Hi, I have just downloaded FPC 2.4.4 and Lazarus 0.9.30 from SourceForge. This is the first time I use any development tools under Mac OS X, so this is the experience from a "newbie" point of view [yes, I'm normally working under Linux only]. I hope you take these comments as constructive criticism and not as negative ranting.
1) The Lazarus installer displayed a readme file. There was many punctuation errors in the readme file displayed. 2) The readme files font was rather small (compared to my experience with other Mac software installations that also display readme files). 3) Kudos for placing a Lazarus IDE icon in the Applications folder. Xcode's installation didn't do it, and I had to hunt through the filesystem to find the executable of Xcode. :-) 4) My application dock is aligned to the left edge of my screen - unlike the default bottom centre. Launching Lazarus IDE for the first time, the Object Inspector and the Main Form of the IDE was hidden behind the dock. I've got a screenshot of it if that will help explain it. 5) The main form of the IDE was HUGE. Spanning the whole width of the iMac's display. That just looked totally out of place, but that's maybe just my opinion. 6) The default font in the Lazarus Source window is absolutely hideous! Very pixelated and not anti-aliased. Going to the editor settings, it said it is using Monaco-12, but what is actually being used is a mystery, because it definitely was not Monaco font. I launched the font dialog to select a different font. The OS font dialog showed a preview of Monaco font, and again - nothing like what is used in the editor. I have a screenshot of that too, if it will help. Selecting Monaco-12 in the font dialog and closing the dialog, Lazarus IDE did not update the editor font. I had to physically change the font size to something other than 12pt before the editor options preview window updated. Strangely enough, select Close to accept the new editor changes, the editor font still displayed the very pixelated text. Still not Monaco font either. It seems Lazarus IDE doesn't like Monaco font at all. :) 7) Still being stuck on the unknown font in the editor window, there is some rather strange behaviours. eg: Select a line of text from left to right makes the text "jiggle" (changing there widths) as I select more and more text. 8) To got the source code editor to some sane font, I had to resort to selecting a totally different font, Courier-13 for example, and pressing OK, finally updated the editor. But still the editor text is not anti-aliased, which it was in the Options Dialog preview window! Anyway, that's my first experience with Lazarus IDE under Mac OS X 10.6.6 on my iMac. Using Lazarus 0.9.30 r30219 FPC 2.4.2 i386-darwin-carbon (as downloaded from SourceForge). Anyway, it wasn't a very impressive first impression of Lazarus. Just thought I would mention this. It seems the Mac version still needs a LOT of work. -- Regards, - Graeme - _______________________________________________ fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit http://fpgui.sourceforge.net -- _______________________________________________ Lazarus mailing list [email protected] http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
