Hi,

NOTE:
This only applies to Class Documentation - stuff that FPC's fpdoc generates.

I mentioned this a few years back, and maybe it is worth bringing up again.

"If your answer is that the wiki is simply easier to use than the Lazarus FPDoc Editor, then why not create a wiki frontend to the fpdoc class help. LufDoc (from a guy name Lars or Z505) did something similar, so it is possible. That might even double up as a good sample project for fcl-web."

LufDoc is an acronym for "Live User Fed Documentation". As far as I understand, is uses the fpdoc generated output as the starting point, but allows anybody to add comments or extension to the end of those HTML generated pages. It manages its own set of XML description files, but merges those comments with the fpdoc HTML output when viewed. So it doesn't obfuscate the original fpdoc XML is an explanation of LufDoc from the original author himself. This URL was a test setup to see if users would contribute to MSEgui class documentation.

http://z505.com/cgi-bin/mse/idx.cgi?file=fpdocintegrated

Maybe the author could be contacted (I believe I have seen him post here recently) and the source code for LufDoc could be made available and extended to the Lazarus documentation needs.

Just my 2? worth?

Here is the Starting Page of the MSEgui Documentation test.

http://z505.com/cgi-bin/mse/idx.cgi?file=generalindex

generates.

I mentioned this a few years back, and maybe it is worth bringing up

again.

"If your answer is that the wiki is simply easier to use than the Lazarus

FPDoc

Editor, then why not create a wiki frontend to the fpdoc class help. LufDoc (from a guy name Lars or Z505) did something similar, so it is

possible.

You might not have noticed, but Michael has something similar to this ToDo list:
http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/pipermail/lazarus/2012-February/070600.html

Regards,
Sven
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Sven Barth wrote

You might not have noticed, but Michael has something similar to this ToDo

Yeah, I read that, but still not 100% sure what everything he wants that tool to do. But for that reason, I thought it worth raising the awareness of an already existing tool that seems functional today - especially for capturing user comments to existing documentation (which seems a hot topic here), without interfering with the fpdoc xml files. Docs and comments are store in separate files.

It has to have some Secure and Easy way to community development.

The tools that makes easier are the ones that can make more secure.

Is the most wiser to do something in this way.

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LufDoc is an acronym for "Live User Fed Documentation".

Nice, but I could not find any references to the software. Is it still available, supported...?

DoDi

Why the Java became so strong?

We could think about the good large library.
We could think about the eclipse IDE.
We could think about the partnerships.

But doesn`t matter.

What`s matter is that the fpc/lazarus has even more potential than. What`s matter is why this potential have not yet spread out widely.

This is a good question, I think. No idea what the answer is -- just familiar with the TIOBE data.
My guess is that JAVA has more corporate sponsorship -- but I will be interested in hearing what others have to say.

I often wonder if there would be any possibility of a creative, at-arms-length partnership between Embarcadero/Delphi and FPC/Lazarus that would benefit both.

The TIOBE data also indicate a big increase in database activity in general. Perhaps there's a clue there as well? (It would help to explain the recent increases in Delphi use I think.)

Hi Everton,

I think a lot of people will appreciate it if you start a new topic by posting a new message to the list, not replying to a previous message.

Otherwise, your messages end up in the same thread, which will confuse people and perhaps let them overlook a new post.

As for the content of your post: having had a look at the loading time of the Eclipse IDE a while ago, I'm glad I'm using Lazarus (things may have improved since then). You certainly have a point with the other two items, though.

As for your other conclusion: nice points, but I think the "future of Lazarus/FPC" thread on the forum already has a very detailed discussion on this, so I think I won't contribute to the same discussion on this list ;)

Thanks,
Reinier

Possibly because of the ease with which one could write applets for web browsers?

Reinier Olislagers wrote

I think a lot of people will appreciate it if you start a new topic by posting a new message to the list, not replying to a previous message.

I though i had separated the topics, sorry about it.

I do not want to make any apologia of it here. I`m too glad in Lazarus, but is always good to know what happens in the market.

I didn`t know that, there`s any link for?

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I found this:
http://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,13754.msg86355.html#msg86355

But not sure if you referred this.

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Yep, that's the thread I was talking about...

Regards,
Reinier

This discussion walked too much about the tech which i don`t think is the case.

But JuhaManninen had said so goodly:

"

The fact is that FPC / Lazarus is an almost unknown niche language / environment. I am studying information technology and programming in a university of applied sciences and there nobody knows about FPC or Lazarus, not even the teachers. Everybody knows about C, C++, Java, Eclipse, .NET, C#, PHP, Python, sh scripts, Lisp, even Haskell, but not about FPC or Lazarus. If those people don't know, it means nobody knows. Comparing FPC / Lazarus directly with Java / Eclipse and saying they are equal is not a balanced comparison. You ignore that Java has millions of developers while FPC / Lazarus only has few desperate geeks (like myself).

Why is it so? Another fact is that FPC / Lazarus would deserve better. As a comparison: why is PHP so popular and still gaining popularity? The language itself has nothing exciting. It is a dynamic language and should not be suitable for big projects, yet big and high-quality projects like Drupal and Zend have been developed with it. PHP's secrets are :
- ease of deployment
- ease of usage
- good documentation (see php.net)

FPC libs are documented somehow, LCL not so well. Even the documented things are difficult to find. One problem are the "black holes" in the libraries, most notably the container libraries. Every decent programming environment today has a well structured, well documented (generics) container library. FPC / Lazarus has not. Instead it has some competing containers in FCL and LCL, and some generics containers which have some kind of beta status. For example there are associative hash maps in many places (no generics ones) but nobody knows about their usage. This is like directly from early 1990's.

