A while back I built a form designer that looks much like the Delphi IDE. The idea was to create an advanced form design system that could be used easily with Delphi. A friend of mine has been using it and suggested that I port it to Free Pascal. I don't have a problem with this, but can't figure out where to start. I would figure that the first step would be to add in a code editor and a way to save/load FP files. I downloaded the 1.90 release as I figured it was the best place to look and installed it. Now I can't figure out anything past that. Sorry but PDF doesn't work on my system so I can't really read the documentation. Can someone post a small tutorial on how to get started with FP and some notes about how the visual elements all go together. As an example my current Form Designer loads the Delphi BPL's and overrides the calls that normally the IDE would use to register components. How or where would I do this in FP? I'll build it first in Delhi and then use it to build the same or similar project in FP so that it can be compiled with FP in the frist place.

Thanks,
Jeremy Darling

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go together. As an example my current Form Designer loads the Delphi

BPL's

and overrides the calls that normally the IDE would use to register

I guess you do not know that FPC is the command line compiler, not the IDE, and there is no place to start. You should start from scratch, create your own code editor, add your form designer, hook to the external debugger, and call the command line compiler. If you do that, let me know, I'd like to use it :))

Take care,
Yakov Sudeikin

The documentation is available as html or as plain text as well. You can view it even online.

Download alternate formats from
http://www.freepascal.org/docs.html
View docs online on:
http://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/fpchelp.html

You can do the same in FP. The classes unit is Delphi compatible.

How or where would I do this in FP? I'll build it first in Delhi and then use it to build the same or similar project in FP so that it can be compiled with FP in the frist place.

Before you embark on such a large project, I suggest you have a look at the lazarus project:
http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/

They have a fully-functional, Delphi-compatible IDE which works on Linux and Windows. I use it daily with FPC and it works nicely.

Michael.