>I know this may be kinda naive of me but what I don't understand is why TALK is altered at all by foxpro. Why can foxpro not just turn talk off when we issue a SET TALK OFF and not touch it again until it is set back on.
>
>It seems to me that TALK is mainly useful as a debug and causes untold lines of code to control effectively.

It if would have been just for me, this would be OFF by default and no such setting would exist. Also, SET TALK is bound to the session. So, if you enter a form into a private data session, SET TALK is resetted to its default setting.