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You can compile Lazarus to use GTK2.

oh, and Lazarus tries to copy the VCL and it really bugsme, they should have worked on a independent multiplatform style GUI like wxWidgets instead of trying to clone the VCL, don't get me wrong, VCL is the best productivity toolkit around for Win32 programing, but is not really designed to be multiplatform (no, Kylix doesn't count), it is more dessigned to work with the Windows API.

There is a project that is trying to make it possible:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/fpgui/

Edited 2007-09-10 17:24

That's correct. fpGUI doesn't try and be VCL compatible and talks directly to the underlying Windowing System. Which means any fpGUI based application has no dependencies on large 3rdParty libraries like GTK1 or GTK2 does. Which makes application deployment a breeze!

fpGUI now also has a Visual Form Designer to speed up your development.

Lazarus has years of experience of porting the VCL to GTK. It is suitable enough. The nice part is the ease that people can use the native widgetset (GDI,GTK,Carbon) to improve the (OS specific) behaviour of the app, and mix OS independant with dependant components.

This avoids a bit the "lowest common denomitor" problem that a portable widget set has.

I miss templates as well... TObject just doesn't cut it.

(psht! Don't tell anyone!, there are generics beta in this release)

See the FPC wiki (when it is unslashdoted) for more info

Delphi uses anchors for sizeable dialogs. This feature has been introduced even before Delphi 7. BTW, .Net uses the same concept just with a different name ("dock"). This concept is really easy and powerful.

Oh wow, I didn't know that. Thanks a lot.

> Delphi uses anchors for sizeable dialogs

Correct. It also has the "align" property, and has so since version 1. It is a bit unweildy (just as it can be with any resizable container that is aligned to a specific "area" of another container), but it's workable.

> .Net uses the same concept just with a different name ("dock").

Wrong. This is called "anchor" in dotNet. It works exactly as the Delphi version does too.

Are you saying "I don't care because I can write sizing code myself"? What an elitist attitude. Just because I can doesn't mean I should. Give me one good reason why I should waste my time on micromanaging coordinates instead of focusing on solving the problem.

What kind of non-font-sensitive, non-language-aware, hard-coded piece of shit as that?

If you do resize logic wrong, then yeah, it's easy, but it's 2007 --- we're getting past the point where you can give a wrong answer to a hard question just because it's easier than giving the right answer. If you do layout _right_, it's hard, and it's something the toolkit better handle.

Edited 2007-09-11 01:59

Uhm yeah, good for you. But I have 300 widgets. You still haven't given me a good reason to waste my time on 300 lines of code (probably more, because some widget's position depends on others, or depends on some conditions) instead of using that to solve a real problem.

As I said, an elitist attitude.

There is a layout engine as memson describes in the VCL (and LCL) If you don't know that, you obviously never seriously worked with it.

I wrote a commercial application in Delphi which is still being sold today, so you cannot really accuse me of not having "seriously" worked with it. None of the 3 Delphi books that I have, have ever mentioned the use of anchors.

The LCL and VCL gets around this with a feature called Anchors. The LCL's anchors are a lot more flexible (better) than Delphi's ones.

BTW: The fpGUI project also features Anchors and should have Layout Managers (like Java or Qt) real soon.

Actually the development version generates 64-bit FreeBSD binaries. Unfortunately 64-bit FreeBSD refuses to run them (probably some ELF header gotcha).

This has stalled the progress in this department.

Eclipse uses Java, a managed programing platform that uses tons of memory, that makes it slower, Lazarus use Free Pascal witch is native, is obvious that native is faster than managed, not need to complaine about it since both are good.

Edited 2007-09-10 18:00

You're mistaken. Lazarus also does syntax checking, code-completion, has refactoring tools, context-sensitive help and tooltips. Further a debugger, two-way form editor, syntax highlighting offcourse snd you can add your own plugins. Everything a Pascal-programmer needs.

It only doesn't do background compilation (it can do syntax-checking, though) because you don't need that when all your program are compiled within a few seconds.

Cocoa requires Objective C, dunno if there's any way around that.

Carbon is considered deprecated by Apple.However not by the users, since it seems the main widgetset used on Mac. What do you think the Offices, Adobe Reader and the many Aquifications of X apps (like e.g. LyX)use?

Carbon is way full featured enough, and is better suited to be accessed from existing applications.

Cocoa is an application framework, not a pure widget set. Even to the language (admitted, you appear to be able to avoid Objective C, but it is harder)

Carbon being deprecated by Apple means the resources that go into advancing the entire OS X Platform are on the Cocoa front alone. The law of diminishing returns will soon see the Carbon stallwarts either jumping ship when the dinky is still available or not. Apple gave you guys a decade to move to Cocoa.

So your evidence for Cocoa being slow is a blog post from almost 5 years ago? Cocoa was a new API back then since Carbon has existed since OS 9 times. These days, most of the development on OS X is focused on Cocoa.

Lazarus can use GTK2 as well, but the dependency issue is still there. That is why the fpGUI project [http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/] has been started. It talks directly to the underlying windowing systems (Xlib or GDI) so there is no dependency issues.

