The LA Fox Developer

A Newsletter for FoxPro Application Developers in

LA Fox President’s Column

by Chuck Williams

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 complex-

ity. The contrasts may also be amusing if you

haven’t been frustrated with that old stuff for

several years while waiting patiently for the millen-

nium. 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 infor-

mation 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 - that’s right folks, you

heard correctly. Up until now FoxBase Mac appli-

cations had to live with only 10 work areas - 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.

XPro User Group News

by Randy Unruh

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 devel-

oper 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 evolu-

tion? It _pays_more_revenue_and_profits_ to MSFT

to keep FP evolving,hand-in-hand, with the rest of

(Continued on p.4)

Welcome.

Lisa Slater and Bill House