ken,

no, i agree with everything that you said; and yes, maybe
i am laying the blame at m$'s door (they are, you must
admit, an easy target).

it just seems to me that languages should grow by enhancements
to available libraries and such. i should be able to move
up to visual foxpro while retaining the ability to maintain
my older environments without haveing to keep 2.0, 2.5, 2.6
and 3.0 on separate machines. pls dont ask me how to do this;
if i were really so smart, id be rich too! but the fact
remains, we should be able to select the target environment
(and libraries, APIs, etc) that we wish to support with a
compile.

also, it sounds like you really do have a better appreciation
of my quandry than i had given you credit for! i know tom
does, but he tries not to admit it in public (age thing i
think!).