Re: [fpc-devel] Offer to repair and maintain the FPC community website (repeat msg, no HTML)
I don't know how it is elsewhere, but here in the US, more and more ISPs are eliminating Usenet access completely. Do you mean an NNTP server for FPC that people could access directly using a client like Agent or Pan? (In other words, without being part of the newsfeed.) I've used Usenet off and on since the bang-path era and I like it too. I don't know the protocol well, however, and don't know its limitations. --73-- --Jeff Duntemann Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA On 9/25/2012 2:29 AM, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote: On 2012-09-25 09:01, Cephas Atheos wrote: I mentioned PHPBB because it's incredibly robust, widely used, has good security, is minimally invasive to manage, can be scaled reasonably well, people are familiar with it, and it works. My personal opinion is that I hate web forums! They are hard to navigate, and hard to read topics, and hard to see who replied to what. In the tiOPF project we switched years ago to the rock solid NNTP (news) server solution. I wrote a small app to import existing mailing list discussins so no discussion history is lost. Anybody can choose their preferred news client, new joiners can easily see, read and search past threads. For the tiOPF project I also setup a WebNews HTTP interface to the NNTP server, so for those that prefer a web browser to read message, that could be done too. NNTP is still the most used public discussion medium on the internet, and for good reason - it works very well. Regards, - Graeme - ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
Re: [fpc-devel] Free Pascal 2.6.0 released!
Bravo! My only question is: Are there any particular issues with respect to using 2.6.0 with Lazarus? I didn't see that mentioned in the changes doc. Thanks to everybody who worked on it! (And happy new year, all!) --73-- --Jeff Duntemann Colorado Springs, Colorado On 1/1/2012 8:43 AM, Marco van de Voort wrote: Hello, first, FPC core wants to wish a happy 2012! To start the new year with a bang, a new major release of Free Pascal, version 2.6.0, was uploaded to our FTP servers. Changes that may break backwards compatibility are documented at: http://wiki.freepascal.org/User_Changes_2.6.0 For Downloads, please use the FTP server at ftp://freepascal.stack.nl/pub/fpc/dist/2.6.0/ and sourceforge http://sourceforge.net/projects/freepascal/files/ as much possible. Enjoy! The Free Pascal Compiler Team Free Pascal Compiler Version 2.6.0 ** What's New in 2.6.0 ** Free Pascal 2.6.0 is a new major version of the Free Pascal compiler. Please also see http://wiki.freepascal.org/User_Changes_2.6.0 for a list of changes that may affect the behaviour of previously working code, and how to cope with these changes. Some highlights are: Platforms: * iPhoneSimulator target Compiler: * Many new language features: * Objective-Pascal dialect, supported on all Mac OS X and iOS targets * constref parameter modifier for const by reference * Pascal boolean types with multiple sizes (boolean16/32/64) * ISO 7185 language mode (except for I/O). Features amongst others: * nested procedure variables * non-local goto's * Mac Pascal mode improvements * nested procedure variables * univ modifier * Intrinsics * sar (shift arithmetic right) * bsf/bsr (bitscan forward/reverse) * Delphi compatibility mode improvements * Nested types, class variables and class local constants * Advanced records syntax (no constructors yet) * (for..in) Enumerators in records * Class and record helpers * Generic records, arrays and procedural types * Delphi-compatibility of generics improved * Scoped enumerations * Custom messages for deprecated directive * Ability to use for escaping keywords * New ARM code generator features * ARM VFPv2 and VFPv3 floating point unit support * Thumb-2 support Packages: * Many improvements to the rtl * Many improvements to the database units (fcl-db) * Objective-Pascal interfaces to Foundation, AppKit, CoreData and WebCore * OpenGL headers updated to OpenGL 4.0 Details about these new features can be found at http://wiki.freepascal.org/FPC_New_Features_2.6.0 See http://bugs.freepascal.org/changelog_page.php for the list of reported bugs that have been fixed in this release. ** What's New in 2.4.4 ** Free Pascal 2.4.4 contains most library fixes from early June 2010 till March 2011. There are also some compiler fixes, mostly relating to 64-bit. Please also see http://wiki.freepascal.org/User_Changes_2.4.4 for a list of changes which may affect the behaviour of previously working code, and how to cope with these changes. Some highlights are: Packages: * Many improvements to the XML units * Many improvements to the database units. * Specially sqlite got quite some fixes. * Many improvements to the chm units. * Including a commandline CHM compiler * Many improvements to fppkg and fpmake for another round of testing. Platforms: * Fixes for multi-threading support in OS/2 RTL. See http://bugs.freepascal.org/changelog_page.php for the list of reported bugs which have been fixed in this release. ** What's New in 2.4.2 ** Free Pascal 2.4.2 contains many fixes and a few new features. Most bugfixes in the RTL and packages before June 2010 have been merged. Please also see http://wiki.freepascal.org/User_Changes_2.4.2 for a list of changes which may affect the behaviour of previously working code, and how to cope with these changes. Some highlights are: Compiler: * Support D2006+ FOR..IN, with some FPC specific enhancements. Refer to http://wiki.freepascal.org/for-in_loop for more information * Support for sealed and abstract classes. Packages: * The existing Mac OS X Universal Interfaces units have been synchronised with the Mac OS X 10.6
Re: [fpc-devel] bounty: FPC based debugger
