2009/10/1 waldo kitty <[email protected]>: > the 3rd party coder's stances... the major thing i see is that FPC/Lazarus > could easily become the largest coding platform if more assistance was > available from the built in help stuffs... that's first and foremost...
I agree. The more developers we can attract, then the potential amount of contributes could increase too. I do realize that there isn't a one-to-one relationship with users and contributes, but if I can comment on my own experience as a user... Before lazarus I knew nothing about internal IDE works etc... But using Lazarus and being able to see the code, makes me want to add features I would like to see - obviously based on my skill level. As I mentioned before, my abilities to work on (or even understand) debuggers is near zero. So I try and contribute in other ways. For example. I see a large need for offline help and a consistent help format. I have this need in fpGUI and Lazarus applications (including the Lazarus IDE). I am currently working on a solution which I will contribute back to the community. I have already worked on a dedicated help file format (uncompiled and compiled help), and am currently busy created a help viewer. As a bonus to all, I will be translating the FPC Programmers and Users Guides to this new help format - as a test for others to see how it works. As a bigger bonus, the new help system works like a bookshelf (or library). I can pass multiple help files to the viewer and it integrates there TOC and Indexes, so searches and browsing happens across all help files. This features will help context sensitive help in the IDE a lot - search for IDE help, Language help, Compiler help etc... all with one F1 key. And have I mentioned it's damn quick. So no I can probably not help implement a new debugger (though I will try if possible), but I do try and contribute in areas I have skills in. But I can contribute from a users point, by raising issues and features lacking in the IDE. If we can get a constructed discussion going, maybe we can generate more interest in fixing the various shortcomings of the IDE. Regards, - Graeme - _______________________________________________ fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/ -- _______________________________________________ Lazarus mailing list [email protected] http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
