>Craig, thanks for responding.
>
>
>You said: "As for your 'clumsy API calls', just put SCREEN=OFF in the CONFIG.FPW."
>-I don't like to use CONFIG.FPW, don't ask me why. And while I'm certainly interested in your personal preferences my question was intended to generate a serious response. I'm guessing that there is some sort of deep down architectural reason for this else MS would have given us the VB-like model long ago. I'm more interested in the nitty gritty of the architectural roadblock.

So what's your problem? There is a solution that doesn't require ANY API calls. What you're saying is, "I don't like the solution", not "I want one".

>
>Regarding treatment of OCXs you said: "The answer really lies into the evolution of the two product".
>-Wrong. I'm fully aware of the evolution of FoxPro. I'm also certain that MS could offer a VB OCX compatibility switch that would cause OCX calls to branch to some common VB/VFP OCX handler routines. The new switch could route the call down a whole new path or act as a translator, legacy code shouldn't have anything to do with it. Heck, they could even package the new code into a new DLL that would only need distributing for those who had made use of the shim SET statement.

Actually part of the issue is legacy code. There are globals all over the place. Making VFP OOP in the first place was not trivial. I don't know all the architectural reasons behind the compatable/non-compatable stuff...but the problem technically isn't Microsoft's. It is a fault of the component authors for not following the specs.

>
>Regarding giving SYS calls more useful names you said: "It would merely add to code bloat".
>-An alias to these calls wouldn't add diddly to overhead. By my count there were 52 SYS calls in FPW 2.6, there are now 73 in VFP 6. As MS goes forward why not assign useable names to these things. Again, I suspect that there is some underlying reason for this.

Originally it had to do with the C compiler. But, I do agree that there should be no reason to continue with SYS functions today.

>
>Regarding a potential rename and/or bigger marketing push you said: "Bad??? You need to look around. VFP marketing is now better than it's ever been. Renaming the product would actually be a bad idea. That would mean a huge marketing effort to get the name out and all people would say is 'It's just VFP with a different name.' Renaming something just for marketing purposes is a bad idea".
>-You don't seriously believe that MS is doing a good job marketing VFP do you? Maybe they've improved but they still have a long way to go. Go to a university and talk to the kids moving through the IT curriculum. Every kid there knows about VB and a good many have set their sights on learning it. Most of those kids have never heard of FoxPro. You mention FoxPro or Visual Foxpro to these kids and they are immediately sceptical. The Fox brand carries connotations held over from the many years of negligent marketing. You have to remember that you're looking through some serious goggles. You probably see mentions of VFP because you're looking for them. The marketing isn't sufficient to attract the uninitiated. People need to be hit over the head with it. MS needs to crow about it. How many times have you seen in the press and in MS's own hype a phrase like this "users can leverage the power of Microsoft's development tools like Access, VB, or VC to...". No mention of VFP. I saw one of
>those just yesterday. Take a step back and look at it objectively and I think you'll agree.

Microsoft is not in the business to tell colleges and universities what they should be teaching. The fact is, the schools should be preparing students for the job market and one way shools are rated is on the percentage of graduates that get placed. There is a much higher chance that graduates will get jobs with VB than VFP. Think about this: you are a new college graduate. You sit down with a recruiter from a particular company. The recuiter says "What do you know about VB?" "Uh...nothing...we studied VFP." Now, I'm not saying that VB should be dropped in favor of VFP. I'm just stating known facts.

There is another, more important point to this. I said above, "the schools should be preparing students for the job market". How many universities really do this??? The answer is very few. Here's an example that I know about. The University of Utah has one of the highest rated computer science programs in the country. However, they do NOTHING to teach students about business computing. In fact, the only business computing classes they offer are a couple for grad students. A professor I had once actually understood the way colleges work in the real world. He said "You go to college for four years, then they stamp BS on your back and send you out into the world".