Return of A-T Continued from Page 4.

Developers Conference What can Ashton-Tate do to heal some of the wounds they have created. Well, they have already started to sooth the wounds of some of the developers with their recent conference in Anaheim. Of all the conferences I have been to, this was probably the best of any.

Instead of telling the attendees of the conference that they would only have choices of workshops on Dbase, they gave the attendees several choices. You could attend a workshop on almost any product Ashton-Tate makes. There was a workshop put on by IDBUG that talked about third party products, some that competed with Ashton-Tate products.

I took workshops on how to be a consultant, how to price my product, how to handle a big project, hiring other consultants, how to set up a consulting business, and several workshops on Ashton-Tate products.

In addition to allowing us to go to different types of workshops, Ashton-Tate rewarded us for attending their workshops. When you first arrived at the conference, they asked you what product you wanted, for free, from a list of their products. I chose the dBASE IV developers edition, complete with runtime. Then when I attended certain workshops, I received a coupon good for a free copy of that product.

Why would Ashton-Tate give out their product? Is it because it doesn’t work? On the contrary. it is because it does work. And who better to tell the corporate world

about their products than the people who visit and advise these corporations, the consultants.

Finally, the finish

What should Ashton-Tate do to get back on their feet. They have made two of the first four giant steps. They got rid of Ed Esber. They have appeased some of the development community. Now they need to appease the Fortune 500 and all the small businesses they have alienated over the last two years. Send themfree upgrades that work.

Last, but not least, I think they should drop their lawsuit against Fox Software. It will not help Ashton-Tate in the market place if they destroy a competitor. In fact, it will probably alienate the development community again. It will certainly make third party developers think twice before they come out with a product that competes with, or enhances Dbase. Then where will that leave the developers? With a product with a limited future. After all, a limited number of developers can only come up with a limited number of enhancements, but an unlimited number of developers can come up with an unlimited number of enhancements.

PCX Programmer’s Toolkit

Software Publisher:

Genus Microprogramming, Houston, Texas.

Pricing

Prgrammer’s Toolkit: $249 With source code: $599

PCXtext: $149 With source code: $299

PCXeffects: $99 With source code: $199

Discount to Members: 10%

PCX Programmer’s

Toolkit Version 3.5

and companion programs:

PCXtext Ver. 1.0 and PCXeffects Ver. 1.0.

Reviewed by Bob Balocca, Director, Valley Clipper Users Group and DLAP.

Overview

PCX Programmers Toolkit, and its companions, is a set of utilities and libraries designed to manipulate and utilize graphics images in the .PCX (as the name would imply) format. The .PCX bitmap format is somewhat of a standard in that it is widely supported by many “off the shelf’ software packages such as PCpaintbrush, Pagemaker and Ventura Publisher, to name just three. Furthermore, almost all graphics programs have conversion utilities that include the .PCX format even if they don’t use it as their main bitmapping format.

Continued on Page 6.

PCX Programmer’s Toolkit System Requirements

IBM PC/XT/AT or 100% compatible

IBM CGAIEGAJVGA or Hercules graphics adaptor (or compatible)

Floppy or Hard disk

Dos 2.1 or greater

Available RAM of 128K Supports Expanded Memory

LIM 4.0

Supports Extended VGA Requires 1 of the 6 supported program languages and compilers: Pascal, C, Basic, FOR TRAN, Clipper or Assembler.

The Newsletter of the Dbase Language Professional Developers Group, October 1990

Page 5