>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?

That is correct. One of the reasons we are moving away from Access is to make it easier for our customers to add-on their own reports or modify some of the special reports (such as invoices in Accounts Receivable). These changes are typically done with the help of a reseller but presently it means they get our source code, change the one report they need to change, and then create a new MDE for A/R and we proceed to stomp all over their changes with our next upgrade. I am planning on making it easier for reseller changes and our upgrades to co-exist with this planned change away from Access.

>... 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.

We are planning on using Crystal Reports as an option for our resellers but was hoping to use the FoxPro report writer for all of our standard reports.

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>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.

This problem concerns me the most of any that I have heard up to this point in time. I really don't have any control over what my customers decide to use for hardware (quite often they have purchased the hardware before we ever get to talk to them). We seem to have a fair amount of difficulty with this type of problems with Access also so it may be just more of the same for us. I hope to get some input on this question from Microsoft since I have e-mailed the FoxPro product manager.

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>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.

I appreciate your input here. It does, however, seem like SBT has been quite successful with FoxPro.

Jon I.