Talk:Ashton-Tate

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DBASE entry virtually has Ashton-Tate's history.

[edit] Naming of the original company

I have added a note at the bottom of the document about the original name of the company. Can anyone comment on this? Maury 15:26, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

The comment was correct, the article has been updated. Maury 13:32, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Personal back-n-forth between Ed and Maury removed with both party's permission.

[edit] Bias

I've added a bias tag to the top of this article because much of the text reads like a corporate press-release. For example there is the paragraph:

dBASE III+, a version including character-based menus for improved ease-of-use, had troubles maturing and had to be recalled just prior to its release in early 1986. However the company handled this with some aplomb, and although some customers were affected, Ashton-Tate's handling of the problems did much to improve customer relations rather than sour them. dBASE III+ would go on to be just as successful as dBASE II had been, powering the company to $300 million in sales in 1987.

These assertions are simply not true. See chapter 5 od In Search of Stupidity by Merrill Chapman for more details. Rglovejoy 22:12, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi - I worked at Ashton-Tate HQ from 1988-1991, and just to let everyone know, there were at least a few errors in Merrill Chapman's chapter on Ashton-Tate, although most of it is correct. (For example, I think he said George Tate died in 1985, and I also think he said Ed Esber took over as CEO right away, ignoring David Cole's brief turn as CEO which I added to the main article here. I do not have the book at the moment, so that is just from memory.) - TWR, El Segundo

Oh, it's most definitely NPOV, it doesn't read like a Wikipedia article, it's got style.... ^_^

I wouldn't say it reads like a press release when you step back a bit from the prose style: the author has strong opinions about various people and groups and doesn't hide that. And as a software developer, and WRT to a company that in part failed due to mismanaged development, I'd like to see a little more attention paid to Ratliff et. al.

All this should be corrected, but while I never used it, I was using PCs from before its inception (at least as a product) and it had a lot of the market's mindshare. I didn't detect anything incorrect in it, its been scrubbed a bit per the above entry by a someone who worked there, and after removing the second use of "strategically inept" (in referring to the board---who by definition are responsible for the outcome of a company) I'd say it'll do for the time being. Hga 19:54, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Framework

There is one error in the small section on Framework. It did not use character graphics; it used bit-mapped graphics. Character graphics on the IBM PC and clones used ASCII text codes greater than 128 to "draw" shapes on the screen, although these are actually characters. The IBM PC character set contained characters for right angles, straight lines, and other "glyphs" that one could use to simulate drawing. However, being (merely) ASCII characters, the programmer was limited to a maximum of 80 characters across by 25 rows, the size of the IBM PC screen in those days.

Framework used bit-mapped graphics. In this "mode" (as it was called), the programmer had to something like 320x200 and/or 640 x 200 pixels on the screen for graphics. The graphing portion of Lotus 1-2-3, Version 1, used this mode to create true graphics".

I used Framework in those days and it definitely used bit-mapped graphics. This also made it slower than comparable character graphic programs such as Symphony by Lotus Corporation. RSzoc 14:54, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Framework used character graphics for the GUI -- menus and window borders, but used bit-mapped graphics for the charts. Mike 19:05, 11 September 2007 (UTC)