>If MS are dedicated to VFP, why do they consistently fail to provide documentation and code samples for Fox Pro developers when releasing SDKs and other utilities? I draw you attention to the recent MS Speech SDK. The help documentation contains samples for all Visual Studio products except Fox. Hardly positive marketing for VFP…

I'm probably going to regret jumping in here, but PMFJI anyway.

Personally, I don't consider the lack of fox examples a marketing problem. I consider that problem to be a lack of technical knowledge internally at M$. A marketing problem is when you meet a big shot IS/MIS/IT VP who looks at you and honestly says "Fox what?"

I have prime example of this, albeit slightly personal. My Dad is one of the founding fathers of the National Association of Purchasing & Procurement (NAPP), and he's a board member to this day. He's not an IS person, but he understands managing data from a purchasing perspective and he understands which tool fits what need better than some programmers I know. Now this NAPP organization acts as a user group in many ways, and he's organized presentations for all the major accounting packages out there plus many software consulting firms who specialize accounting/purchasing/etc. When I meet his associates from this group, many are big shot IS people. Until this year, the level of recognition I see in their eyes when they ask me what I do would rank about a 2.5 on a scale of 1-10. But not any more, I've heard from Dad 3-4 times since January '99 about one of his associates remembering his daughter does FoxPro and therefore instigating a conversation regarding a decision to possibly use fox in place of something else... despite public awareness. (<g> then Dad calls me to make sure his small talk was technically correct)

So for years now, Dad & I have had many a discussion about my choice of specialty, and until recently his opinion was always that I jumped on the wrong boat as far as market demand & awareness. I've explained the fox's place in the world until I was blue in the face on many occaisions. But with all the extra marketing/advertising M$ has done for VFP since VS6 came out, Dad has finally found a belated sense of pride in my work as far as realizing that I don't have an odd or unusual skill set but rather a highly specialized skill set that's going to become more valuable with time due to the ever growing size of corporate data stores. Granted my father has an inside ear to foxpro thanks to me, but I still feel his change of perspective in the last 6 months is a definite sign that the age of the big shot corporate VP hearing the word "foxpro" and looking dumbfounded or misinformed is starting to fade away. (& just for the record - Thank You Robert Green!)

And just to make sure I really stick my foot in my mouth this time < bg > I think a lot of the things the fox community lumps under the guise of "lack of Microsoft marketing", or more generically under "M$ is doing us wrong", is truly an internal problem with the way M$ runs it's business and not anything intentional against the Fox/VFP itself. Think about it... they got so many products and services on the market now, of course the right hand is going to loose touch with the left hand. So if we waste all this time bashing M$ for what it does or doesn't do, all we're effectively accoplishing is promoting a bad reputation for ouselves and our tool. Granted we can't physically change the way M$ works internally, but we can make a difference as far as increasing awareness when we interact with products and tools other than VFP.

So if it was me who had a need for implementing the new M$ Speech SDK, I wouldn't of taken offense that Fox examples were missing. But rather I would see that as a personal opportunity to do something to help alleviate the internal lack of technical knowledge at M$. Therefore, I would be jumping at the chance to send my own example to the M$ Speech SDK team to say "hey look what I did with foxpro... I think you missed a major asset in you documentation".

ok ok... I'm getting off the soap box now, back to lurking =D)