>What I dont understand is why I can display/print graphics from a table in a report but cannot do the same on forms. I guess the mechanism is different.
>

The way I've done this in the past is to have an image object on the form. At runtime, I open the table with the name of the logo file, and set the Picture property of the image object to that field's contents. Say the field is called cLogoFile. I would do this:

thisform.imgLogo.picture = cLogoFile

You can do this in the Init of your form.

>I also don't understand why VFP stops short with general fields (i.e. why there is no function to return what is stored in them or why one has to append from a file rather than a memory variable).
>

I don't know if you ever tried to use memo fields in FoxBASE, but it was pretty pathetic. We didn't have an editbox type of thing where you could enter or edit memo field content. They added General fields in 2.x, but they were about as useful as memo fields were in FoxBASE.

>In the same way, why must my graphic be from a file (unless it was compiled with the project). Why can it not come from a memory variable? What is the difference between loading from disk and loading from memory? What is the difference between the object compiled in my project and a file on disk?
>

Loading the image from a graphic file isn't much different from loading it from a disk file. The difference is that instead of the image being a separate file, it's stored in the EXE file, and the EXE file is that much bigger because of it. It's no different from shipping the FRX/FRT files for your reports bound into the EXE. You can just as easily not bind them into the EXE and ship the FRX/FRT files separately.