How to improve things:
- Better container lib.
- Better documentation.
- Easier installation.
- Publicity! This would be the most important now. The other parts are in a decently good condition. Successful projects have a public relations side-project, advertising themselves somehow. Product releases are one way to get free advertising. Thus it is very bad for publicity that Lazarus has releases so seldom. A product release is always mentioned in some programming site, read by potential users. Without releases this looks like a dead project.

I think CodeTyphon has good goals to solve some of these problems. I don't know how well they did it, I honestly have never tried it yet.

Garbage collector in FPC is a bad idea IMO. Compiled binary code, manual memory management, reference counted strings and a clear syntax make up a unique combination. What are the practical alternatives when you want tight code without garbage collection? They are C and C++. Often people are afraid of memory problems because they have struggled with C++. They think the problems were caused by memory management while in fact they were caused by C++ syntax and features. In school I had to make string class with overloaded "=" and "+" operators using C++. Even with that "simple" class I had serious memory problems (crashes and leaks). Using Object Pascal I could do a class with similar complexity without memory problems. I would say in 99% of cases the memory allocation / release is easy and has no issues when the objects' ownership is well defined. The remaining 1% needs some effort. There was an issue with Lazarus where a garbage collection would have helped: #18506: access violation when switching designer/lfm source but that was really the only bad one I have struggled with.

"

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The market and the education environments are practical unaware that we exist.

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That's why I'm often running around in a Free Pascal T-shirt at university ;)

Last Monday we had a little "end of lecture happening" with our program optimization teacher and there I surprised him with the fact that Pascal is happily alive ever after... a little sad as he's the head of the "programming languages and compiler development" chair... :(

Regards,
Sven

Apologies for my poor threading, but some messages fail to get through our mailing list gateway.

Having spent time selling and supporting languages, as well as having done a university job, I have to point out that you're not "comparing like with like" here. If you'd asked them about /Pascal/, rather than one specific implementation, they'd almost certainly have had something (of dubious accuracy) to say about it; if you'd asked about a specific obscure implementation of C or C++ (anybody remember AD2500? or Zorland?) they'd have been completely nonplussed.

Is true, but in the mind of most of this people the pascal is dead. And the better of this people will be even sorry about it ;) After all, the pascal always was an elegant language.

Everton Vieira wrote

Is true, but in the mind of most of this people the pascal is dead. And the better of this people will be even sorry about it ;) After all, the pascal always was an elegant language.

Correcting:
The Pascal IS an elegant language. ;-)

Marcos Douglas

Thanks for the correction! :-)
Must be my english that fails!

Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote

Nice, but I could not find any references to the software. Is it still available, supported...?

I can't remember if it was ever released. The author, Lars (aka z505) is still active in the fpc-pascal and mseide mailing list (I don't think he uses Lazarus at all). Lars posted a message 12 day ago in fpc-pascal. I'm sure if you search the z505.com domain, you should find his email address too, or simply post in fpc-pascal with the subject line "LUFDOC <something>" - I'm sure that should draw his attention. :)

- get billion dollar investments of big IT companies. Java did too :-)

This the second time I have got involved in this kind of discussion today!!

There are so many points here is not possible to discuss them all.

Many Pascal programmers are well versed in the language, and the associated tools, having began using it even before the Turbo Pascal era. let alone the Dephi/Object Pascal period. They are quite fine working as they are and can get to speed quickly. Newcomers and even some of old timers are the ones who ask themselves "If I am starting a new project, is Pascal the right one? Of course not!" Newcomers problem will be familiarity with the language, old timers issues will be the libraries and associated tools.

In relation to Eclipse above, The minimum 2Gb or even 4Gb or RAM needed to run Eclipse is not much these days. I have used Eclipse with languages I am not familiar with and the syntax highlighting kicks in shows me syntax errors and missing libraries straight away. With Pascal I have to repeatedly compile to track them down. Try that with an free contemporary Pascal IDE.

Collaborative tools lag behind. Enough has been said about the Git vs Subversion issue. As for moving to a hosted service such a Github, Jira, Assembla etc, the topic has not even come up. It is okay if existing tools are fine but how many young people what to work with anything other than Github, Git, Mercurial etc.

How about the reluctance to put documentation in library code? The policy with fpdoc is to create documentation separately from code. The problem is who has time for that. If documentation goes into the code it is better as it forces you to think clearly about what your are doing as you are doing that knowing that others depend on it, especially if there is a strict community code of ensuring that docs in the code are always correct and up to date, and that if they are not accurate they should be removed altogether. I am developing a FreePascal Lazarus program now, owing to my familiarity with Delphi, but at the same time I am keenly aware that in domains I am unfamiliar with I would probably better using Java, Python because the tools and libraries would be much better.

Mind you I am not denigrating Pascal in anyway, but it would be more a labour of love than one of economic utility, when economic utility would be the better driver.

PS. Whatever you do store it in a repository and keep good notes on it. You might forget it sooner than you think

There are also people with the following attitude: if it's not suitable make it suitable! (I'm one of them ;) )

Regards,
Sven

You don't need to choose.

FPC can produce Java Bytecode and can leverage the whole Java API and all Java libraries.

I just wrote an article on how to write an Android app, using only the Android Java APIs.

It's remarkably easy.

Michael.

FPC can produce Java Bytecode and can leverage the whole Java API and all Java libraries.

But neither FPC nor Lazarus can give you all the goodies the Android SDK Eclipse plugin can give you (integrated debugger, profiler, gui designer, emulator/device manager just to name some) and the features that Eclipse provides and Lazarus does not come on top of that. FPCs Object Pascal is my favorite language by far. Nonetheless if there are tools that make stuff easier/more convenient for me I have no problem switching to other languages. I just don't get all this 'this is better than that' stuff (generally speaking, not directed at you Michael). For some people it is for others it is not. Freedom of choice is the important part not that everybody uses the tools I like the most. FPC is not the holy grail of programming just a very good compiler.

