>Marcia-
>
> It's not that I personally am or am not willing to spend $50 for a book- I'm a consultant who would not be reimbursed by the company that I'm contracting to at the moment. I'd need approval by my supervisor, then the department head, than a P/P, etc. Since there are contracts that specify items like "intellectual property," etc., I wouldn't even be able to bring it with me if and when I were to leave.
> In any case, this is the last VFP project for new work to be initiated here- we'll most probably be moving to C# and SQL Server on the .Net platform, and most of us aren't hugely inclined to shell out even more money for something we'll use once and possibly never touch again.

You'd gladly shell out the shekels for something like Sheriden Widgets - a set of ActiveX classes that might implement some of the functionality that you'd need for the app, which would save you the time and effort of implementing your own solution. What's the difference between buying a component, and buying the source to the component along with a cogent explanation of how it functions - it seems a poor judgement at best to buy a component on a maybe vs a book which proviodes you with both the source and concept behind it!