On Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:24:46 -0300, Marcos Douglas <m...@delfire.net> wrote:
>> I think I must learn GUI programming with Java and port the code. Java is >> already installed on those machines and runs for sure. >> The other choise is to boot Windows XP on my mini-laptop, install Lazarus >> there and build the program, then send the binary to my friend. He lives >> 250 >> km away and I don't drive there now. > > If you don't have Java installed then broke. If you use another > version of Java then broke. If you change anything.. broke! > Java works, this is true. But he has the same (even worst) problems. > >> Write once, compile everywhere. Right yeah... >> > > This is more true (and more realistic) than Java: write and run everywhere. Indeed. I wrote several extensions for OpenOffice.org in Java and for some time even tried to use the GUI Widgets from Java (Swing). It worked fine on both of my development machines and I assumed, it would just run everywhere else too (where Java is available). Then a Mac user came by and told me that my extension crashed his installation. After getting my hands on a Mac I was able to see the problem: the Java VM that is shipped with MacOS is a bit different from the others ... some packages are different and the rules for opening new dialogs/frames were completely different. In the end I had to either handle Mac completely different or rewrite the whole extension to use more calls to the OpenOffice.org API instead of relying on it's native packages. I have no idea how I would have handled that if it wasn't just an extension/plugin but should have been a full standalone app. Either way it taught me that I definitely can't trust Java to "just run everywhere". Without testing and if necessary platform specific workarounds/fixes, it just doesn't/can't work, if the apps are complex enough. In the end I'm still faster writing apps in Lazarus and compiling them for the target platform than I am writing them in Java and searching workaround for all those corner cases. Just my two cents. Best Regards, Andreas. -- _______________________________________________ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus