>Actually, I have looked at it ( a little :) ) and my reason for avoiding it is that APPEND BLANK violates the key's 'uniqueness' and so triggers an error. Lately, though I haven't been using the APPEND BLANK method, so maybe I'll revisit this issue.

You can use a Primary Key and still use APPEND BLANK - You probably want to use buffering for the tables/views you are using (at least row buffering)
and you can also set a "default value" function that will return the next available key for the Key field

Arnon