Hi Jim,
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>Yes, I would be interested, but really only if it is not difficult for you to extricate it.
>My current contract (until March of 2000) is not FP/VFP so there certainly is no urgency to this.
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I'll be doing some major maintenance work on the framework during August. I'll get it to you then. The subsystem is more than just a replacement for the standard menus as it is, as you may have already guessed, tightly linked to the security part of the app but, mainly, it's external to the app itself: no extra coding(compiling needed when adding or eliminating forms or reports, it's all tied with a nice serial number so that it is enough to issue a different one to enable/disable whole parts of the app and so easying distribution, etc.

>In general these "Windows standards" is another issue that I would like to get into, with many others, to "help" MS come up with more practical and real-world ways of doing things.

OTH, it's nice to have someone to blame: when something sucks just lay it on MS doorstep. But, here we are going deeply into the meaning of the word "standard". I don't think that a standard represents the best way of doing things, just an accepted ,common, way of doing those things. It would be nice if the two coincided. Didn't you hate the 640K limit on DOS, just to point to a macroscopic one? Once the PC architecture, as defined by IBM, became the standard it was all but impossible to to change it.
Personally, I don't like the mouse: when I have to write long pieces of text I use my old trusted WordStar. I can use WordStar on any machine (I do my typing on an old laptop, useless in a Windows world) without being distracted by the mouse or, worse, this devil's invention that is the touchpad. If you remember, there were long discussions, it seems ages ago, about the usability of WordStar: it was usually stated that it was difficult to use but, once you started digging a bit, I think we all agreed that it was just difficult to learn and not to use. Can you count how many editors use (used?) the basic WordStar control keys for moving around, editing, saving, etc? Didin't those key assignements qualify as standards?
It was in WordStar days that IBM had this terrible idea of inverting the control and caps lock keys. I still have a small TSR that changes them back. I would love to meet the genius that decided that the caps lock proper place was in the home row of the keyboard. The thing is that IBM had enough muscle to make this stick and it it's now a "standard".
Going back to menus and other Windows niceties: I would be weary of MS changing the way of doing things. When they do you usually have to change about everything. Computers and OS are just the start. For us developers it also means changing a whole set of tools. And learning a whole new baf uf bugs.
As for UIs, we are lucky to be part of the VFP comunity where lots of constructive discussions take place, thanks also to places like our very own UT. We also have the Wiki now that is getting to be the place for more theoretical discussions, at least for now. This is to say that we are a group of people open to discussion: do you have any evidence of a common way of presenting information to the user or having the user interact with data? And how far do you think it would go if we started our own search for "standards"?
There is no closing line on this message. Things are far to complex , at least for me, to try to arrive to a conclusion. But it's nice to let off steam.

An Italian writer, Guareschi, wrote a little story about his daughter, about three years of age at the time of the "facts", The little girl had been crying loudly for an hour under the kitchen table because she wanted a kilo of peppermints. After long negociations the father gave in and, having settled for half a kilo of peppermints, went to buy the stuff. Coming back he gave the bag to the daughter that stopped crying, at long last, unwrapped a candy and sucked it for a moment. Ten she took it out of her mouse, wrapped it again and dropped it back into the bag, declaring: I prefer to cry!.

>To this end, in fact, I plan to re-read Alan Cooper's "About Face..." and I have just ordered his "The Inmates are Running the Asylum" to get his insight and to try to correlate that with Windows standards that get in the way. Of course I will add my own as I feel they warrant (for instance, I do not remember him being too upset about menus disappearing on any click, but a few here and many users I've encountered simply hate it).
>If that amounts to anything I will try to get something started here.
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