Jim,

>I would propose that we don't absolutely need any of the enhancement requests to write well designed applications. Static is a standard variable scoping along with local, private , and public (although many languages have no concept of Public vars).

>Asking for static scoping of vars in VFP is only asking that VFP stay in line with other programming languages. C++ has statics and it is OO.

Hmmm... I don't think this is the way to go. If for this reason we would require static variables, we should be consistent and also ask for multiple inheritance, (Operator) overloading etc. I have the opinion that VFP is a very fine language because most things (aside from OOP) are straightforward, easy to understand and allow us to write maintainable code rather easy (relative to other languages, like C, C++). Having the goal to make VFP like another language could IMHO take away the strengts VFP has.

If we really want to do something that cannot be accomplished within VFP, it's better to use another language rahter than expand VFP to make this possible *IF* this something is some exceptional requirement that is only used in a very few limited cases. Hereby I think of the Assign and Access methods added in VFP 6. I'm sure there are also other examples to find which indeed are not as neccesary than things we really need (Better menu implementation (with pictures), maybe OOP menus, Dockable IDE forms, Resizable toolbars etc, all classes maintainable within the classes tab in the project manager, recycle deleted record, revise of the RELEASE command and method, FIX of the SQL filtered resultset behaviour, etc.).

I see a lot of people demanding for a better report writer. Since I use Crystal Reports, I think it's better to use this Report Writer to make reports. the VFP team would definitely have a very hard time to make such an advanced Reportwriter. Sure it needs some VFP Database support, and aligning objects is a real pain. But I think a lot of the VFP developers would benefit if CR was to be included with a future release of VFP.

Walter,