Acknowledgments for the First Edition
As with any work of this sort, a lot of people have contributed to this book in many different ways. We'll take the chance of thanking them by name, knowing we're bound to leave someone out. Whoever you are, we really do appreciate whatever you did.Two people have made this a substantially better book. Drew Speedie, our technical editor, kept us honest, pushed us harder, and offered many gentle suggestions based on his own hard-won expertise. Steve Black may know more about Visual FoxPro's Builders and Wizards than anyone alive except their designers (maybe even more than them, too). Thanks to him, the chapter on that subject is a true hacker's delight.Many other folks turned the light on for us or made us look harder at something or just plain told us what we needed to know. Thanks to: the Toms - Rombouts and Rettig - for filling the holes in the history of Xbase; Dan Pollak, beta tester extraordinaire and true Hacker, who figured out a bunch of stuff we missed; Mac Rubel off whom many thoughts and ideas were bounced, especially in the area of error handling; Doug Hennig, for helping Ted through the database container; Harve Strouse who helped Tamar finally to understand Present Value and Future Value (at least long enough to write about them); Tom Meeks who made sense of DrawMode and its friends; Nancy Jacobsen, who educated us about colors and made us think hard about what a user interface should be; Ken Levy and Paul Bienick for their help in getting us to understand the Browser and OLE Automation; Andy Neil, the master of multi-user; Brad Schulz, PrintMaster, for his help on printing issues; Tamar's father (the retired Math teacher), who helped her make sense of MOD()'s weird behavior with negative numbers; the Visual FoxPro Beta tester community, who pushed and prodded and poked and showed us all kinds of ways VFP could be used and abused. Thanks to all of the DevCon '95 speakers, each of whom brought their own talents and perspectives to bear on this wonderful product, and produced wonderfully lucid sessions with a product still not done.We have (at least until this book comes out) many friends at Microsoft. Our respect for the group that built Visual FoxPro is tremendous - this is an awesome product - and we thank them all. Special thanks to a few people who helped us in various ways - Susan Graham, Erik Svenson, Gene Goldhammer, Randy Brown, Calvin Hsia.A few people kindly helped us to fill the disk. Thanks to: Sue Cunningham, Walt Kennamer, Roy L. Gerber, Andy Griebel, James Hollingsworth, Ken Levy, Andrew Ross MacNeill, Tom Rettig, Randy Wallin and Ryan Katri, Rick Strahl, and our friends at Flash, Micromega and Neon.Our thanks to all the FoxFolk who allowed us to include their records in our sample data.Dealing with Addison-Wesley has been nothing like the stories we hear about publishers. Our editor, Kathleen Tibbetts, has been helpful and pleasant throughout. Working with Woody Leonhard was a special bonus. Thanks, too, to Arnold Bilansky, who first suggested we take on this book together.On to more personal thanks.Solomon and Nathaniel have had nearly a year of "Mom'll take care of it after the book." Hey, guys, it's after the book - I'll take care of it now. My husband, Marshal, has gone way above and beyond the call of duty in taking on extra responsibilities and letting me work on "the book, the book, the book." He also has an amazing knack to know when I need to hear "of course, you can do that" and when I need the challenge of "gee, I don't know if you can do that." I couldn't have done this without him.My extended family (Ezekiels, Granors and Fishbeins) have all contributed in tangible and intangible ways. Special thanks to my parents who never once said to me (at least not about work), "Girls can't do that."So many of my friends have helped out by driving carpool, watching my kids, letting me moan, and more than I can't begin to name names. You know who you are and I really do appreciate it. I owe you all a lot.Editing a monthly magazine while writing a book while beta-testing a massive product definitely falls into the major league stress category. Everyone at Advisor has been understanding and helpful.TamarThis book was only possible through the love and support of my family. My wife Ellen has tolerated more long hours and stress than any spouse should have to put up with. She is the wind beneath my wings. Thanks to son Steve, for letting Dad finish "The Book." Thanks, too, to my extended family for their support, especially my dad, who knew I could write long before I did.Ted