There was no limit to the size of the file. They could easily copy and paste text between different files. It resided in a window and users could have as many text files open concurrently as they liked. It was functional for developing dBase programs, but most hardcore users would buy an additional editing program to do real text editing work.Īs coded by Eric, though, the new FoxPro editor was an animal of a different color (no pun intended). Only one file could be edited at a time, and there was a rigid limit to how big that file could be. It just filled the screen with whatever file was being edited. Two commands in the language would present this to a user, MODIFY FILE and MODIFY COMMAND. As an outgrowth of the new language added to emulate dBase IV, and our new window-based interface, many items present in earlier Fox products were substantially transformed. 'By the beginning of summer ‘89, FoxPro was turning into an impressive product. As an outgrowth of the new language added to emulate dBase IV, and our new window-based interface, many items present in earlier Fox products were substantially transformed.'

It was fun times, but sadly the xBase dialect wars were superseded by the rise of Windows, and by the time people retooled into Delphi and Visual Basic, that went away and the web became the dominant application platform.Ĭorrection: dBase IV came out before FoxPro. dBase never caught up - dBase IV tried catching up with FoxPro's GUI, but it was buggy, slow, and its lunch was being eaten by Nantucket's Clipper compiler. It was a big departure from dBase, and the name went thru multiple iterations before it became FoxPro. Then in the beginning of 1989, they started working on 'FireFox' - that's where the classic FoxPro GUI came to life. FoxBase was however a console application - no windowing and no mouse. It is one of the more niche, under-appreciated technology books out there: 'FoxTales: Behind the Scenes at Fox Software' by Kerry NietzįoxPro was originally FoxBase, a clone of dBase III, and in some respects better than dBase - IIRC, it could handle larger files, and worked better on a Novell Netware. One of the original Fox developers wrote a great behind-the-scenes book about the software and the company culture, uptil their acquisition by Microsoft.

Foxpro 2.6 book