I agree with Joost. I've always liked the Insight GUI for gdb, and as best I know that's written in Tcl/Tk, of all things. So a FreePascal front end for gdb isn't a bad idea, and would be a great deal easier than writing a complete low-level debugger from scratch. --73-- --Jeff Duntemann Colorado Springs, Colorado On 9/13/2011 6:09 AM, Joost van der Sluis wrote: On Tue, 2011-09-13 at 12:59 +0200, Michael Schnell wrote: On 09/13/2011 11:06 AM, Jonas Maebe wrote: GDB is built for supporting multiple languages. E.g., its ADA support has been much better than its C++ support for a long time (although C++ support is getting fairly good nowadays too). Unfortunately it seems to be hard (or close to impossible) to work with the g* team(s) to have gdb (or gcc) provide Object Pascal specific features :-( . An addition to Jonas answer: There was a time that the development of gdb stalled a bit. That can happen to any open source project. That had nothing to do with Object Pascal features. But now the gdb-development is on track again and those people working on it are really helpful. I think the problem lies more in the fact that a lot of Pascal developers do not know c very well. So they are not able to write patches for gdb to implement these features. That's why the idea of a debugger written in Pascal pop ups every year. But improving gdb to fix the last glitches seems to be a better approach to me. But 'we' are the ones who has to do the work. (As we should when we would build our own debugger) Joost. ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
Re: [fpc-devel] Project Idea: Mini-FPC
If a mini-FPC were to be created to help popularize the Pascal language and get beginners interested and up to speed, it would be more useful to provide a simple IDE than a stripped-down compiler. The console FP IDE has never worked well for me (crashes a lot) and Lazarus is very large and intimidatingly complex. I'd rather see some effort put into an easy-to-install beginner's programming environment than in pulling features out of the compiler. I know this isn't the forum for that discussion, but I did want to make the suggestion. --73-- --Jeff Duntemann Colorado Springs, Colorado On 9/10/2011 6:12 AM, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote: Skybuck Flying schrieb: Nano would be: One integer type, one string type, branch support, loop support, basic support, object orientation support, property support, array support, virtual methods support. You'll have much trouble in *removing* existing features from FPC, affecting parser, error handling, intermediate representation, code generation and more at the same time. DoDi ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
Re: [fpc-devel] Project Idea: Mini-FPC
That just may do the job. Three years ago I started rewriting my BP7 Pascal book for FPC, but the issue of which IDE would be better for beginners drove me nuts. I looked around for something simple and reliable and eventually set the project aside. Lazarus is really the way to go for an IDE, but it's a lot to grasp all at once for students and newcomers. Don't get me wrong; I love it--but it really wasn't designed for absolute beginners. The book is an intro to Pascal and not to Lazarus, but I'd really like to use Lazarus as the example IDE, even though all the example code runs in a console. I'll take a look at Lazarus for Education this week and see whether it could work for the book. Thanks for pointing it out to me. --73-- --Jeff Duntemann Colorado Springs, Colorado On 9/10/2011 9:28 AM, Mattias Gaertner wrote: On Sat, 10 Sep 2011 16:51:36 +0200 (CEST) Michael Van Canneytmich...@freepascal.org wrote: On Sat, 10 Sep 2011, Jeff Duntemann wrote: If a mini-FPC were to be created to help popularize the Pascal language and get beginners interested and up to speed, it would be more useful to provide a simple IDE than a stripped-down compiler. The console FP IDE has never worked well for me (crashes a lot) and Lazarus is very large and intimidatingly complex. I'd rather see some effort put into an easy-to-install beginner's programming environment than in pulling features out of the compiler. I know this isn't the forum for that discussion, but I did want to make the suggestion. Maybe more effort should be put in the 'education' version of lazarus. Someone already started this. See here: http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Lazarus_for_education Any help and ideas are welcome. Mattias ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
Re: [fpc-devel] Freepascal in microcontrollers
This is very blue-sky, but it would be an interesting enhancement to Lazarus to target ARM or Atmel AVR CPUs in the manner of the Processing language/IDE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processing_%28programming_language%29 It's how you create software for the Arduino boards that are so popular here in the US. I started out in embedded processors, and I can program in C-like languages, but they make me itch. Pascal would be better. --73-- --JD-- Michael Schnell wrote: IMHO, nowadays, 8 (and 16) bit processors only make sense for very small projects. Those are very hardware specific and thus using C here does make sense. OTOH, 32 bit processors have become very cheap and handy. For embedded projects, IMHO, especially processors that are programmed as ip-Cores in FPGAs are very interesting, so that porting the FP compiler could make sense. I am considering to do this port for the NIOS CPU (that runs in Altera FPGAs). I don't intend to start that project very soon, but if someone is interested in starting the port, I of course will try to help. -Michael ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
[fpc-devel] New download location for the ebook--sorry for the messup!
