Claude,

>Thanks. My take on this is that MS does not want to support another .NET language - that doesn't rule out the possibility of a 3rd party(or parties) doing it. I think MS only officially sponsors VB.NET and C# and languages like cobol.net are 3rd parties, correct?...

VB.NET, C#, J#, C++ (unmanaged code) are all supported by the Visual Studio IDE. Obviously, only the first three run on the CLR. Fujitsu has a Cobol.Net and many other companies have other languages.

>... I would be happy if they just included VFP9 in the box with Visual Studio. Many, many VB developers and MVPs are demanding they do this with VB6 (classic VB)- see http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1774528,00.asp and I think if MS actually does it, it would be a natural to include VFP as well...

Yes, the outcry of VB6 and VBA devs and MVPs is pretty interesting, since their "first-phase" free support expires at the end of this month, leaving them with just the non-free extended support (and no further SP's). It will be very interesting to see how this turns out and if Microsoft actually holds firm or caves.