Craig,

Just a minor thing, but things can lead people astray. . . You said:
>There were never system variable _SORTWORK, _PROGWORK, etc.
>
Well in fact, at least in FPW 2.6, there were: EDITWORK, PROGWORK, SORTWORK and RESOURCE in addition to TMPFILES. Not system variables, to be sure, but certainly file locations specifiable in CONFIG.FPW.

Cheers,
Jim N.