involved in the closed testing going on right now (I wish I were, since I'd have more than rumors to convey to clients who desperately need some of the announced features of VFP 6). All I can do is try to glean what I can about the progress being made, and to log in detail the reproducible problems I've run into - the latest was some annoying behavior with multicolumn ListBoxes and Comboboxes whose unit of measure is foxels; there's a workaround, to switch everything to pixel resolution and respecify the multicolumn lists, but in at least one case, I'm looking at perhaps a hundred and a half controls that will have to be rescaled to move the product from 5 to 6 at present.

>>
>>Jim, I suggest you look at other parts of VS 6 before saying that MS doesn't love us - there are at least as many complaints about VB 6, and it sells a whole lot more copies than VFP. I'm not an MS apologist, but I recognize that there are tradeoffs in the language as a platform, and that I'm not in a position to second-guess the VFP development team as to what needed to be done. My needs are not typical of the VFP development community at large; I'm clearly a candidate for the extreme mediocrity award that you've given to people who've put an effort into learning more than one component of VS. i must be totally brain-dead, since the platform I've devote the least effort to is VB; VC and VFP are my preferred platforms, and I'm putting serious effort into learning to use VI really well. I'll continue down the path of fragmented, incomplete knowledge and put effort into multiple language platforms, so that makes me stubborn and perhaps brain-dead in your eyes. < shrug >
>>
>I'm sure that you are correct. As I said, this is a VFP forum and VFP is where I choose to spend my limited talents these days.
>I had visions that a place like this was where one could express concerns and issues. That having like-minded people (the VFP "community") would result in discussion and that it could result in influencing MS and the VFP Team.
>Instead one gets (what I'll call, for lack of a better word) 'excuses' at best and crapped upon at worst and none of it from the horse's mouth.
>Yes, I may be more stubborn than most when it comes to things like this, but I suggest no more stubborn than many others here.
>

I don't see them as excuses; where I've gone and documented problems in detail, especially with reproducible errors, there's been serious followup done on the proiblem - in one case, a workaround based on my DCOM key research found its way into a KBase article, and I've been asked repeatedly to reproduce some errors with small snippets of code - and in several cases, I haven't taken the time to do so, so I take at least some of the blame for these problems not being investigated more thoroughly.

>>I'm sure you've got a much better idea of how the WOSA environment works, operating system theory in general, VFP internals in detail, and what's really needed to generate an application than I do. You've been rather outspoken on how badly they VFP team has screwed up your vision of where VFP should go and how it should work. While I'm not pleased with the stability of the VFP 6 platform at present, I'm very happy with the direction that VFP appears to be moving - it's surely a function of my limited understanding of the platform and lack of vision about how VFP should fit into the scheme of things. I don't believe that VFP sits at the center of the universe, and that all other things revolve around that. I like a lot of things about VFP; if I can, I use it as much as possible, given the tasks I've got to perform. But I also believe that an awful lot of what I do doesn't fit VFP's present state of development, and where that happens, i don't use VFP, or at least don't use VFP by
>>itself, and I don't want to see the level of mediocrity that I feel is in languages like VB that attempt to be all things to all people.
>>
>Yes, I've had a vision of where I wish to see VFP headed. But I have tried to:
>1) let it be known that the MS vision should also proceed;
>2) garner some support here for some additional inclusions by MS to that vision. Seems to me the inclusion of "1 and 2 tier" in the recent statement amendments may indicate some progress there, but I am cautious because so far it adds up to words only without much evidence of fact.
>I have nothing against using other tools and I am glad for you that you can personally deploy so many and so well (no implied anything here other than respect).
>
>>IOW, the fastest way that MS could get me to stop using VFP would be to spread their efforts across all aspects of VFP, trying to make it a general-purpose tool to do everything for everyone, because I believe that this approach will ultimately fail. I'd rather that they concentrated their efforts into making VFP a truly wonderful platform for data-centric OOP development that really fits the mid-tier requirement.
>>
>I don't want VFP to become a "general purpose" tool either! I do want it to remain capable in the GUI side of things and to focus on VFP-to-VFP table/cursor (SQL generally and hopefully more) capabilities to make 2-tier more realistic and to improve the documentation. I happen to see these as real important for the future of VFP.
>Remaining capable on the GUI side means things like easily deploying ActiveX stuff, delivering some of the fancier 'objects' which are making their way into other languages (but only those relevant to D/B and table stuff), improving the Grid and Report designer and Menu designer (objectification, etc) and things like that.

We'll have to agree to disagree here - there are other issues, like the thread model, and non-blobking COM support, and better incluysion of necessary files in the distribution file set to avoid the need to install DCOM separately that I think need to come first. But these are my priorities, and I don't speak for the majority of the VFP community.

>The documentation is necessary to eliminate occurrences of people who try VFP out, find it doesn't work as they interpret the documentation and so write it off as too complex or too fraught with errors.
>

I have one thing to say - buy The Hcker's Guide To VFP 6.0

>>That's the price one pays for mediocrity bred from too many languages. It's the different between a complete set of finely-crafted, specific purpose tools instead of a magic Swiss Army Sword (clearly, to fit all the requirements of all software development, it's gonna have to be bigger than a simple Swiss Army knife...)
>>
>>>Very recently Craig B. (unofficial spokesman for MS as I see it) stated that MTS was only half-ready when the deadline for packaging forced development cut-off for VFP 6. Now how does this square with DEVCON statements that 'we are ready for packaging but being held back by other components'? And how does it square with the pbulicity that MTS was a full feature of VFP?
>>>
>>
>>That's unfair at best; while Craig clearly believes that MS is more on track than you do, he's not the only person here who feels that way. But then, the spectre of mediocrity rears its ugly head again. Your purist point of view gives you so much greater depth of understanding of the way the world works...
>>
>
>What can I say. But I continue to worry that lots of the acceptance of the MS direction for VFP is rooted more in fear that rocking the boat will ensure the full demise of VFP. The 'excuses' offered sure most often fit that suspicion than much esle, as I see it.
>

I don't see them as excuses; Craig is in much closer touch than either you or I to the VFP team, and he's a bit constrained by NDAs and the like in what he can say, I'm sure.

>>>It remains my belief that there are far more small-medium businesses out there that *could* benefit from a 1-/2-tier VFP solution than there are bigger businesses that can and will spend the dough to hire SQL and xxx and yyy experts in addition to app. developers. It remains my belief that VFP is *not* getting the attention on the GUI and other 1-/2-tier aspects of the platform which will continue to make it viable for the small/medium business market. It remains my belief that the continued insubstantial improvements to the VFP documentation contribute to its difficult learning curve and its too frequent trying/trashing by many programmers.
>>>
>>
>>There are far more small businesses out there than large ones; I'm fortunate to have a few large ones who keep me in business as a consultant, while continuing to develop multi-tier automation solutions for Weatherhill, which, when you come down to it, is a small publishing and book distribution company. I think we've benefited at Weatherhill from going at things in a multi-tier, layered approach; we've been a multi-language environment (which has included Foxpro in it since day 1, back in 1990) throughout our lifecycle.
>>
>>Ed
>
>Jim N