Thank you to Jonas for your kind reply dated 9th May.

I have SuSE 8.0 and Debian 3.0 Linux distros.

The Debian is more recent than the SuSE since it has "fpc" rather than "ppc386", and a whole range of units (which I have installed). Both are 1.0.4.

I can run free pascal in my home directory, but it cannot find the graph unit. I get "cannot find -lvga" when linking, so I guess that the problem is a matter of links or paths to the required unit.

There are several likely looking units installed in the directory /usr/lib/fpc/1.0.4/units/ which include the files svgalib and libsvgalib . I have loaded and installed everything except the database stuff.

I am using the compiler in command line form, without any IDE.

Are there many members of this list with experience of getting the graph unit to function ? I would like to use 1024 by 768 if possible, which is higher resolution than the 640 by 480 of my old Turbo 7.0.

Is fpc version 1.0.4 the most recent to be available in distro form ? I only have a 28.8 kb/s internet connection.

Is the Free Pascal Handbook on the book market in printed form so that I can read it at my leisure ? It would be too tedious to down-load it.

Many thanks

geoff bagley wrote

I can run free pascal in my home directory, but it cannot find the graph unit. I get "cannot find -lvga" when linking, so I guess that the problem is a matter of links or paths to the required unit.

No, the problem is that you don't have the lib(s)vga development libraries installed. You have to do this using the installer tools that your distribution provides (just like you have to install the mysql development libraries if you want to use units that provide an interface to mysql).

There are several likely looking units installed in the directory /usr/lib/fpc/1.0.4/units/ which include the files svgalib and libsvgalib .

Such files should be in /usr/lib or /lib. FPC doesn't have any units that are called that way.

Are there many members of this list with experience of getting the graph unit to function ? I would like to use 1024 by 768 if possible, which is higher resolution than the 640 by 480 of my old Turbo 7.0.

That should be no problem under Linux.

Is fpc version 1.0.4 the most recent to be available in distro form ? I only have a 28.8 kb/s internet connection.

No, there is also a 1.0.6, but soon we'll release 1.0.8, so I would advise you not to download 1.0.6.

Jonas

geoff bagley wrote

Is the Free Pascal Handbook on the book market in printed form so that I can read it at my leisure ? It would be too tedious to down-load it.

I would suggest downloading the FPC documentation for 1.0.6 or whichever version you have (it's not that big and won't take long). Install them on a local web server on either box (if they're networked). That's been my experience with the documentation, where I simply point my browser to http://localhost/fpcDocs/

cheers
James

Thanks for the swift and courteous replies to my enquiry.

I will get a friend (who has broadband connection) to download the handbook.

My dial-up connection is very slow, though OK for e-mail.

Thank you again

apt-get install svgalibg1-dev
will solve your problem on the debian box..

You are missing the svgalib development libraries if it can't find -lvga.