ADV: The future of filePro... one major one anyway!

[John Esak]

Hello World,

I'm going to write a few sentences here to briefly describe a new product I
have had the pleasure (and honor) to see grow from an idea into what will in
my opinion instantly become one of the most important futures of filePro. It
comes from Sound Ideas, and is called Reface.

I won't steal his thunder, and I can NOT in a few words describe the massive
complexity of design that makes this program what it is, nor will I try and
describe how it works... I'll let Dave (the author) and his formal
announcement and press release in the next week or so do that good stuff. I
will say, however, that this is it. This is, finally, the holy grail.  By
that I mean it is the product we have all been looking for this past 20
years or so for filePro.

Okay, okay... what does it do! As simply put as I can do it, "Reface" allows
you to convert your existing filePro Unix applications to full Windows GUI
programs.

It does this totally respecting every bit of processing you have, yet does
it with Windows style screens, buttons, etc., that give the user full
mouse-ability and the uncompromising belief that they are running a Windows
graphical application rather than a character based database. Do NOT make
the assumption that this is some kind of "screen scraper" or anything even
remotely like that. It is absolutely nothing like anything you (or I) have
ever seen before, and it is so far ahead of everything else out there, that
as I said it will instantly become the de-facto method for putting
completely graphical Windows front ends on any legacy character based
application.

This year SCO is spotlighting how to bring legacy character based apps into
the GUI world... *but* they are showing and suggesting only ancient and
essentially ridiculous programs to accomplish this. All of the things they
are suggesting and "pushing" in their upcoming technical conference are
*incapable* of truly doing the job in nearly every way. They all come from
an outmoded "idea" of how to do the job, so they can never be really
"right", and they will never be anything but slow, cumbersome (and stupid
looking) bad screen renderings of your app that look like and work like just
what they are, crap.

When everyone sees what Sound Ideas has come up with this time, and I know
it has taken them years to do right, everything else on the market will be
blown away. You don't have to take my word for it, just wait and see. The
approach and methodology Dave has used to make this product work the way we
all have been waiting for is going to succeed where everything else has
failed.  He already has the product out there in a couple places where the
participating developer has a huge user base of a filePro app that they
simply can not afford to "re-write" in Windows... nor do they really *want*
to do this! Hell, the programs are written in filePro and because of that
are fantastically powerful and correct for their users, why in the world
would they want to change them?  They don't, all they want to do is make
them full GUI compliant apps that "look and feel" like Windows programs.
Users these days want, need, and honestly *deserve* to roll from any of
their other Windows programs directly into their filePro app without
thinking they've gone into the dark ages of DOS... losing not only their
mouse and their cut and paste, but their entire intuitive *feel* of how to
run things on their desktop. This new product, Reface, lets you do this for
them... and for your filePro packages... yes the ones you've been working on
for all your life. You don't have to lose them, change them or drop any of
their functionality. You get to just convert and re-design their look and
feel to be *mainstream*.  Yes, I think this product from Sound Ideas will
finally move filePro into that "real" world which has been so illusive for
it in the past.

Best of all, the product is reasonably priced for what it does. If you have
a package that is deployed to many people out there, imagine what it would
cost to rewrite it, or have it rewritten by someone else to be a full
Windows GUI application? $20K maybe for starters?  Who knows... the only
starting point for such a task is *high* whatever it is. Besides, the first
thing that really happens if you take that route is that you lose design
control and adaptability control and in general the ability to just change
your program at will, or whenever a user needs something,  that filePro
gives you. With Reface, you not only don't lose any of this because you
still program *in* filePro, but you gain the sorely wanted ability to
enhance your apps by doing all the graphical stuff you've always wanted to
do... be it just make the damn program mousable with nice looking fonts,
buttons, and dropdowns, etc., or, doing some of the new, really valuable
things Reface empowers you to do like browsing through images in a parts
file and flipping through GUI filePro screens and functionality as you do
it... all never taking your hand off the mouse!

All right, I've gotten the "wow!" out of my system...I can't wait for the
formal release in the next   couple weeks. When you see it... take a good
look. Remember, this product comes from the same people who brought us so
many amazing programs before, from the dead simple but wonderful Datapipe,
to the amazing Weblink, which is without doubt the simplest, most secure and
dead easiest way to integrate your Unix filePro apps with a website... if
you haven't seen Weblink, take my word for it... this product does exactly
what you want and more.  I couldn't work a day without it when it comes to
the web and filePro integration. However, we are not talking about this
stuff now... we are talking about Reface... or at least we certainly all
will be doing so shortly. I'm betting also all the X-org and IXnet and
W-cubed legacy-to-GUI engineers out there. This is not just a something for
filePro, although it has been specifically designed to facilitate moving
filePro to GUI, it will work with *any* character-based *nix app.

I'm so glad to have been a little in the background on this one in that Dave
Stauble is my long time friend, and therefore able to scoop the news to you
first. Once again, as with any of my reviews or "scoops", this was
completely unsolicited. Sound Ideas has no idea :-) I've written it. Like I
say, I'm not trying to steal any thunder, just ride on top of the wave as it
happens.

So, what is the summary of all this praise and premature disclosure? If
you've got big (or little) filePro Unix apps (or even just ideas) and you
want to put them on  everyone's desktop in a way they will immediately
accept and love... check this out when Sound Ideas does their release next
week or so, you will not be disappointed.

John Esak
Hazleton, PA

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