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From: steve@violet.berkeley.edu (Steve Goldfield)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Why Does FoxBase Act Like a Virus?
Message-ID: <1989Oct24.153944.29979@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 24 Oct 89 15:39:44 GMT
Sender: usenet@agate.berkeley.edu (USENET Administrator;;;;ZU44)
Reply-To: steve@violet.berkeley.edu (Steve Goldfield)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 35

Encouraged by the many glowing descriptions I've seen
about FoxBase (many of which are undoubtedly true), I
tried running my McMax database in FoxBase. I ran into
a number of problems, some trivial, some not. For instance,
McMax accepts either T (dBase II) or .T. (dBASE III+). More
importantly, FoxBase seemed to have trouble
passing public variables from one program to
another. But the worst feature of FoxBase is the one I
mention in the subject above. FoxBase takes over both
data and program files and changes their type so that
McMax can't run them. In order to get my database running
again in McMax while waiting to figure out what's wrong with
FoxBase (version 2.0), the file types had to be changed back
for any file that FoxBase touched. I don't see any advantage
to the user for FoxBase to "take over" such files, especially
the databases themselves, except to use the type to launch
FoxBase. It reminds me of the infamous one-way compatibility
many programs offer to get users in but not out.

In McMax, the user is given the option of changing the file
type to McMax (I usually do so only on programs which launch
a primary menu or are stand-alone). Why did FoxBase put in
such an annoyingly proprietary feature?

Finally, does anyone know what the problem with the public
variables is? I have various programs which set filenames
and other parameters and then use these to share other
programs which perform basic functions like editing,
appending, reindexing, printing galleys and labels, and packing.
I declared a variable public in one program and set it to a
value, but in the next program I ran the variable was declared
not to have a value. I'm not strongly motivated to use FoxBase
if the programming features I'm used to using don't work.

Steve Goldfield