Hank, we have never stated that this could not be done in some form. What we have discussed for a long time is if and what should be done. To create a VFP .NET language, you would lose the VFP data-centric commands and functions since .NET languages are built around ADO.NET and other .NET Framework classes, you would lose the native database engine since that is not part of .NET and something like MSDE (soon SQL Server Express) is used instead if not SQL Server, and you would also lose the VFP IDE in place of the VS IDE shell. So you lose the VFP database, the data language stuff, and the IDE. What do you have left from VFP to put into .NET? Some language commands that look a lot like VB already. We have decided that what customers want and need is VFP like feature added to the VS shell, .NET languages, and .NET Framework.

The project of X#/Xen was research only, it was never planned to be more than that. The good aspects of that project have been reviewed and are being considered for a future version of Visual Studio for the .NET framework, VB, and C#. We do not see the benefit if adding yet another .NET language to the mix since there is already enough confusion among developers choosing between VB and C#. Some VFP team members are keeping VS designers educated on the great feature of VFP and many .NET team members have VFP installed on their machine and review the features and how it works. So the issue is not can we do something technically and slap a name on it, the issue is what we should do that is the right solution. If you list features in VFP that you would like to see in .NET programming like more data-centric language capabilities, it is most likely to be added to both the .NET framework and the existing .NET languages (mainly VB and C#). Feel free to list out what you want more in Visual Studio development (technically) and why so we can evaluate the feedback.