Doug,

>I'd be willing to bet that a lot of bloat is there. The trick is which to keep and which to get rid of and what kinds of troubles would be caused by making the change?

I can see a new compile options, similar to MTDLL, that limit the language elements to open up new possibilities. For example, how about a compile option specifically for Web Forms-related code which gets compiled to a COM object to run on the server. Why not add a few new features and eliminate a few old ones specifically for that one purpose and end up with code that can be pre-processed into C++ equivalent code.

For instance, get rid of macro expansion and other interpreted issues for the COM server portion of Web Forms, and add strong typing and other necessary language features. This is an over-simplification, but the idea is to have a special set of VFP commands that can be used in a Web Forms code package, that will produce the exact same DLL or EXE that VC++ would have produced. No VFP runtime needed.

For other projects, the full set of backward-compatible stuff would be available.

Seems to me this is the direction things ought to be moving to open up new possibilities for VFP, without sacrificing what we can do now.