JULY1990

An Interview with David Fulton,

Amy Fulton, William Ferguson, and

Eric Christensen of Fox Software

by Michael Kei Stewart

[Ed.Note: The following interview

was conducted in April, 1988, and

published in the Sept/Oct 1988 edi-

tion of Programmer’s Update. It is

reprinted here in abridged form with

the kind permission of SDC Publica-

tions, publishers of Programmer's Up-

date The publishers can be reach at

Software Developer’s Company, 5

Pond Park Road, Hingham, MA

02043.

The interview is quite revealing

regarding the Fox Software team’s

view of the graphical, event-driven

style of software found on the Macin-

tosh, under the OS/2 Presentation

Manager, and now under Windows 3.

It also gives an interesting glimpse of

the personalities behind Fox-

base + fMac and FoxPro.

Note that the capitalized initials

that precede each response from Fox

identify the speaker as follows: Dave

Fulton (DF), Amy Fulton (AF), Wil-

11am Ferguson (WF), and Eric Chris-

Programmer’s Update’s Preface to

the Original Article:

This interview.., with the core

development team involved in the

FoxBASE +/Mac port, is interesting

for several reasons. First, it offers in-

sights forthose consideringa veiy com-

plex platform jump; secon4 it reveals

an interesting strateV for moving to

OS/2; and thir4 it demonstrates the

general theme that development goals

can be supported by intermediate,

highly profitable projects — which may

turn out to rival the original goal in

How did you arrive at the decision

to port FoxBASE + to the Mac?

DF: We had some discussionswith

Microsoft early last year, and in the

course of those discussion we learned

a little bit about the state of the

documentation and the stability of the

internal specification for Microsoft

Windows. Our original thought had

been to do a windowing version of

FoxBASE +, but we determined that

the Windows environment was still

relatively immature and didn’t have

the programming tools yet. We

continued on page 2

by Greg Dunn

This Month:

Foxbase +/Mac!

Charles Williams, who begins a

column in our newsletter this month,

has agreed to do a presentation on

Foxbase +fMac at our July meeting

This presentation, in addition to ad-

dressing the needs of the many

Macintosh-using members of our

group, is particularly well-timed in

view of the recent release of Win-

dows 3.0 for the PC. Although Fox

Software has not announced a Win-

dows version of FoxPro, Dave Fulton

and others at Fox have repeatedly

stated that Foxbase +IMac is a good

place to look if you want to see what’s

coming in FoxPro 2.0. [See the inter-

view with Fox Software at left.]

A Windows version of FoxPro is

apparently an item of considerable

interest to FoxPro users. A few

weeks ago I posted a question to Fox

Software on the Compuserve FOX-

FORUM about their plans for a Win-

dows version of Pro. The question

spawned a message thread over 100

messages in length. I’ve excerpted

highlights from this on-line discus-

sion and had hoped to print them in

this newsletter, but alas!,

Compuserve’s copyright policy

means there will be a delay of at least

a month. Nevertheless, I’ll bring

some copies of the excerpted discus-

sion to the user group meeting, so get

in touch with me there if you’re keen

to see what issues are being faced by

those trying to run FoxPro under

Windows 3.

FoxPro/Windows: Things

to Think About

FoxPro developers, like Fox

Software itself, will have an easier

time of it than most PC programmers

making the transition to Windows.

We’ll already be used to many of the

basic concepts and techniques as-

sociated with the windowing environ-

Porting Foxbase to the Mac

July Meeting

TOPIC: ‘“Foxbaseón the Mact”

PRESENTER: CharlesWiIllams

DATE:

Thursday, 12 July 1990

TIME; 7:30PM

PLACE:

Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza

5985 W. Century Boulevard~

(LAX Area, 1 mile west of 405 Fwy)

(213) 642-7500 for directions

Come see where FoxPro came from1

Come see where FoxPro Is headed.

ADMISSION $5 TO NON-MEMBERS,