>>>Hi Jim,
>>>
>>>So you are saying that the backwards compatibility stuff is not a real burden, right?
>>
>>Not exactly, I am saying that I've been told that taking it out wil not have a great impact on the size of the runtimes.
>
>Would it make a difference as far as the amount and complexity of the code that the VFP development team maintains and extends? Even if the runtime didn't get a whole lot smaller, if it resulted in a more stable and reliable product, and made it easier to enhance and extend VFP cleanly, I'd still want it done!

If MS has reasons not to do this for backward compatibility stuff, this approach could probably be worthwhile for some new functionality, say, in VFP X.X we get XML functionality as separate module...