I downloaded the program called 'contact' from
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Contacts_Database, and it looked like it might be suitable for what I want to build, but I can't seem to build the program in Lazarus. When I load the project file, I get an error about MyDbf.UseFloatFields -- unknown property UseFloatFields.

I can't see to find any information on assume that there is some library or package that I'm missing. Anybody here who can tell me how to build this project?

Hello,

I've just bought a new eeePC and I've trying to install FPC and Lazarus on it. No success up to now.
I've tried installing libglib1.2, etc. but I still get a segmentation fault on FPC, can't even do a "make clean". I've tried both FPC 2.0.0.4 and 2.2.0-1 but no success.

Has anyone seen a clear installation procedure on eeePC anywhere?

BR
Thierry

Howard Lee Harkness wrote

... When I load the project file, I get an error about MyDbf.UseFloatFields -- unknown property UseFloatFields.

When you get the error dialog you should see three buttons. If you click the 'Stop all loading' button Lazarus will then present you with a 'FixLFMfile' dialog. All you have to do is click the 'Remove all invalid properties' button, and the project will then compile.
If you are not presented with the 'FixLFMfile' dialog, just open the mainunit.lfm file (any text editor) and remove the line 'UseFloatFields = true' in the object MyDbf: TDbf definition (it occurs about line 456).

HowardPC

Thanks. I got a similar reply from the author. I went back to the original address_book example, and it compiled and ran with no problem, so I was poking around that to see how it talked to the database. I didn't see enough different with CONTACT 1.0 to bother with, after all.

address_book uses .dbf files, and accesses/creates .dbf files on the fly, which is sort of interesting. I'm not particularly familiar with DBF, but it might be useful if I could figure out how to do foreign keys and referential integrity, but I think I would rather use FireBird (IB) if I could just figure out how to WRITE to the database (I can read it just fine).

OTOH, the application I'm working on may be simple enough that I can just hold my nose and forgo the database normalization.

I'm trying to build a contact database system where each contact can have any number of phone numbers, addresses, and (dated) memos attached, and is searchable on just about every field. If anybody should happen to know of something along that line, I would even consider buying it rather than re-inventing it. Much as I would LOVE to do this in open-source software (especially Lazarus, since I'm already familiar with D6), I'm finding that in order to use any open-source development tool, I have to first learn how to use at least two other open-source development tools, and by the time I'm about four layers deep in that mess, I've pretty much lost track of whatever it was that I was trying to do in the first place.