On Sep 12, 2016, at 6:40 AM, Man-wai Chang <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Well, Paul McNett and I *tried* to do that when we created Dabo, which does >> pretty much everything that VFP does, but with an open license and a future >> path forward. It did require learning Python instead of Xbase, but other >> than that, it had data binding, support for multiple backends (even a DBF >> backend, if someone had maintained it). It's been production-ready for over >> a decade. > > Dabo is NOT resurrecting Visual Foxpro. It's building something > similar to replace it. Dabo is competing with Visual C#, Visual > Basic.Net and alike. Then Dabo must prove itself to be a real VFP > replacement in *ALL* aspects. Seriously? And do you want that on a silver platter? > When I said "resurrecting Visual Foxpro", I was referring the one and > only Visual Foxpro owned by Micro$oft. :) The final step in grieving over death is to accept it and move on. Resurrection is the stuff of myths, not reality. >> Very few people were willing to make the effort to move to Dabo. Sure, you >> couldn't directly port a VFP app to Dabo, but new development work doesn't >> have that problem. It really seems that people are much more willing to >> invest in a product with no future from its owner than to invest in a >> product with a future. It's like people who lived on the coast who have been >> flooded as sea levels rose: instead of moving to higher ground, they keep >> propping themselves above the waterline and praying for a miracle. > > If Dabo offered a tool to convert Visual Foxpro projects.... there > was never a 100% conversion tool that really does it. There was never a 100% conversion tool for moving from Fox 2.x to VFP, but people made that move anyway. Anyone who tried to do conversions quickly realized that the converted apps sucked, and were impossible to maintain. It was much smarter to realize that VFP was a new tool that did things differently, and that only by coding your app to match the tool would you ever get the results that VFP offered. > BTW, have your team ever considered to write a conversion tool that > translates *ALL* VFP codes into Python, including its Report Writer? Sure, we did, and after a couple of quick attempts, decided that it wasn’t worth it. We have a visual report writer, a visual class designer, and lots more. The thing is, we started this in 2004, and very few people made the move. So when I Paul and I took jobs that didn’t use Dabo (but paid the bills), it got put in a holding pattern. There hasn’t been much new development in Dabo for the last 5 years or so. Unlike VFP, though, the source code is 100% freely available at https://github.com/dabodev. And I mean free in both senses: no cost, and you are free to modify it to your heart’s content. You could even write a VFP conversion tool! -- Ed Leafe _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
