History and Background of FoxPro
Wayne Russell
All
Does anyone have any information on the history and background
of FoxPro for a brochure we are putting together. Anything
particularly 'meaty' or pictures of the original team would be
of particular interest. Thank you.
Many thanks to Lisa Slater Nicholls for getting me here.
Best regards
David Ogden
Ashlawn Data Systems Ltd
www.ashlawn.com
enq...@ashlawn.com
Wayne Russell
Wayne Russell
Lisa Slater Nicholls
>Does anyone have any information on the history and background
>of FoxPro for a brochure we are putting together. Anything
>particularly 'meaty' or pictures of the original team would be
>of particular interest. Thank you.
Hi Wayne,
Now that you are out in public <g>...
I will write a sort of general narrative to start people off, although
I don't know exactly what type of stuff you're interested in. I
expect that many people will have additional reminiscences to
contribute.
Fox Software was a small company started by Dr. Dave Fulton and a
bunch of his graduate students in Ohio, who were doing custom computer
consulting on the side, I think. They figured they could write a
better dBase than dBase. And they convinced other people they had
done it, by going to a dBase convention and asking people to run their
own PRGs and applications under the FoxBase environment, where the
code immediately ran faster. No code changes, just better technology
underlying the same Xbase language features.
They improved FoxBase, but mostly kept it as a dBase clone, until
somebody convinced Dr. Dave to put out a Mac version. I think he
wasn't very enthusiastic at first. I think he did it to prove that it
was a "trivial exercise" <g>.
But the Mac environment intrigued him. By the time he was finished
with FoxBase Mac, which probably took longer than he'd expected, he'd
seen the advantages of the Mac UI, and he'd resolved to create a new
FoxBase -- which became FoxPro 1.0 -- which would have a lot of the
features of the Mac interface but would not be a GUI environment.
If you've wondered why Fox had a Puzzle and other DA's, or why the
menu bar in Fox DOS was System File Edit, now you know: these are Mac
conventions <s>. FoxPro DOS was born from FoxBase Mac -- not its
language, but the assumptions of how it should work and look. To Dr.
Dave and the Fox team, whether you expressed those assumptions in
graphics or characters was irrelevant.
Unlike dBase III and FoxBase, windows weren't an afterthought in
FoxPro 1; they were part of how you worked, just as they were on the
Mac. Other things stayed just as they were in FoxBase DOS; FoxPro 1
kept Fox's deserved reputation for running quickly. Although it took
more resources than FoxBase, its improved ability to produce a
finished inteface deserved those resources, and its data handling was
still without peer.
But the Fox team knew that this wasn't the whole story. People were
using tools such as templates and screen painters. FoxCode/FoxView
were included with FoxPro 1 but never really caught on; I used
something called SCRIMMAGE, written by Russell Freeland, which was a
generic Xbase tool. But these tools needed tighter integration with
the language and the Fox style of working.
We already had a Report Writer -- pretty similar to the one available
in dBase -- so that "positioning" in output was less of an obsession
than it had been, in hand-coded reports. FoxPro 2 offered additional
tools in which you painted Screens and Menus, and out of which code
was generated for you, again to eliminate some details of positioning
and put the focus on design. The Project Manager offered you a chance
to focus on application design -- the way your files were supposed to
work together -- rather than the mechanics of compiling and file
management.
At the same time, SQL and the idea of optimized data access through
new index types (Rushmore optimization) entered the language. This was
how Fox 2 kept breaking new ground in the speed/efficiency dept.
There were many heroes in the original team, including Amy Fulton, Dr.
Dave's wife and the original architect of the RQBE (the visual tool
that was intended to do for the SQL additions to the language what the
other tools did for Screens, Reports, Projects and Menus) and Dave
McClanahan, who did a lot of the original SQL work, and Walt Kennamer,
who wrote FoxDoc as Snap! before he joined Fox as COO. I'd have to
mention Janet Walker, who guided just about every facet of the
development, from what I can reckon.
Outside Fox Software, people like Tom Rettig and Alan Schwartz
(although there are actually no people *like* Tom Rettig and Alan
Schwartz <s>) helped grow the community. The two were interfaced by a
thriving set of CompuServe Fox Forums, hosted by the company but
enlivened by the efforts of many thousands of committed Fox
developers, who built additional tools and stretched every ounce of
capacity out of the Fox language and data format. Both "in" and "out"
of the community was Glenn Hart, who served as a consultant to the
company and spearheaded the community effort on CompuServe.
Glenn's sudden passing was a shock to us all, and serves me as a sort
of watershed date in the history of Fox. A few months later, the
Fox-MS merger was announced, at a "breakfast press meeting" on the
first morning of dbExpo. Dr. Dave and Bill G made the announcement
jointly. I remember thinking that it was difficult for any more
effective underminding of Philippe Kahn's keynote speech to have been
planned, by anybody <s>.
FoxPro 2.5 DOS and Windows were under development at the time. I
believe that the development team (most of whom were going to Redmond)
had a committment to get these products ready for release before the
final merger. I'm afraid that the timing of RTM for these products had
something to do with people wanting to be settled into their new
Seattle digs before their children started school <g>.
There are lots of people who can take the story from this point.
I have so many personal memories it would be hard to know what to
share first. Many of them are from the Forums, and would sound like
clique-ish in-jokes out of context, I'm afraid. There are DevCon
stories (I hold a record, I believe, for most times luggage was lost
flying to Toledo!) and there are really exciting things that have
happened through the friendships and relationships that form in all
parts of this community, including the regional conferences.
Um... for my part... I flew Down Under to teach some Fox classes and
to meet with a particularly excellent group of Fox programmers. I was
editing _FoxTalk_ at the time, this group had been bombarding me with
really good article submissions, and I couldn't believe that such
whiz-kids were all working in one remote place, doing some of the
finest Fox work in the world (and writing relatively literate English,
for developers <gd&r>). Unfortunately, I was terminally intrigued;
one of them was *such* a fine Fox programmer that I had to marry him
to keep it in the family <rofl>. I live in Auckland now <g>.
The best person I can think of to ask for pictures of the original Fox
Software team is Pat Adams, who has affectionate memories of all the
folks I have mentioned and many of the other people involved besides.
I have no idea what kinds of people will "pop up" on this thread.
Best,
>L<
Lisa Slater Nicholls
Forgot to say before:
Everybody:
The "brochure" that David rather coyly mentions here is something for
his company's promotional purposes. I asked him to repeat his
question here because if this information can help one Fox development
house, surely it can help more than one Fox development house <s>.
Feel free to quote anything at least from *my* message that you think
will be of value to you in similar efforts of your own.
Attribution will of course be appreciated where appropriate <s>.
Attribution is *required* if you quote in any publication that is
sold, such as a magazine.
Best,
>L<
Craig Berntson
Wayne,
There was a similar thread a few months ago on this. I *think* I printed it
and kept it somewhere. I'll look around and see if I really did. If you
don't hear back from me in a few days, eMail me to keep my memory going.
BTW, this question is asked often enough, that it should be a FAQ
somewhere...perhaps we can ask Michel to put it on the VFP Yellow Pages
(www.transformation.com)
--
Craig Berntson
Salt Lake City Fox User Group
Wayne Russell <w...@cegelecproj.co.uk> wrote in article
<32E5E3...@cegelecproj.co.uk>...
> All
>
> Does anyone have any information on the history and background
> of FoxPro for a brochure we are putting together. Anything
> particularly 'meaty' or pictures of the original team would be
> of particular interest. Thank you.
>
Wayne Russell
Craig,
Many thanks for reviewing this thread. I hope you can
find the document.
Wayne Russell