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A Newsletter for
FoxPro
Application Developers in
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Migrating an old FoxBase Mac application to the newly-released FoxPro Mac, clearly illuminates the sharp contrasts between old and new in terms of richness of language, power of tools, and complexity. The contrasts may also be amusing if you haven’t been frustrated with that old stuff for several years while waiting patiently for the millennium. At any rate, a few comparisons illustrate just how far our FoxPro world has advanced in the last 4 years. And remember that at its release time, FoxBase Mac was thought to be innovative and advanced.
First consider the sheer size of the documentation that comes with the product. The professional version comes with 11 separate books containing about 3000 pages. This compares to 4 books containing 1200 pages for FoxBase. And when you consider the difference in type size and page layout, there is at least four times as much information now.
The distribution disks now include 14 floppies at 1.4 mbytes each, compared to 3 floppies at 800 k each, eight times as much by this rough measure. The fully expanded files on disk now occupy 25 megabytes, compared to a little over 2 megabytes.
At a programming level, consider the task of managing work areas. With today’s 225 work areas this is hardly a matter of concern,but with only 10 areas available
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that’s right folks, you heard correctly. Up until now FoxBase Mac applications had to live with only 10 work areas
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a developer was constantly faced with the task of remembering what data files were open at any state of the app, and which ones could be closed temporarily to do the task the user just requested.
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XPro User Group News
LAST MEETING
Well, the ground moved and there wasn’t one. The Westside Pavillion where we normally meet was closed due to earthquake damage to the adjacent parking structures. The mall is now re-opened and we will meet again this month. Hurray!
DAVE FULTON LEAVES FOXPRO?
If you haven’t heard, Dr. Dave has left the FoxPro team at Microsoft. Dave says it’s time for him to move on and after a six month sabatical he will return to Microsoft to work on issues related to the Information Superhighway. His leaving has cast some doubt in some peoples mind as to Microsoft’s commitment to FoxPro. I have included some messages here from CompuServe’s FoxForum that relate to this and other FoxPro issues.
Fm: Randy Unruh To: Lee Hamngton Lee,
>>BUT CAN I TRUST THEM? If you look for motive, why not? You cite 0S2, but that experience came because of _extemaL competition, not _internaL positioning. MSFT ownsFoxPro lock, stock and barrel. Which was not the case with 0S2. The FoxPro developer community is obviously a valuable resource for MSFT and it makeslittle sense for them to let this community fracture, as Nantucket did with the Clipper community. Many of which are now part of the FP developer community (myself included). You’re talking about a company which even their competitors agree is no slouch
in
marketing. So, why would MSFT alienate their valued FoxPro supporters when they already have the resources (read, talented people) in place to keep the product in a state of steady evolution? It _pays_more_revenue_and_profits_ to MSFT to keep FP evolving,hand-in-hand, with the rest of
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Welcome.
Lisa Slater and Bill House
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