DevBlog

Betanews.com has published an article on the release of VFP 9.0. Contrary to comments posted there, VFP is still alive and kicking! [Ken Levy]

Mary Jo Foley of Microsoft Watch writes about the VFP 9.0 release. [Alex Feldstein]

I've been working on permalinks and think they're fixed. Please let me know.

Why can't someone build a tree view control with lots of features, an easy to use API, and a reasonable price? Come on, how hard can it be? For a project I'm working on, I've looked at about a dozen treeview controls...none of which have what I need. Yes, some come close, but are so complicated to use and with sparse documentation, that I can't figure out how to use them. I could handle a complicated interface if the docs explained how to use it. Here's what I need:

• Each item (node) must support a unique, user-defined key.
• A way to determine click, right-click, and double-click on each node.
• Multiple images. I don't mean one image for selected, one for open, one for closed, etc. What I want is a way to have the text, then an image to the right of the text. I need to change that image at anytime or even remove it completely. The image support has to be different for each node, not columnar where the image is defined for the entire column, then hidden/displayed on each node as needed.
• A simple interface to add, remove, and access each node.
• Affordable. Many treeviews come bundled with other controls and sell for $300 or more. I don't need all those other contols. Just the treeview.
• Must be ActiveX...not .NET.

If you have any ideas of a treeview that may meet my needs, let me know.

The VFP Website has been updated with VFP 9.0 information.

VFP 9.0 has RTMed! From John Koziol, posting on the VS Data Team Blog: "We are done with the puppy. See Ken or Calvin's blog or the product website (http://msdn.microsoft.com\vfoxpro) for more information."

Last September, Micorosoft posted a security bulletin and patch for a critical GDI+ vulnerabilty. You can read about it here. At the time, there were several questions about how this would affect VFP 8.0, since it requires GDI+. The official word from the Fox team was "We're looking into it". This week, we got the answer in the form of two security patches for VFP.

The first is for design-time (download here). This patch file updates gdiplus.dll in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VFP, the HOME() folder (on Win2K only) and the .msm file so new distributions will be patched. Note that if you use Windows XP or Windows 2003 Server, VFP uses the GDI+ in the OS, so if you patched back in September, you're ok, but you'll want to install the patch anyway so new distributions will be patched.

The second patch is for runtime. If you distributed a VFP 8.0 application, you need to update your endusers. You can do this in one of two ways. First, you can build and distribute a new setup using the updated merge modules in the Design-time update. Second, you can send your users the runtime patch file (download here) and have them run it.

Update: Clarified the Design-time patch.

Ken Levy announced on his blog and online forums that Friday (tomorrow) is the day!!!! Watch for updates on the VFP web site and the VFP 9.0 video demo on Channel 9.

Updated: Added a link to Ken's blog.

The Linux community is at it again. After having accused Microsoft of spreading FUD by sponsoring "independent" research that supports their own cause, the Linux community has done the same thing. Shame on you...again. A recent article, Linux Looms Larger than Thought, published on the TheStreet.com quotes research from IDC that "the Linux market -- including servers, PCs and packaged software -- is expected to register a 26% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over five years, reaching a whopping $35.7 billion by 2008." This is bigger than previous estimates because it included more categories of software. However, read further and you'll see who paid for the research. "The analysis was commissioned by Open Source Development Labs, a nonprofit dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux." Not exactly independent, are they.

Linux supporters would have you believe that the OS is overtaking Windows more rapidly than previously stated. However, the numbers are suspect. "IDC and OSDL did not release comparable figures for other server operating systems such as Microsoft's Windows and Unix." So, all we know is that Linux acceptance will grow. Nothing in the research says it is growing more rapidly, slower, or the same pace as Windows.

This study...and the Open Source Community's trumpeting of it...is just another example of how statistics can be twisted to mean anything you want.

For as far back as I can remember, FoxPro has had a 2 Gig limit on the size of a file. Before going any further, I'll answer the big question...No, Visual FoxPro 9.0 does not support tables over 2 Gig in size. And don't look for VFP to ever break that limit. Here's why....

DOS had a file size limit of 2 Gig. That limit had to be met under Fox2x...and the indexing scheme was designed that way. Because of the indexing algorithms, breaking the 2Gig limit would require changing the algorithm...that would break existing applications. Being backwards compatible is one of the strong features of Fox. So, there are some tradeoffs. In talking with the Fox team, backwards compatible is a higher feature request from Fox developers than breaking the 2 Gig limit.

Sean O’Driscoll, Global Director, MVP and Technical Communities for Microsoft has published an open letter about the MVP program. The future looks bright and exciting!

VFP team Dev Lead Calvin Hsia

Microsoft has announced the Professional Developer's Conference (PDC) 2005 for the Los Angeles Convention Center, September 13-16. The main theme will be Longhorn.

During the VFP 8.0 beta, several testers commented that object instantiation and traversal was much faster than in previous versions. When asked what he did to speed things up, Fox team's Dev Lead, Calvin Hsia replied, "I took out the slow parts." Now we know what the slow parts were. Calvin has posted an explanation on his blog.