At some stage DataEase development went "stale".

We have seen the same happen to a lot of other companies, and recently to Nokia. They lose their way, and desperately start clinging to the past or go "retro".

When I first started working on DataEase development, I asked why there wasn't a RT field, or why Memo couldn't be formatted etc...

I was brushed off with things like Memo is just that a "memo" field for notes etc, and that MemoFields needed to function the same way as all other fields to fit into the tab order etc. To be honest, if I had a choice about being able to use Enter as new line in Memo instead of that being next field, I would be extremely happy...

To me it was obvious that a field that didn't fit into the traditionally DataEase functionality and storage model, but had to be constraint and burdened with all the limitations of same model, must be a failure, and it was - Abysmally!

Nothing have been more abhorred than the memo that was introduce in 7.0.

So exit Memo with limitation, and enter MemoClass without limitations. I think we can safely call Memo the "ugly duckling" of DataEase for Windows.

In DataEase 8 (and to a big degree also in DG3) memo is centre stage.

And one of the new roles it play is as a storage container for the HTMLEdit control.

The HTMLEdit is simply a WYSIWYG HTML editor that save it's result directly in a MemoField. This memofield can later by used anyway you like, viewed in a WebField, Printed with MemoPrint, or Exported with MemoWriteToFile.

Finally a proper editor in DataEase...High time!