On Fri, 4 Jun 2010, spir wrote:
On Fri, 4 Jun 2010 13:21:09 +0200 (CEST)
Michael Van Canneyt <mich...@freepascal.org> wrote:
And to be honest, I think we do a very good job of it. Yes, we don't have
100% compatibility. But no, it's never 100%. But it is certainly good
enough to satisfy most people that need it.
Hello, Michael!
No doubt about this. And I take the opportunity to thank you (and all
others) for this great (and huge) project. What I question is the
necessity to keep Delphi-compliance now and for ever. And the consequent
choice of _not_ making, progressively, a free (object) Pascal dialect,
with its own design & principles, style & taste, and so on... (*) Sure, I
also understand the great advantage of reusing Delphi code and cloning its
libraries, esp. for production code. But after so long, fpc could
already have a relevant shared codebase, don't you think? (what by the
way GNU PAscal does not have). How old is freepascal already, 10 years?
More. 15-16 years.
Denis
(*) For instance, I have had a look at GNU Pascal, and via this look
discovered standard & extended Pascal design. I must say that on numerous
points it looks better to me than TP & Delphi choices; standards were
obviously very carefully designed. An FP freed of Delphi chains could
take the best of this. "Free" also means free ;-) Another point is the
terrible library/unit mess, partially inherited from Borland pascal
history, partially increased by compiler modes. Very hard to find what
one looks for (except maybe if coming from BP). More or less, anything
can hide anywhere; and there are variants of any feature; and many are
just legacy from the 80's. (I don't even evoke the global namespace.)
Severe, radical, cleanup needed, imo. ________________________________
There is no global namespace; there is a per-unit namespace if you care to
use it. It existed before the term namespace was coined.
But, and this is the main thing:
The call for Delphi compatibility is MUCH larger than the call for ISO
or Extended ISO pascal.
If someone were to submit patches to improve the ISO-Pascal compatibility:
no problem, they would be accepted. Once upon a time, we had a gpc mode
(which is pretty much what ISO pascal is), but there is no demand for it,
so it died a quiet death.
Theorizing is nice, but sterile if no-one uses it in practice.
And in view of the large Delphi codebase: I think Borland didn't do such
a bad job of it.
Personally, I fail to understand what people are complaining about.
I make my programs with the tools available, and they work damn well.
Michael.
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