5
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 develop-
ers with their recent conference
in Anaheim. Of all the confer-
ences 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 For-
tune 500 and all the small busi-
nesses 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 en-
hancements, 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 utili-
ties and libraries designed to ma-
nipulate 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 conver-
sion 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 com-
pilers: Pascal, C, Basic, FOR-
TRAN, Clipper or Assembler.
The Newsletter of the Dbase Language Professional Developers Group, October 1990
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