>Since our column is not in this list, what do you think we should improve in "Advisor Answers"?

Christof,

Both "Ask Advisor" and "Tips" have a similarity in that a you have to select from a pool of potential entries and try to guess which ones will appeal to a sufficient percentage of subscribers. How do you assess whether you're hitting the mark? I would suggest periodic surveys where subscribers indicate for each answer or tip, whether they read it, liked it, etc. If not, was it too simple or complex, or was it just not a subject of interest.

Where the features differ is in quality standards. The answers in Ask Advisor are written by the three of you, so the quality is always solid and the answers trustworthy. So the issue gets down to which items to publish. In January 2000, for example, both yours and Ted's are well worthwhile. For example, I never knew that VFP "accepted" parameters in the JOIN .. ON clause, and that entire answer was worth knowing about. OTOH, I didn't understand the reason for publishing Tamar's at all. (Nothing against Tamar--I usually like her entries.) The person is asking about the 2GB limitof VFP tables. A one sentence answer would do it, and I wouldn't have published it.

"Tips", which I always browse for points of interest, often fails the community by including cute tricks, which either employ or promote bad programming practices. For example, look at Bill O'Connor's item on page 46 on redimensionsing arrays using assign methods. This is a dangerous technique to publish without a big warning. This technique allows you to pass invalid dimensions and the array gets redimensioned on the fly. I would say that if you pass invalid dimensions, something's wrong with your code. Now it's "neat" to realize you *could* use this technique if you really needed it sometime, but I am strongly opposed to just listing it as a tip (that beginners might assume they should employ) without discussion of its negative features.

I'm not meaning to jump on Bill's submittal here; it just happens to be in the current issue. But I find problems like this every month--many times in the feature articles as well. If the magazine is targeted at a lower level audience as you suggest, it is even more important to address the issue of the whether publsihed content is consistent with best practices.

Regards,

-- Randy