filepro wish list

[Fairlight]

On Thu, Apr 28, 2005 at 06:07:33PM -0400, Robert Haussmann may or may not have
proven themselves an utter git by pronouncing:
> 
> Why not: http://www.fptech.com/ODBC.htm ?

"Windows only."

This request is just part and parcel of what I've been proposing for the
better part of a year now--abstraction of the storage layer.  It's not
new.  They could gain not only MySQL, but Postgress, DB2, Oracle, Sybase,
MSSQL, etc.  And nobody has a non-GUI RAD for RDBMS's that I've managed to
find--they're all GUI-only environments.

So you'd start with the abstraction and one module, then just release a
module a quarter or something.

Of course...TPTB appear to be immune to new ideas.  I've already brought
this directly to them.  It appeared at the time that there was interest in
the idea, and yet now it's as if the conversation never took place.

I do hear through the grapevine that 5.1 will have a nice spell checker,
however.

<sarcasm>
That's certainly a huge Value Added feature for all the clients -I- know.
</sarcasm>

Nice to know the development of the core product is going into bits people
don't really care about (NOBODY I've talked to thinks the spelling checker
is required, or even sensible), and the things that people actually need
fall by the wayside, eh?  Way to listen to your customers.  Way to gain an
entire new market and second front for marketing.  Oh wait--they don't do
real marketing.  But hey...Go fP-Tech!

There's a funny thing about that marketing thought.  We've had (even
heated) debates about how the product should or could be marketed, over
the years.  It's just now struck me that I really don't recall ever seeing
MySQL actually "advertised" as such on its way to their huge installed
base.  They might nowadays but I heard through word of mouth.  Ditto with
Postgress.  Ditto with mSQL, which I think, despite its paucity due to
limitations and bugs, actually may have had a bigger user base than fP
probably does now with active 5.x licenses, based on the amounts of people
I knew that were using it back in the day, and the fact there are actually
drivers written for it for languages.

This begs the question--why do some products pretty much just sell
themselves, without marketing?  Perl and PHP aren't really advertised
anywhere, and there are millions of programmers for both.

This disparity in the requirements of advertising raising any serious
questions for anyone besides me?

mark->