I just wrote an article on how to write an Android app, using only the Android Java APIs.

Can you send it to me or tell me where to get it, please?

It's remarkably easy.

I don't doubt that.

R.

2012/2/13 Everton Vieira

You have Delphi to blame here, because somehow Borland's marketing of Delphi deemphasized the Pascal dimension of Delphi with the effect that most people don't identify Pascal with Delphi. The terms FPC and Lazarus don't give any indication that Pascal is the language. Somehow FPC should some how get itself identified with Pascal in the mind of people and Lazarus must be identified as the definitive Pascal IDE at the very least if not in the Windows world very much so in the Unix/Linux world. Most the languages mentioned above are strongly identified with Linux and the web and are 'cool' whereas Pascal are not. Being a language that has to be compiled language is also a downer

Reimar Grabowski wrote

But neither FPC nor Lazarus can give you all the goodies the Android SDK Eclipse plugin can give you

If everyone had your attitude Lazarus wouldn't have a Android widgetset. Probably wouldn't even exist, you can always use Swing.

But I question what for send such a negative non-construtive comment for a volunteer-based project? Just to push the morale down?

Luckily, I didn't claim any such thing :)

I just wanted to state that if you want, you can leverage all the Java APIs.

I can do anything I want/need with FPC/Lazarus itself, for me that is good enough.

> I just wrote an article on how to write an Android app, using only the Android Java APIs. Can you send it to me or tell me where to get it, please?

Unfortunately, not yet. It's not yet published :/

Michael.

2012/2/25 Frank Church :

who ask themselves "If I am starting a new project, is Pascal the right one? Of course not!"

I don't get that... why not? Pascal (or rather Object Pascal) is a brilliant language. It is easy to read and understand - even by non-Pascal developers (just like I can read and understand Java - thought I don't work commercially with Java projects).

Also, using the right tools and frameworks with Free Pascal, you can create incredible applications in a very short time. Case in point... Our company needed a bug tracking tool, with some special features. We reviewed quite a few - nothing to our liking. In the end I said... "I had enough of reviews and wasting my time, I can build us something in a shorter period it took us to review all the other choices." I made this a challenge. I jotted down the basic requirements that we would need to make a bug tracker usable for us. I started from scratch, using FPC as compiler. Lazarus IDE as my editor, fpGUI as our UI toolkit, and tiOPF as our persistence / database laye, and tiSQLEditor to help me produce boiler plate code for tiOPF. 4 Hours later we had a working product that did everything we required! Another hour later, the database was loaded with all our existing bug reports, feature requests, attachments like images, sound clips etc.

I would love to see somebody else do similar with other languages.

Object Pascal is a very powerful language - just like C/C++, Java etc. I can create full blown GUI desktop app, CGI web apps, console apps etc. All with low system requirements, stand-alone executables (no runtime environments required) etc. Anything you can develop in another language, you CAN do in Object Pascal. I am very productive using Object Pascal, and I am pretty sure there are many others that can say the same.

In relation to Eclipse above, The minimum 2Gb or even 4Gb or RAM needed to run Eclipse is not much these days.

I still think that is crazy!!! [I don't care how cheap RAM has become] MSEide loaded with a large project, and after heavy use and debug sessions, uses a mere 30-60Mb RAM. And no, I don't believe MSEide and Eclipse are in the same league - I'm just pointing out the HUGE RAM usage difference (bloat in Eclipse)! But then, we all know that even a Java "hello world" app is memory hungry.

If you really want to compare Java vs Java, then compare Eclipse to IntelliJ IDEA. The latter uses a fraction of the memory that Eclipse requires - and it is much faster too.

With Pascal I have to repeatedly compile to track them down.

Often it is also because most Pascal compilers are so damn fast! You don't need to waist development time to make the IDE guess any syntax errors while you type. Simply let the compiler tell you - because it can compile a project is seconds. Delphi is a case in point.

How about the reluctance to put documentation in library code?

Have you ever seen Object Pascal code that is well documented, and that uses inline documentation (docs inside the source code units)??? The documentation obfuscates the code so much, it is damn hard to read the actual code. We had this problem with tiOPF, and since moved to fpdoc style documentation.

The other problem of inline documentation in Object Pascal, is due to the Object Pascal syntax. Java, C# etc don't have interface sections and implementation sections. So having to document a method of a class in Java or C#, only has one location. In Object Pascal you have two locations to think of.

I'm sorry, but seeing it for my own eyes, I MUCH prefer having the documentation separated from the source code. All you need is a easy to use documentation generator (we have fpdoc) and maybe some IDE integration (Lazarus does, by being able to read the XML documentation files directly), and you have no problems at all with separated documentation.

NOTE:
When I say "documentation", I don't mean a one liner summary, I mean clear documentation with at least 3+ paragraphs minimum for every procedure, function or identifier. Such long text do not belong mixed up inside Object Pascal source code!

That's no problem for me as I do not intend to use it, but I already praised your work on Android so I am thankful for what the people developing Lazarus have achieved, you included.

Probably wouldn't even exist, you can always use Swing.

I don't use Java for desktop apps so Swing is not an option, but QT and C++ are a nice team for cross plattform desktop development. :)

But I question what for send such a negative non-construtive comment for a volunteer-based project? Just to push the morale down?

Calling Object Pascal my favorite language by far and FPC a very good compiler is negative? Perhaps you should read the whole mail, not just parts of it and never forget that we use english to communicate and not our native languages. I was just stating that there are other tools out there that may be better suited for a given task. Most of the time projects just need to get done. If Lazarus/FPC helps me to get them done faster, great. If not I take other tools. I just don't have the luxury (meaning time) to first implement all the stuff that is missing and then start with the project. Why is your morale pushed down when I state that I think that Eclipse is a better tool for Android development than Lazarus? First of all it is only my opinion not a general truth. And second and more importantly and as I tried to state in my first mail the Pascal fanaticism is sometimes a little to much for me and I don't think that it helps the projects either. I can say that the core developers mostly take no big part in bashing other languages and tools but such threads are started on a regular basis (have seen enough of them in the last 10 years) and they convey the image of Pascal developers being religious zealots. 'Pascal owns so hard the rest just sucks' (<- DANGER! Exaggeration!) is not really a professional position. FPC and Lazarus are great projects (see I did it again) but other languages and IDEs are good, too. Sometimes they are even better suited for a given task. If you implement all the stuff you need to get FPC/Lazarus on par for such tasks, more power to you, but not everybody has the luxury (meaning time) to do this. I think everybody on this list likes Pascal a lot but at least for me there are good reasons not to use it exclusivly (and if I read the mails correctly for other people, too). It should be no problem for a healthy community to accept that FPC/Lazarus cannot excel everywhere. That's all there is to it. Hope I made myself clearer this time.

R.

Luckily, I didn't claim any such thing :)

Luckily, I never said you did. :)

I can do anything I want/need with FPC/Lazarus itself, for me that is good enough.

Most likely I can, too, but I would miss some features a lot. I plan on doing my next Android project with FPC (native) so I evaluated it. FPC is definitly up to the task but my work flow will change quite a bit as I got used to the Eclipse goodies.

Unfortunately, not yet. It's not yet published :/

Hopefully it will be soon.

R.

Where's link to that article ?

zeljko
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Frankly, I think that sort of thing could be done with any of the classic "4GLs"- in effect, application-specific BASICs.

Object Pascal differs in two ways: first in that it's got a well-thought-out underlying language, which despite continued enhancement is still somewhat regular, and second in that it's arguably complete enough that it can be used as a system programming language. My own experience indicates that as soon as you start using a 4GL or similar for anything that the implementors didn't think of you're in very deep water.

2012/2/26 zeljko :

If it is for the same magazine I write for (freeX), then the next publish date is 1 March, and articles may only be made public (by the author) one month after the published date. So that would be two months from now.

Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote

used as a system programming language. My own experience indicates that as soon as you start using a 4GL or similar for anything that the implementors didn't think of you're in very deep water.

I guess in my 5 years of Turbo Pascal and 15 years of Object Pascal/Delphi, I haven't stepped in deep water yet. Or I was very lucky, or I simply found alternative programming solutions for all my "deep water" problems. :-)

Ultimately though, I still say: "Use the right tool for the job." Object Pascal has just been flexible enough, that it could be my tool of choice for the last 15+ years.

This is not so much a criticism of the language, but the facilities within the available IDEs. Lazarus community has no where near the resources of the Eclipse community et al, I understand that.

Another point is that Intellisense helps you to understand how everything hangs together, especially when you are not familiar with the domain.It gives you a birds-eye view even before you have to compile anything.

Often it is also because most Pascal compilers are so damn fast! You

When I said 'documentation' I didn't mean the whole nine yards, but something on the input and output parameters, a short summary of what it does and how it lnks to others, nota benes or gotchas. Something enough to understand the code, enough to understand the program state when applied, for programming by contract etc.This could be used as stub for what goes into the main fpdoc file.

Apart from input and output parameters less than 5 lines would be enough, unless there are some additional points to be noted.

Most of the time when you are programming you just want to know that the inputs and outputs are correct, you don't need to understand the code itself or be an expert in that domain. Lazarus and FPCs approach to documentation cannot be described as support this. Not only that the editor can fold them out of view and display them when you want them.

You didn't think I was referring to something on the order of the Delphi docs did you :)

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote

On 26 February 2012 10:31, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:> used as a system programming language. My own experience indicates that as> soon as you start using a 4GL or similar for anything that the implementors> didn't think of you're in very deep water. I guess in my 5 years of Turbo Pascal and 15 years of ObjectPascal/Delphi, I haven't stepped in deep water yet. Or I was verylucky, or I simply found alternative programming solutions for all my"deep water" problems. :-)

Wrong end of stick, Graeme. I meant that the traditional BASICs and 4GLs got hairy very fast as soon as you attempted to do anything out of the ordinary, I hoped that my

> Object Pascal differs [...] it's arguably complete enough that it can > be used as a system programming language

was sufficiently unambiguous.

- anything is (or should be) an object
- no pointers that could get wild
- write once run anywhere

That was one of the starters, because it could run on any OS Sun or someone else made a VM for. There actually have been many more cpu types for server hardware.

- it was the new kid on the block

Trying to remember that really was a reason for many people jumping in ...

- it look easy at first sight (and mostly is IMHO)
- it was available free of charge
- it looks much like C(++)

Much of all this holds true for python as a tool more oriented to scripting and text processing. There were libraries for mostly anything in amazingly short time. And it is readable, compared to perl. OK, perl is unreadable compared to anything, even compared to egyptian hiroglyphs ...

There are so many points here is not possible to discuss them all.

I agree, I tried to list some of the more obvious reasons.

Yes, but at that time Delphi was nearly dead because of the Borland/Inprise/whatelse? confusion and many programmers stepped back from using it. Especially in germany pascal had a very broad acceptance based on historcal reasons. I remember being a pascal compiler being comparatively low priced for CP/M2.2 besides pascal was taken for teaching.

I'm not absolutely sure, but IIRC fpc and lazarus were not as bug free and mature as they are nowadays. Using fpc 1.9.x/2.0.x and GTK1 for a program got me some more grey hair. ;)

Documentation is a central issue. As are tutorials and the like for beginners. I know there are many, many very good example programs, but at lest they could be made more visible to the newcomer.

Take IBMs developers side as an example. There are tutorials explaning the most basic thiongs in very short time and amounts of text. First you think "WTF?" but after reading two or three of those simple texts you can actually start betting productive.

But you can work that way, mixing code and documentation is what pasdoc[1] uses. I've tried it, and it is nicely working. Same for fpdoc, but that was a bit of a rough experience. It took me a while to get it working at all (generating skeletons IIRC) and the window inside lazarus never made me happy - got to think about it, dunno why. In the end I'm writng docs for my own stuff using Openoffice writer and a template adapted to showing source code snippets. One to threee pages for tutorials or small unit docs, very readable, very handy writing support - how did I ever think about writing raw xml files? ;)

Mind you I am not denigrating Pascal in anyway, but it would be more a labour of love than one of economic utility, when economic utility would be the better driver.

Choosing the right tool for the job is wise in any case. I do, using C, Python, Java - but if possible my language still is and will be object pascal.

But before I forget:
Lazarus and fpc have grown up to a really strong pair of mature tools. Whenever possible it's my first choice using them. Many thanks and congrats to anyone making this possible.

And something more:
I can hardly close my mouth reading that lazarus and fpc are generating java byte code and are having an android widget set. I'll try using that as soon as possible.

Keep on good work,
Marc

[1] http://pasdoc.sipsolutions.net/

Marc Santhoff wrote

And something more: I can hardly close my mouth reading that lazarus and fpc are generating java byte code and are having an android widget set. I'll try using that as soon as possible.

Lazarus itself does not generate byte code. It was simply extended to support some language features/changes that were necessary for the JVM port.

Regards,
Sven

Marc Santhoff wrote

And something more: I can hardly close my mouth reading that lazarus and fpc are generating java byte code and are having an android widget set. I'll try using that as soon as possible.

=) Just one small correction: The Lazarus Android widgetset is unrelated to the Free Pascal Java support. Android supports Native code too.

I also expanded the LCL to support various nice features from Android and other smartphones: Accelerometer, SMS sending, reading the phone model, GPS positioning. And more to come.

What is the main reason that Java / C + + is better known than Lazarus / FPC?

INTERNET. For Example even Microsoft in his great years can't beat Internet! If you remember the advertising of one of the version of Windows was: "The Internet looks like Windows!" They understood that it is not so. The next version of the advertising was: "Windows looks like Internet!"

What include in Internet?

Web Programing. I know only one web sait written in Lazarus: www.lazarussupport.com. But when I go to the forum it is not written in Pascal! Can a programmer with Web languages make a desktop applications? Yes! Maybe not so good and quick like with Lazarus but the programmer have Internet... So why the programmer must learning another programing language?

Interten applications like below was writen on C/C++/Java, php... No one of they was writen on Pascal.

Browsers
Forums maker - like phpBB
DB

Another is:
Office Aplication

Antivirus software - if someone can convert MoonSecure from Delphi to Lazarus will be a great demo of capabilities of Lazarus/Pascal. Another thing are the mobile phones. Lazarus can not be used directly for mobile phones.

Graeme wrote: "Use the right tool for the job." Unfortunately, Lazarus made alone ??mainly Desktop applications. But this is a very small part of the market! For the above marketing purposes it partially use other languages. Even Lazarus use qt, gtk..., which are not written on Pascal. So why the programmer learn Pascal and another language when the programmer may do what he/she want for Internet, mobile devices, desktop applications with this another language?

Please do not get me wrong. I really like Lazarus / FPC very much. Lazarus / FPC teams do a great job. But while the marketing objectives are so limited, there is very little chance of Lazarus to gain greater prominence. This was a very big mistake of Borland and we know what they do with Pascal.

Sorry for my bad English!
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2012/2/27 Rigel Rigel :

Web Programing. I know only one web sait written in Lazarus: www.lazarussupport.com.

Here you go, here is a wiki engine and website I wrote in Object Pascal. It's a very small application, but it's a website written in Object Pascal, using the Lazarus IDE (though any IDE or editor could have been used). :-)

http://opensoft.homeip.net:8080/wiki/wiki.cgi?p=Main-Page

I don't like web development work, so I don't have more public things to show. I can say thought that we (our company) also have an advanced database driven web interface to one of our company applications - all written in Object Pascal, using Free Pascal as the compiler.

Another thing are the mobile phones. Lazarus can not be used directly for mobile phones.

I have no problems writing and running applications for my PDA (Windows Mobile). All written in Object Pascal, using fpGUI Toolkit and compiled with Free Pascal.

Graeme wrote: "Use the right tool for the job." Unfortunately, Lazarus made alone mainly Desktop applications.

You should be more specific. I guess you mean LCL and not Lazarus. To me, Lazarus describes more the IDE, and the Lazarus IDE is implemented in LCL. Well, I have used Lazarus (IDE) to develop web, desktop and mobile apps. No problems.

Even Lazarus use qt, gtk..., which are not written on Pascal.

Then maybe you should take a look at fpGUI Toolkit (see my signature) or MSEgui. Both are GUI toolkits 100% implemented in Object Pascal, stable and fully capable for advanced applications. And as I said, fpGUI even works on mobile and embedded devices.

2012/2/27 Rigel Rigel :

Interten applications like below was writen on C/C++

I never heard of a web page written in C/C++

Even Lazarus use qt, gtk...

Not necessarely. In LCL for Android everything is done in Lazarus itself: http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Custom_Drawn_Interface

Rigel Rigel wrote

Another thing are the mobile phones. Lazarus can not be used directly for mobile phones.

Ehm... I used Lazarus to develop Windows Mobile applications (both private and a commercial one) and also an Android JVM based one (though that more used FPC than Lazarus).

Also Lazarus recently gained support for native Android development through the CustomDrawn widgetset.

Also FPC used to have support for Symbian (though it never gained much momentum and now Symbian can be considered more or less dead).

And would have Meego taken of then FPC and Lazarus would already have been able to develop applications for them.

So I don't see why you say that Lazarus can not be used for mobile phones...

Regards,
Sven

Well, I know one:
http://blog.fefe.de

As the author writes in his FAQ (free translation from German):

=== quote begin ===

If that is done without PHP, Perl, Ruby, MySQL and Java how is it done then? I've written a blog software in C using dietlibc, libowfat running undar gatling and a tinyldap-Backend.

=== quote end ===

Regards,
Sven

Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho wrote

I never heard of a web page written in C/C++

We (my wife's company) uses an application written by my son in Object Pascal and that actually "writes web pages" (aka html files). In fact it is a desktop-GUI based Editor that allows for managing sorted lists of web pages and external links. The content is uploaded (via FTP using another dedicated tool written in Object Pascal) to a standard web server (see e.g. http://www.dgabaldon.de/aktuell/html/aktuelles.htm and http://www.dgabaldon.de/methadon/html/a.htm ).

-Michael

I never heard of a web page written in C/C++

http://cppcms.com/wikipp/en/page/main
or
http://www.webtoolkit.eu/wt/

R.

On 25/02/2012 21:51, Frank Church wrote:
[...]

I had my first lick of (Turbo) Pascal on an ancient 286 (!) some time between 1996-7, on an ancient 286 machine ...
C looked extremely complicated then (and when you read a manual for Atari C compiler your hair would stand up and stay there...) and still a pain :)

But I have heard/read opinions of people that think Pascal is a toy language, and they date to way way before Borland :(

So to recap - yes Borland probably is to blame but not for the reason you wrote, rather for /not/ trying to reverse the old opinions, but trying to detour around them, badly...

L.

2012/2/25 Frank Church <vfclists at ....>

The terms FPC and Lazarus don't give any indication that Pascal is the language.

I only noticed now that your statement is totally wrong. You do realise that FPC is an acronym for "Free Pascal Compiler"? ?Note the word "Pascal"? You can't get much clearer than that!

I think Java is a C/C++
dialect. So is known for programers using C/C++.
My point is that for now Internet and mobile applications has focus. And the place of Lazarus/Pascal is little in them. I hope this change.

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2012/2/28 Rigel Rigel :

I think Java is a C/C++ ?dialect.

Java is totally different from C/C++, it is only superficially similar.

My point is that for now Internet and mobile applications has focus. And the place of Lazarus/Pascal is little in them. I hope this change.

About mobile applications you are quite mistaken. I have been working Lazarus support for mobiles since many years:

http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Windows_CE_Interface

Lazarus-0.9.30-fpc-2.4.2-cross-arm-wince-win32.exe had 10.000 downloads http://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus/files/Lazarus%20Windows%2032%20bits/Lazarus%200.9.30/

I also added Android support:

http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Custom_Drawn_Interface/Android

FPC can write apps for the iPhone. The LCL also runs in MeeGo. That covers 90% of the mobile market.

And for the server side in the internet we have fpWeb: http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/fcl-web

Which basically just needs more tutorial, more example pages built with it, more extra libraries, etc, which are thing which come from people using it.

We currently don't have anything for the client side in the internet, but here I guess it is a lost cause. Even huge companies are loosing the battle to get a slice of the client side of the internet. Java, Silverlight and Flash plugins are slowly being replaced by JavaScript. (which is unrelated to Java despite the name)

But summing up, more then yet another discussion on this topic, what really helps is contributions. If you think that Pascal needs better support for the Internet, well, then just write some tutorials about fpweb, write a usage statistics counter using fpweb, write a Forum or whatever other generally useful software with it and release it open source. Or write a LCL interface which support CGI. Make an announcement and then answer questions of people using it, etc.

Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho wrote

But summing up, more then yet another discussion on this topic, what really helps is contributions. If you think that Pascal needs better support for the Internet...

Oh, yes, and if you think it just needs more Mobile support, then just task to me. There are tons of tasks which need to get done in the LCL support for mobiles ;)

Lobbying Google to accept us in the summer of code might help too: http://groups.google.com/group/google-summer-of-code-discuss?pli=1

I already made the subscription, but they already rejected us twice before.

On 27/02/2012 11:49, Rigel Rigel wrote:
[snip]

Sorry for cutting all of this out, but [to the OP]:

As you can see from others' answers, NONE of what you wrote is true.

Therefore, what YOU wrote is FUD and a 'loaded question'. (like: when will you finally stop beating up your wife?)

[To others] I think we have a troll in sight.

Lukasz

+1000

How much time do these discussions take that's better spent improving the Lazarus/FPC code, documentation, samples, filing bug reports, improving your own production code using FPC/Lazarus...

(And yes, I'm aware of the irony that my posting here takes away time as well).

Regards,
Reinier

I believe that is a lost cause, because "Pascal doesn't exist", or "Pascal is just uncool". :-(

Well, i think all pascal developers should do something about it and, all the fpc/lazarus team is doing a wonderfull work!
________________________________
William de Oliveira Ferreira
Bacharel em Sistemas de Informa??o

2012/2/28 Graeme Geldenhuys

I believe that is a lost cause, because "Pascal doesn't exist", or "Pascal is just uncool". :-(

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Graeme Geldenhuys wrote

I believe that is a lost cause, because "Pascal doesn't exist", or "Pascal is just uncool". ?:-(

I think not necessarely. Last year I complained a bit and they were quite open about it, and apparently they changed the team that chooses the projects. Last year the subscription time coincided with a huge peak of work here so I missed the deadline =(

I think that someone that mentions that FPC has around half a million downloads each year, and Lazarus around 200k and a dedicated community could convince them to accept us. I just don't want to lobby since I am already the project mentor, it would look like a 1 men effort.

I do not understand why insulting me. Maybe because you are stupid and do not understand what I write? All described applications using CGI or others languages who are not written in Pascal. Now you understand or you need more explanations? If so, read the two questions in my previous post,

troll.

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Thanks for answers, but you know when you begin with Web programing. Before anything was written in other languages ??and will be difficult to change people's understanding. Which mobile devices are the bes for Lazarus programing?

And after Lukasz Sokol blame me for troll no sense to continue.

dialect.

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I wrote that, because /many/ people have replied to your lengthy post, one by one debunking your arguments, and I have not seen you reply to any of them, no sign of you accepting that you're wrong; Seems to me then, that you wrote it with an /agenda/ in mind, therefore my 'loaded question' statement.

Lukasz

My intend in start this thread was in order to make visible the potential of the FPC/Lazarus, that i believe is more than Java.

2012/2/28 Lukasz Sokol

Well, i think all pascal developers should do something about it and, all the fpc/lazarus team is doing a wonderfull work!

+-1

Yes, much time is spent on the *code*, on mass instead of quality. No, the *documentation* is in an horrible state.

Every possible user will need some documentation, before he starts to write code. As he doesn't find such documentation, he'll never start using Lazarus.

The Lazarus team continues to ignore the importance of documentation, and refuses to contribute even the most important details themselves.

No wonder why Lazarus is only used by frustrated Delphi users, and even these will drop Lazarus sooner or later, for different but continued frustration.

DoDi

Il 28/02/2012 16:01, Hans-Peter Diettrich ha scritto:

+1000

I agree absolutely. Trying to use a complex entity as Lazarus+FPC+LCL+packages without extensive documentation it's a delusion, and this should be obvious to every programmer in the world nowadays.

Either the guys in Lazarus team plans to take advantage of the original Embarcadero helpfiles by compatibility virtue or plainly just does not give a thing for doc'ing how everything works :-(
It's a huge mistake.

documentation, but it's often a problem to find it. Most things are already available in the wiki or the generated docs.

Every possible user will need some documentation, before he starts to write code. As he doesn't find such documentation, he'll never start using Lazarus.

If asked I'd suggest:

There could be some overview pages (made manually or by scripting) handling special information requests. One, imho the first of those pages would be an information page for beginners.

Like often seen on development project pages, one of the most visible things is an index page having a small selction of the most searched pages, titles may be "getting started", "help in development", and so on.

Lazarus has no beginners page at all (checked quickly this moment, not speaking about fpc).

sometimes all lazarus' users wanna see core team do something that themselves can

writing a basic article of how to compile a basic application, how compiler directives affects the way fpc manage pointers, place side-by-side a delphi and a lazarus project for beginners is easy and it's not necessary to get deep on the subject because it's designed for beginners ________________________________
William de Oliveira Ferreira
Bacharel em Sistemas de Informa??o

2012/2/28 Marc Santhoff

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William Oliveira Ferreira wrote

sometimes all lazarus' users wanna see core team do something that themselves can

Thank you for speaking that out aloud :)

Regards,
Sven

That's just the way i understand the meaning of community and opensource projects: Everyone helping with what they can (if they want), not just a little group...

Today, i simply can't get the lazarus' source and solve a bug because i have a limted knowledge of how it works internally but i can submit bugs on mantis, that's a way that i can help. On my environment, with my friends, i can promove lazarus and help them to write some applications, write tutorials, etcs...
________________________________
William de Oliveira Ferreira
Bacharel em Sistemas de Informa??o

2012/2/28 Sven Barth

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Am Dienstag, den 28.02.2012, 13:25 -0300 schrieb William Oliveira Ferreira:

sometimes all lazarus' users wanna see core team do something that themselves can

I absolutely agree with you. Because I do I'd like to ask you to do two things:

1. Please answer to the mail you're referring to - which is not mine in this case, I did not target the "core developers" at all.

2. Do not top post, instead try to reply inline, so anyone can understand, what part of the mail you are talking about.

<rant>
If poeple would stop ranting or complaining, real work could be getting done. Why do discussions like this end up in the same complaints any time?
</rant>

Sorry for being very direct while trying to put some positive criticism, Marc

[ ... TOFU deleted ... ]

I'm always looking for ways of more participation and, please, believe me, today is not clear. If you work on a company, by example, embarcadero, is very clear the way the work is done. There's a very well knew structure of how that happens. Here, i'm on a small company making software and the work is also very clear. What is supposed to be done, who is in charge of what, who is in the project with who and who. And so on. Today, in the open source enviroment, we dont have this info, and without this info how can we join and partipate. There's some anuncoments about but very little info about the development. Please undarstand me, i'm not talking about myself, i'm talking about of ways of public show that kind of info, for the people can acknowledge what is happen and naturaly see how they can help. People in general has a natural reciprocity. And i include myself for sure. 2012/2/28 William Oliveira Ferreira

2012/2/28 Marc Santhoff

Sorry about that. I do it 'cos gMail do it automatically and i just follow, but i'll try to stop...
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I understand what you want to help but i don't think it's too hard as i understand how. Exaclty how you wanna help? As i can see, if you found a bug and solved it in your pc, you can submit a patch generated by a svn tool in bugtracker. If you wanna enter in the core staff, well, the current staff must see something great that's justify your join, if you found something wrong in the documentation on Wiki, you can edit it and post a updated version, but, i really don't know how to submit new documentation on official wiki as a tutorial about how to use a tool (example), so, about this, i must agree with you...
________________________________
William de Oliveira Ferreira
Bacharel em Sistemas de Informa??o

2012/2/28 Everton Vieira

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This simple statement speaks volumes. I agree with it completely. Most people DO want to help out but the way to do that is not at all clear.

