Jim,
You've mentioned some good points. However, your point "So it should come as no surprise at all, given this background, that there is *NO* *GOOD* book available on VFP - how can one possibly write a decent book on the subject when over half of its design is deliberately hidden???" is precisely why you, me, and every Fox developer buys books in the first place.

My original question of a "good book" is not a book that simply restate the underpowered manuals that come with VFP (and I have browsed through a lot of them that are this way!). When someone pays money to buy a book, the author SHOULD include subjects that are "hidden" or not documented elsewhere. That's why I hate those "XXXX Unleashed" books because it just restates the obvious and gives a simple, crude example code! When somebody writes a book, he/she should spend the time and effort to uncover those "hidden" features and "jewels" that we all need to stay competitive.

You could get more info from this site than any book I ever read!!!

>John,
>
>I'll venture another opinion as to why there are so few *GOOD* VFP books out there (I see a reasonable number of below-average ones). . .
>
>To be sure, VFP has gotten far more complex. So have, by the way, operating environments generally.
>Along with this vastly increased VFP complexity has come a corresponding SIMPLICITY (strike 'simplicity' and make that ECONOMY instead) of the product documentation. For instance, for its complexity the Help provided with FPD or FPW was pretty good - not the easiest to read or to find things in, but overall a not bad effort telling us most of what we need to know.
>Look now at VFP documentation! What does it (really) tell you about a DataEnvironment?...or a GRID???... or a DateTime???... or DBCS???... or firing orders???... or the "base code" of each event of each control??? or What 'NODEFAULT' will actually still execute (and when???... or how timer's time is counted (elapsed or actual execution)???... or Locks (same processor, different processors, etc.???... or SQL options like "LIKE' or 'IN' or 'EXISTS' etc.???... or buffering and what OTHER users might see when you have a series of updates not yet TABLEUPDATEd???... or buffering and what the other users might see after you do a TABLEREVERT???... or the impact of putting project components under the wrong tab in the Project Manager???... or READ EVENTS??? or duplicate keys when Candidate or Primary key records have been deleted before???... or the technicalities of actually constructing a OLS Automation Server to be used by 100 clients???... or some basic DESCRIPTIONS of the supplied ActiveX
>controls???... OR HUNDREDS OF OTHER FACTORS, ALL OF WHICH CONTRIBUTE TO MAKE A GREAT APPLICATION!!!!
>
>And then are the BUGS. Bugs which may *not* be bugs because the lack of documentation does not clearly define what can reasonably be expected to happen. Indeed, MS answers many such reports as "working as designed". Trouble is, they never told anybody just what the design was in the first place!!!
>
>So it should come as no surprise at all, given this background, that there is *NO* *GOOD* book available on VFP - how can one possibly write a decent book on the subject when over half of its design is deliberately hidden??? It is unreasonable to expect anyone to try things out and then document their observations as facts IN A BOOK (you might get that in papers or articles) because it substantially would be conjecture and nothing more.
>
>This lack of reasonable documentation leads, of course, to the quest for GOOD BOOKS by most everyone. And what we have offered to us is less than good (except, possibly, for a genuine beginner who might get 'something' out of them). This leads to dissatisfaction for having spent good money for nothing and (eventually) a general suspicion of all future books on the subject.
>
>I rwalize that many on this facility have taken the hard road and learned through tough experience. And that is something they should be proud of. But that does not make it the proper medicine for everyone. In fact nothing , not even EXCELLENT product documentation, would stand in their way if they really wanted to keep on learning it that way. But at least the rest of us, who may lack either time or patience, would jhave a fighting chance to get a good grip on the product. That could only be good, in the longer run for VFP.
>
>Bets are, though, that we will never see it!
>
>CHeers (yea)
>Jim N
>
> >>>
>>>> >I know there is a discussion currently about the best Foxpro magazine.
>>>> Well, I want to know what the best Foxpro book is/are. I've purchase
>>>> enough Foxpro books (mostly based on older version 2.5/2.6) to start a
