> I've read somewhere that Delphi 7 compatibility is planned (since I do not > have it I do not know what that means in detail).
Main plans short term to my knowledge are: * create/improve the COM/OLE support. This has multiple facets: o COM compat interfaces/vmt o Variants (needed for OLE) o implements style delegation * linking/debug/fileformats related * improve smartlinking (get rid of .a files, less mem use) * improved "packages" and dynamic libraries (PIC!) support in general. * crosslinking (2.0 is actually quite crosslink capable already) * stabs->dwarf crossover. * Some form of Kylix compat resources.(still under discussion) * Support for 64-bit (sized) native filetypes. Some of these target functionality (specially in the linking section) might require restructures related to * introduction of an internal linker for some core platforms (no more LD) * Rewrite of module (unit) handling For the rest, improve RTL/FCL compability and extend them in general, and of course fixbugs. > Beside of compatibility towards Delphi or MacPascal or others FPC should be > open to other modifications/extensions (maybe Delphi one day copies FC a bt > :-), and not always the other way round) > > Useful extensions I would see: > > bigger sets: set of -100000..100000 (e.g.) I'd like that too. > a way to write integer constants in any base, not only > binary/octal/hexadecimal (not so important, but easy to implement) Rarely used. Specially since more than base 36 becomes a notational problem. However it has been brought up before. > writing of enums to text file; This should be supported, however needs some tricks. (RTTI is available for enums!) > more operators which can be overloaded (should follow the ALGOL68 rules) IMHO this is asking for a mess, and the use is limited. > should automatically permit constructions like: > > var > x : type1, y : type2 ; > > x *:= y ; Why to save two characters? The C operators were afaik mostly added to ease porting critical C code. However IMHO one shouldn't use them in new code, and there is no need to start adding variations on the C syntax. > multiple assignments: > > a := b := c := d := 0 ; > > etc. Same point. Totally useless. > That are just some ideas. Maybe there are more? To judge extensions, it might be smart to check this faq item: http://www.freepascal.org/faq.html#extensionselecthttp://www.freepascal.org/faq.html#extensionselect which is more or less a rough view on how we (or actually more I, since I wrote it) see extensions to the language. Except larger sets and more control about set packing is the only really interesting thing IMHO generics/templates, since it really makes heaps of new behaviour possible, and is not purely syntax that saves typing. The wiki also contains some roadmap info: http://www.freepascal.org/wiki/index.php/Detailed_2.1.0_branch_todo _______________________________________________ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel