> The 64bit version will be interesting... aiui on x86-64, "Integer" remains 32-bit "in the metal" so I think 64-bit shouldn't have that much impact. The only immediately obvious issue I see with 64-bit will be where people are using "Integer" types to store pointer values. Int64 becomes hardware supported rather than requiring compiler magic (which is - or was - sometimes broken!).
But, now that pointer arithmetic is directly supported, using Integers to wrap pointers shouldn't be necessary any more as this is often where/why such things are done. I hope Embarcadero(*) don't capitulate to the backward-compatability crowd by migrating Integer to 64-bits just to ease the transition of such code (except in so far as adjusting things like the TComponent.Tag property, but that should be handled by making that property Int64, not making Integer itself 64-bit). (*) see next email.... -----Original Message----- From: delphi-boun...@delphi.org.nz [mailto:delphi-boun...@delphi.org.nz] On Behalf Of Jeremy North Sent: Friday, 16 October 2009 12:09 p.m. To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List Subject: Re: [DUG] Unicode [redux] Under what circumstances would you want to use the $H- option now? For recompiling old code? Perhaps it should now be deprecated as well. Time to update that really old code or just leave it in an older version. I personally have a number of projects that I won't upgrade for various reasons. I find it frustrating how sometimes Borland/CodeGear/Embarcadero seem to always favour backward compatiblity at the expense of doing things better or right. However there is really only one group to blame for that. Users. People complain when they have to change a line of code when using a new version. They expect all these new things to be added, and expect not to have to change anything. This is what leads to compromises. The 64bit version will be interesting... When unicode was introduced, it was going to cause some upgrading issues, so they (Embarcadero) should have broken it properly, instead of leaving a lot of legacy smells around. It is a balancing act and you'll never please everyone. I'd certainly settle for Embarcadero giving Delphi 2007 to upgraders of Delphi 2010. Anything that gets people off the pre-Galileo IDEs is a blessing. Although it is pretty easy to give product away when it isn't yours to give in the first place though. A "clean-up" release would be nice but might be a while off and folks don't generally like those because they don't bring new features. A bit like the Delphi 2007 release. I hated that because of the non-breaking nature of the release, but many other developers thought it was really good because upgrading was really easy (from 2006). Anyway, I've gone off on a little tangent there... _______________________________________________ NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi mailing list Post: delphi@delphi.org.nz Admin: http://delphi.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi Unsubscribe: send an email to delphi-requ...@delphi.org.nz with Subject: unsubscribe _______________________________________________ NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi mailing list Post: delphi@delphi.org.nz Admin: http://delphi.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi Unsubscribe: send an email to delphi-requ...@delphi.org.nz with Subject: unsubscribe
