>Jon,
>
>While I'm not one to discourage the use of Foxpro I am one to use the right tools for the job considering all of the requirements. Foxpro is great at highspeed access to databases and is a good platform for quickly making n-tier systems. You should consider that Foxpro has problems with printer drivers (notably Hewlett-Packard Laserjets) as well as problems with video drivers. Foxpro's internal reporting features are less than desirable (but integrate fairly well with 3rd party ones such as Crystal Reports). You are almost certainly going to find more staff (programmers, etc.) and cheaper staff when developing on VB/Access/delphi,etc. and even C/C++ in some areas. Support costs in a wide distribution package such as a generic accounting program would be high with Foxpro as well because of the problems I mentioned above as compared to a more 'generic' development environment. Foxpro may be the best mid-level database development environment but if you go broke supporting it then who
>cares how good it is.
>
>From a business standpoint (general mass marketing of an application versus an internal or consulting or limited market application) I choose other development environments or a combination of those environments rather than a lone Foxpro environment. From a programming standpoint, I use Foxpro because I can write database programs SO MUCH faster and easier and cheaper. I've tried supporting a foxpro application of over 1200 installations about 3 years ago and I'm not going to try that again. For the locations that I can control or be reasonably sure of tight IT control and knowledge over the machines, then I pick Foxpro for database work.
>
>As far as Foxpro's future ... well, we (meaning Foxpro users) haven't killed it yet. That should say something. :) Those are just my experiences and certainly can't be representative of everyone. Good luck on your hunt for a new development environment.
>
>
>- A Hilton
>

Just IMHO.
I do not agree that FoxPro Report writer is bad. I already said several times that it just requires some imagination, and you can do many things with that. So far, I was not using anything but FoxPro Report Writer unless the client requires something else. You can easily use UDF, which does whatever you want as a report controls source.
I have the video driver problem with the report writer in the design mode, when controls being moved to another place leaves the traces on the screen, but I just ignore it, and minimizing/maximizing window lets you get rid of traces. I personally have the problems only with VFP 5.0a and new HP 8000 series printer drivers (so do some other applications)
but it works fine for me with Laser Jet 4 Plus driver.
Right now I am doing 7 very complicated financial statement reports with VFP and quite happy with that.

Nick