Edited 2007-09-11 08:00 UTC

Why is GTK2 dependency a problem? I don't know any post-2004 Linux desktop system that doesn't have GTK2 installed. I think it's safe to say that 99% of Linux *desktop* systems have GTK2.

NO, not all distros come with GTK2. Kubuntu or any other KDE based distro doesn't come with GTK1 or GTK2. A bare bones X Window system (Linux or FreeBSD) comes with some lightweight window manager. Normally not with Gnome or some other GTK2 base WM.

Also installing GTK2 afterwards is normally a pain. It's not just a single package. It's gtk, gtk-comon, gdk, pango etc... A lot of packages just to get a GTK2 app running. Then lets talk about different versions on GTK2. Distro's are normally behind compared to the latest GTK2 version available, so your applications will have a hell of a time trying to run if it was designed with the latest GTK2.

Talking directly to XLib (like fpGUI does) removes all those problems! And your applications will run, no matter what lightweight or heavy WM you have installed.

Might be true for GTK1, but I am pretty sure every distribution ships GTK2 and Qt3, especially since the two are part of the library set specified by the LSB.



All distribution package managers do dependency resolution, don't they?

I didn't say all. I said most. And which distribution today doesn't support automatic dependency resolution? If I type 'apt-get install gtk2' then APT will automatically install whatever extra dependencies it has. Even FreeBSD's ports supports auto-installing dependencies.

I dare to say that if people refuse to install GTK in order to use your app, then your app is not worth installing anyway. Likewise, if a good app is written in QT, and I need that app, then I will make sure I have QT. I don't care about the GNOME/KDE "war". Even commercial apps like VMWare and BitRock Installer depend on GTK2 and they don't seem to be losing customers because of that.

Sure, there are hardcore geeks out there that absolutely to refuse GTK/QT (note that I didn't say GNOME/KDE) or other "bloat" because they're running a Pentium 300 with 64 MB RAM (or just because of irrational elitism), but those people consist of, like, 1% of the market. I'd gladly trade that market share with the amount of development time I save by using a good GUI toolkit.
It's a good thing to care about users and to minimize dependencies, but at some point there will be a point of diminishing returns. And I believe anything below GTK2/QT lies past that point.


"Distro's are normally behind compared to the latest GTK2 version available, so your applications will have a hell of a time trying to run if it was designed with the latest GTK2."

But what does that have to do with you, the developer? Just don't use the most recent GTK APIs and stick to the subset of APIs that were introduced in GTK 2.4 or something. The GTK API docs specifically mention the version where an API is introduced.

Edited 2007-09-11 18:42

I wouldn't be very quick to judge an IDE just by it's look. The OpenDylan IDE has a distinct Win95 look to it, but in many respects it's more advanced than Eclipse or NetBeans (eg: full compiler integration). SLIME is a pre Win95-looking Emacs add-on, but it's much more advanced than NetBeans or Eclipse in ways that matter.

I used Eclipse for a couple of projects over the period of a year, and I'm not very impressed. It's basically got a lot of gimmicks to make up for two major weaknesses: no real integration with the compiler, and a language that requires lot's of wizards and crap to get anything done.

That said, I'm not saying the FreePascal IDE is any better, but rather that you'd be surprised how a primitive-looking interface can hide a lot of powerful features, which show themselves only when you use the thing to write a lot of code.

Hi, the included IDE is actually not as bad as you make it sound. It is a clone of Borland Turbo Pascal's IDE for DOS.

However, the IDE that was talked about in the article that can do RAD is called "Lazarus" and you can find it at http://lazarus.freepascal.org/

Lazarus really is a good IDE if you've used something like Delphi or the early versions of VB. It's very comparable to those. It also can do cross platform applications just like stated in the article, it really is just a simple recompile away from another platform. I'm just not a huge fan of Pascal, but if I was I'd definitely be all about Free Pascal/Lazarus, the speed of the compiler is just absolutely amazing after having used hello-world-in-c++-takes-five-seconds-to-compile-on-a-dual-core
GCC. Not that it is a fair comparison since C++ is a very difficult language to compile.

Thanks for the link, I will check it out.. I figured there had to be something better than what I saw from the Free Pascal site. And as far as trying to compare the DOS version of Free Pascal to Netbeans or any other full featured GUI based IDE ( this is in response to the first guy who posted a response to my thread ) don't even think about going there. I would love to see someone sit down and whip out a GUI in FPC DOS at the same time someone is whipping out the same GUI in Netbeans and lets just see who gets done first. Anyway thanks for the link.

I never was able to accomplish anything in netbeans, so I can easily take your word for it :-)

Where did you learn to read pal?

The "RAD" IDE is called Lazarus from http://lazarus.freepascal.org

The textmode IDE ala TP is called fpIDE and is part of the free pascal package (and btw. most fpc devels still use that because it had better gdb support in windows).

In any case next time, before you put something down, please try to read properly.

Free Vision is a TP Turbo Vision clone.

There are some differences (most notably the "driver" part for kbd), but for the general framework, you can almost use the TP docs (and 3rd party books) verbatim.

And those are cheap :_)_

Yes, for example see: http://taoyue.com/tutorials/pascal/