There is no clear way to start out small and progress. That's because no one wants to make a contribution from a position of weakness. I do not want to document something unless I am sure what I write is correct. But I cannot learn enough to have confidence in what I write without more documentation. (or extraordinary effort which is exactly what we are lamenting is scarce).

There is a very good reason why people keep asking for stuff and do not contribute it themselves. The FPC and Lazarus projects are just not organized well enough for this to happen - especially in ways that welcome new participants. When I see people trying to contribute and then responses from the team that are curt and unyielding and downright unfriendly I just discouraged from joining in.

Now I can hear the current contributors saying "You haven't seen all that we do to help newcomers!" and "You only see the troublemaker's side of it!" and so on. Perhaps that is true but that very situation MAKES MY POINT. This is exactly what is seen publicly. So the team has a big public relations problem.

When I read between the lines I also think I hear "We slogged through this stuff and you will just have to as well!" In other words, "We earned our right to be here. You must also!" Unfortunately, that is just the perfect message if you want to keep people away.

What I think we need is one or two people who are fully accepted into the core team whose task is mainly, if not solely, to mentor newcomers and manage the process of getting new contributions accepted. These people would handle the sometimes tricky problems of language translation. The would interpret and explain when misunderstandings occur. They would generally provide the friendly face of the project which has been missing.

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I'll try once more to tell on what i'm refering: "project managemant of the development". All that i have to say about it is in that. Who some day had worked with project management and has the insight of how could be done in the open source enviroment knows on what i'm talking about it. 2012/2/28 William Oliveira Ferreira

Good analysis. And ?Everton Vieira names the solution: a kind of project management. The moderation problems you name should handled by some sort of supervision, too.

And now we have reached the point where the dog bites it's own tail, who would and could do that? Maybe technical tools like trac or similar system could be used to direct contribution efforts to a more synergetic effort by not stating fixed rules but showing a corridor of most appreciated work.

2012/2/28 Everton Vieira

with that, i must agree with you too...
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I do not only mean general information, but information about the added features, that can be provided only by the inventors of these features.

The team presents itself as "we are the greatest", and assumes that every user will understand immediately these great ideas, casted into cryptic code. Everybody else, be a Lazarus user already, or be somebody interested in learning more about Lazarus, is left alone in the rain.

Is it really required to file an bug report, for every undocumented item, in order to get more information about it? Questions in the mailing list about such items are typically never answered, and according marks in the documentation are silently dropped. Is this how the team expects Lazarus be ever documented? Let somebody write something, it will most probably be correct? Reality proves almost the opposite: a lot of false guesses in the docs, which obviously never had been verified :-(

DoDi

Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho wrote

Lobbying Google to accept us in the summer of code might help too: http://groups.google.com/group/google-summer-of-code-discuss?pli=1 I already made the subscription, but they already rejected us twice before.

why did they reject? do they, too, think that pascal is dead?

Right, the customers are the brake-shoes in every business. Simply ignoring them will increase the in-house productivity a lot :-]

DoDi

waldo kitty wrote

why did they reject? do they, too, think that pascal is dead?

No reason was provided.

You are absolutely right in this special case. No newbie or noone not involved into development of compiler features is able to document those.

The team presents itself as "we are the greatest", and assumes that every user will understand immediately these great ideas, casted into cryptic code. Everybody else, be a Lazarus user already, or be somebody interested in learning more about Lazarus, is left alone in the rain.

That's why I suggested sort of a solution which you cut off from my previous mail:

Making missing docs more visible makes it easier to handle, not only for seekers of information but for the poeple having enough knowledge to fill in the gaps, too.

If there was page collecting those features it would be really easy to step in and write some sentences, otherwise the developer would have to scan all available sources or xml files. Maybe the release notes already have this list to transfer to the wiki or whereever it should go.

As a side effect developers may be getting a push from time to time when someone asks for one of the undocumented topics. Hopefully this would help getting pieces together over time ...

;)

Count me on the customers side in this case.

Having calmed down again I'll concentrate on putting my energy into some work ...

Massimo Soricetti wrote

I agree absolutely. Trying to use a complex entity as Lazarus+FPC+LCL+packages without extensive documentation it's a delusion, and this should be obvious to every programmer in the world nowadays.

Here, very recently, has been a very interesting discussion on offline help. It has died but I am not sure if any result has been achieved.

-Michael

William Oliveira Ferreira wrote

sometimes all lazarus' users wanna see core team do something that themselves can

Of course there are many outside the core team who would be able and willing to help improving the documentation. But to allow them to do this, there needs to be a decent infrastructure for writing/modifying the help sources, compiling and viewing the result (as Offline help in Lazarus) and providing the additions to be reviewed by the "powers". This includes all help aspects (like Language, IDE, Compiler, RTL, LCL, user-additions, ...)

-Michael

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I'm thinking here, a tool like we have on php.net that allows everyone to post comments on wiki pages should be good to keep somethings as it goes by now. many people post case of use of functions, alternate routines, when they shouldn't be used, etc. it's easy enable user's comment on lazarus' wiki pages?

2012/2/29, Michael Schnell :