Subj : Compiler for Pascal To : Sean Dennis From : mark lewis Date : Thu Apr 08 2010 04:45 pm ml> FPC and Lazarus is really the only thing going these days that's ml> free... everything else costs $$$... SD> Not true. You can find Delphi 7 Personal floating around and legit SD> keys if you look hard enough on Google yeah, i forgot about Delphi Personal... i have a version around here somewhere but never really figured it out... i've done RAD stuff in the passed but it was waaaaay back in the past and was actually more like an add-on for dBase III/IV... SD> (I have my own key I generated long ago on SD> Borland/Iniprise/Embarcadero/whateverthehelltheycallthemselvesnow's SD> website). The key (no pun intended) is you can only do freeware SD> stuff with D7P. yeah... that's another reason why i don't use it... i do some commercial apps from time to time... SD> In fact, if anyone wants D7P and my key (doesn't matter who it's SD> registered to, really), let me know via netmail or email and I'll SD> be happy to provide it! No, this isn't illegal. ml> FWIW: as an old pascal hand, i still have troubles with Laz/FPC ml> because i've never done the delphi or object pascal stuff... they say ml> to get a decent delphi book and you can go with that but i've yet to ml> find a "decent" delphi book or one that can reliably point me in the ml> proper direction for the components used in Lazarus... some things are ml> named differently and if you don't even know what they were called in ml> the beginning it is very hard to know what they may be called now... SD> Wow, I got my first Delphi program running in about two minutes, SD> even if it was a form where you pressed the button "Hello World" SD> appeared! yeah... but that's a whole lot simpler than what i was speaking of ;) SD> Delphi is easy-peasy compared to grinding out code, but you're SD> locked into Windows if you use it. You just have to change SD> your mindset enough to think of Delphi's RAD system as a "helper" SD> to speed things along. that's exactly what a RAD is... a "helper"... you still have to go in and add the necessary code for the specific tasks you need a component to do or call... ml> i read the lazarus mailing list every day and suggest that others ml> interested in lazarus do the same... one may want to also participate ml> in their web forums but i find them quite lacking for numerous ml> reasons... SD> What do you expect for free? Really now. hahahaha... the IDE and compiler are, actually, very good... the main problem comes to the documentation... that still needs a lot of work but the developers can only do so much ;) and i don't like using a wiki for many things... documentation like i feel is necessary for this being one... SD> I've had compatibility issues with using FPC on my various SD> machines, so I've just stuck to Borland/Turbo/Virtual Pascal. if you've not reported those problems, you can't expect them to be fixed ;) of course, there's also the situation of what version(s) have you worked with... just reading the mailing list, i easily see where the release versions have been surpassed by the SVN code and i regularly see bugs reported in the mailing list and an hour or so later, there's a new SVN update that fixes it... then one only need do a SVN update and recompile FPC/Laz (both or which ever one needs to be)... )\/(ark * Origin: (1:3634/12) .