Well, I have no idea why the downloads went so badly, but it doesn't matter where the file comes from, really. Try this URL instead; it's my own FTP site: http://www.copperwood.com/pub/FreePascalSquareOneVol1.pdf I'm going to delete this copy in a couple of days because it isn't anywhere near complete, so if you want to look at it, do go get it soon. Good luck and thanks for the reports. I'll have to look into why Lulu downloads don't work. --73-- --JD-- ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
Re: [fpc-devel] Lazarus: A new widgest set
As a pertinent aside here, I learned most of what I know about X from Niall Mansfield's book The Joy of X (Addison Wesley, 1993). Great overview, lots of good technical figures. Not an implementation guide, by any means, but it made the X system quite clear to me, even though I don't use it much. It's 15 years old now, but the basics of X haven't changed, and copies can still be found on the used book sites online, cheap. (~$3 US plus shipping.) --73-- --JD-- Michael Schnell wrote: To me it sounds more like an X like protocol with an X server as plugin. (but then on MSEGUI instead of X widget scale) I understand that when using X you need a widget set at the X-Client site and the X layer transports informations about the primitives the widget set translates the application's GUIcontrol-definitions in, while MSE transports the (supposedly somewhat limited) GUIcontrol-definitions to the viewer's site and the widget set (or whatever) is handled there (maybe the browser-defined Web-Controls are used as a widget set). Might be an interesting concept for the additional GUI we need here. -Michael ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
[fpc-devel] On recasting BORLAND PASCAL FROM SQUARE ONE for Free Pascal
Hi everybody-- I figured I would introduce myself, having just signed on to the list here. Some of you may already know me and my work. I've been a Pascal fanatic since I discovered the language in 1978 and wrote heavily about it for many years. I wrote COMPLETE TURBO PASCAL in 1985 and kept it current for eight years, until 1993. At that point Delphi was well underway, and I moved most of my efforts there. The last edition of COMPLETE TURBO PASCAL had to be renamed for a couple of reasons, and it became BORLAND PASCAL FROM SQUARE ONE, focusing on BP7. That edition was published in 1993, but the publisher was shut down in a merger that same year, and few of the books that were printed were actually sold. I've been trying to figure out what to do with the book since that time. (All rights reverted to me long ago.) Recently Anthony Henry suggested something that I had thought of a couple of years ago: Recasting the book for Free Pascal. Time permitting, that's what I intend to do. I was paid fairly well for the book in 1992, so I'm going to release it under Creative Commons, which is a sort of GPL for textual material. The ebook PDF will be free, and I'll post the PDF on Lulu.com so that people can order printed copies if they prefer to read a paper book. Those printed copies won't be free, obviously, but they won't be expensive, either. (I won't know how expensive until I recast the book, as the cost to print a copy varies linearly with the page count.) I've had Free Pascal installed on a corner of my hard drive for five or six years now, and although I haven't written anything ambitious in it, I've loaded and compiled a bit of the old Pascal code that I've had lying around for 25 years. I haven't explored it completely, but I'll get back to it and exercise a lot more of it in coming months. Here are a few issues that I'd like some advice on: 1. The book is quite large, at 810 pages. To make a printed book on Lulu that won't fall apart after one reading, the length has to be *much* less than that. I'm thinking of cutting it up into a couple of shorter books. The first book will be purely an introduction to the Pascal language, and will go as far as locality and scope. (If anyone here has the original printed book, that would be up to about page 300.) A second book will take it from there, and go into a lot more depth about separate compilation, disk I/O, debugging, linked lists and so on. There may be enough material for a third book, depending on how I cut it and how much I will simply delete--coverage of overlays, for example. I really need to keep the length of a single book down to about 300 pages. Since the ebooks will be free, this shouldn't be a problem. 2. I need to know what platform to base the book on. It's now a DOS book, and I can easily recast it for work in a console window under Windows. However, I suspect that more people use it under Linux. Would basing it on Linux (using text mode in a terminal window) be better? 3. The book does not cover objects in depth. I'm of two minds about how to cover object-oriented programming: I prefer Delphi's object model, but I've used Turbo Vision (I named it, in fact) and have some example code. Which would be better? (I don't think I would cover objects in the first book, at any rate. 4. How important is it to cover GUI apps written from text mode? (That is, without using Lazarus or something else Delphi-like.) This wouldn't be in the first volume, obviously, but are enough people doing it (whether for Windows or Linux) to make the coverage worthwhile? I didn't do much on GUI apps prior to Delphi, apart from some minor messing around with Turbo Pascal for Windows. So that would be all new research for me and might take awhile--and I would prefer to cover it via Lazarus anyway. That's the most of it. Alas, I don't have a Mac and can't really cover OS/X. However, if anyone here would like to work over the material once I release it for FPC, I'd be happy with that. Do let me know what you think. I need to mention that I work fairly slowly (mostly because I'm not retired and have a lot of other things to do) but I'm willing to release chapters as I finish them if people want them. Good luck and thanks for listening. I'm on the list now and will start digging back into FPC again. --73-- --Jeff Duntemann Colorado Springs, Colorado www.duntemann.com ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
