ed -

thanks for your recommendations. i'll be trying those classes.

my real and original object was to be able to open and print a text
file from VFP. i could not find an app like notepad or wordpad
that is an OLE server. (maybe i didn't look hard enough or didn't
look in the right place).

what i ended up doing in the meantime, was to create a table called
TEXTBL with 1 field called io_line C(100). i fopened the text file and
read each line with FGETS, appending each line as a record to TEXTBL.

then just did REPORT FORM rpt_TXTRPT TO PRINTER PROMPT NOCONSOLE, where
the report rpt_TXTRPT just has a detail line with one full-width field
for io_line. (no grouping, labels, headers, or footers).

crude, but simple. talk about going around the barn 3 times to get in
the door.

thanks again