I would have to agree that the Foxpro report writer is acceptable for a 'developer centric' application. If I understand Jon's application correctly, he's wanting a development environment for more of a mass market product ... an accounting application at that. Is that right Jon? I don't have too many problems with the Foxpro report writer when the client wants me to make predefined reports that aren't that complex. But how many successful accounting applications do you see that don't allow you, as the client, to dynamically create or adjust the reports? Thus, the need for a 3rd party report writer tied onto Foxpro and supported by Jon as well. Yes, I'd use Crystal Reports with VB/Access/etc. too but I've found it is more 'tied' to them than with Foxpro and thus less support. It's simply a matter of how much support on Jon's part.

The video and printer problems are well known and have existed for a long time with Foxpro. I think I've had them all too. :) As long as I can reasonably control what hardware gets used with the client applications, then I don't have too many problems. It gets frustrating for me to support an application in which I have to tell my customers (in a mass market type application) that they have to use such and such video card/driver and printer/driver to be able to work with my application. That doesn't fly too well when they can simply go to another product that WILL work reliably.

Again, I'm not saying anything here that hasn't been reported by hundreds of other developers. I just want Jon to know that Foxpro isn't the panacea for his progamming needs. It works for what it is intended to do. In my opinion, it is not for a mass-market, front-end application.


- 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