Gerry,

>>Well, you could add a single record for each FRX, SCX, etc and stach the code in a single memo field as text. That's done now with some special information.
>>
>>I'm thinking that there could be a way to let you have your text file and at the same time keep the visual side as well.
>
>We keep coming back to "tables"; I fail to see their relevance. This is not a "backward compatibility" issue.
>
>VB, VC, VJ and VD already render "visuals" from text that can be manipulated at design time in their IDE ... The fact they don't use "tables" hasn't detracted from their design experience; it's made it more flexible. Why can't this (MS) technology be "shared" with the VFP team ?
>
>(see: H_E_L_P thread for another VCX "confidence" vote).
>
>I can see the day when UI's will be rendered (at least partially) from XML because of its ability to represent complex structures; will we still be using "source code DBF's" when that day comes ?

Well, probably so if for no other reason that backward's compatibility and so much of VFP's structure also uses DBFs. However, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see something along the line of what you suggest regarding visual interfaces being rendered by some sort of meta information like XML.