>>>> small library and is not about to contribute too many more. Specifically,
>>>> a good book about proper use of OOP as it applies to Foxpro would be nice
>>>> with detail sample applications/codes. Lastly, yes I know I could browse
>>>> through the local bookstore but not all bookstores carry enough
>>>> Foxpro-based books to make a good judgement. What do you recommend???
>>>>
>>>> My favourite is still "The Pros Talk Microsoft Visual FoxPro 3"
>>>> :)
>>>> Nick
>>>
>>>Hi Nick, John,
>>>
>>>I've not read 'The Pros ...', but I have found that the lack of
>>>litterature is one of signs that VFP is in trouble. There is probably a
>>>good reason for this: it must hard to write a book about VFP because of
>>>its internal inconsistency. This being said, as far as I know, VB does
>>>not score much better on this account, and look at the wealth of
>>>litterature (at least that is the situation here in Antwerp, Belgium).
>>>
>>>Most of the books are suffering of the "What you know is in the book,
>>>and what you do not know you will have to find out by yourself (or as
>>>Vlad says, ask him and his friends on the UT)" syndrome.
>>>
>>>I _have_ found one book on VFP that I did like though:
>>>
>>>"The hacker's guide for Visual Foxpro" (The book is at the office, I
>>>cannot give you more information at this time). It is a lot of fun to
>>>read and it is full of good tips that are very useful. But most of all
>>>it convinced me that I'm not allone in my judgement of VFP, a language
>>>which when one is fluent in FPD is to say the least difficult to
>>>apprehend.
>>>
>>>Another "must" is Alan Cooper's "About Face". This is as brilliant as
>>>the cover says it is. It will not tell you anything about Foxpro, but
>>>then, no book will. You might as well invest your time in finding out
>>>which terrible blunders you designed and why your users look at you in
>>>bewilderment sometimes. I do not know about you but it happened to me
>>>more than once, and to my shame I found out why reading Alan Cooper's
>>>book.
>>>
>>>Finally, you did ask, did you not :), if you want to lear about OO ...,
>>>well learn about OO. Mind you, my first application runs in VFP
>>>without a single object in it. It is quite succesful and runs like a
>>>charm.
>>>
>>>I read a lot (well a lot, you know what I mean, I have a family to feed,
>>>and projects to finish :)) about OO, here's the bibliography:
>>>
>>>Succeeding with Booch and OMT methods by Lockheed Martin
>>>Object Solutions by Grady Booch
>>>Design Patterns by Erich Gamma et al.
>>>Analysis Patterns by Martin Fowler
>>>Object Oriented Methods by Ian Graham.
>>>
>>>And what did I find out? Well OO _is_ a lot of fun. But as a theory
>>>it is far from stable. Every author puts more or less what he wants in
>>>it and leaves out what he does not want. More important, in our line
>>>of business it is not even that relevant, because our tendency to
>>>approach analysis and design with the relational paradigm that is, to
>>>put it mildly, only partially compatible with OO.
>>>
>>>But I definitely picked something up from the reading. My second
>>>application is OO. As I said, it was more fun to write and it works
>>>very well too (probably the accepted it better also because I followed
>>>some of Alan Cooper's leads :)).
>>>
>>>I think you should stay away from the VFP cook, eh code books à la Alan
>>>Griver and his framework, or Savanah (I forgot her last name, no offense
>>>intended, the book again is at the office). They are misleading. You
>>>have to convince yourself that OO is an approach, not a technique that
>>>you can learn, or worse a kind of library where everything is premade
>>>and easy to use, and these books tend to make you expect something else
>>>(it did this to me, I do not know about you.)
>>>
>>>That's it.
>>>
>>>Regards,
>>>
>>>Marc
>>
>>Marc, are you finished? Just kidding :)
>>I have to agree with you on lack of "quality" reference books in general. Like I said in the original message I have purchased enough books to fill a small house. I think part of the reason why I (we) can't find a lot of good books is because we demand more from them now. In the past, programming (especially using Foxpro) was relatively easier than it is today. All the new features of todays software makes it almost impossible to include enough info in one book. At least that has been my experience at the bookstore.
>>I've also have read a little about Patterns and OOM and OOP as it is applied to software design and found a lot of them admittedly "over my head". Anyway, I think I'll give "The Pros..." a try since it did get at least 2 votes. :)