Hello, Denis.

>Isn't the UT the main place for VFP? Anyway that's how I feel, like many other I'm sure. The only place I go to have info about VFP is the UT. MS said that the UT would be the main place for .Net can't they do the same for VFP. That way we'd be certain to have all the important information at one place.

Fortunately, I think there is not a "Main" place for VFP, as there isn't one for VB, Java, or any popular language or platform. Indeed, UT is far more popular and useful than most other places, but to pretend that EVERY single resource to be on UT would hurt the product rather then help it.

Anyway, I think maybe you're giving too much significance to Ken words about VFP, disregarding that he is just a member (a very important one, maybe, but just a member) of a larger team.

Along that line, I just wanted to point some facts about growing information about VFP here on UT, and other resources as well (skipping the ones other have already pointed):

- There is more presence of VFP in the various MS sites
- There is a new member of the VFP team here at UT, Esther Fan, who is in charge of documentation (sorry Esther, I know this is not exactly your job description), and the community excitement about that news effort led to the creation of a new category for Documentation in this forum.
- The Toledo Wish List being monitored by Ms as the main channel to ask for product enhacement
- All the vast information and initiatives released at Essential Fox. And -for sure- all that's coming at DevCon.
- Many other things are happening outside UT are happening, and a good deal would come here that I can't comment on but you'll see in the next fews weeks.

And there are plenty more events if you think about it for a while.

But then, as you said, it remains the problem of making the rest of the IT market more aware of VFP. And I think that -although slower than we all would love to see- it's happening.

The article about VFP 7 published last year on MSDN magazine surprised many pleople who didn't imagined VFP capable of doing Web Services (at a time when VS.Net wasn't yet released).

The increasing interest about .Net and other technologies by a good portion of the VFP community is generating an important crossposting with other communities that get to know about VFP for the first time.

Many new people is arriving here at UT in search of .Net info, and is getting "contaminated" with VFP facts that make them watch it differently. Same here about readers of UTMag/Rapozine, CoDe Magazine and other resources that start to mix VFP with other things.

I think one of the best things happening to the VFP community is that it has actually broken it's egg shell and is learning from lots of new things. Some people see this as a danger, afraid about secret efforts to push developers out of VFP. I see it all the way around. I think the more we delve in other plattforms and gain respect as developers (independent of the technologies we are using), the more respect we'll have from others when we talk about the wonders of our favorite tool.

I have this happening. As an example, here at Argentine, at the last DevDays, the VFP community surprised everyone presenting a working Web Service to access thousands of messages for the most important local maillists on topics from VB to n-tier or ASP. It was something that everyone could and wanted to use (accessing it from VB6, ASP.Net or Java), and we made sure that everyone knew that is is running on VFP 7.

Hope it helps to paint a more optimist picture.