On 18/11/2007, Ciprian Mustiata <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> What are the long term benefits:
> - will hopefully became the newbie version of Lazarus
> - will offer a mini-framework on top of LCL, so it will remove a lot of
> "hand-made" designed code
> - it will not have to be a 100% compliant rule UI as much as wants to be
> more proffesionist, so it will get best benefits as is more redesigned (for
> sure not all solutions will be optimum, but will be good enough to take for
> granted)
My 2c worth....
Our company switched completely from Delphi 7 to FPC/Lazarus three
years ago. We have no regrets to this day! One thing I have learned
over these three years is that I now distinguish between the Lazarus
IDE and the LCL. I start talking about them as separate subjects
because they (in my mind) have different goals.
In summary....
* I love the Lazarus IDE. It has plenty of neat features over
Delphi 7. It doesn't try to
be 100% compatible and can invent new ideas or solutions to problems.
* I hate wizards. They are overrated and tend to treat the developer
as an idiot! If you
want wizards, implement them as separate packages.
* I don't like the LCL. To complex design and difficult to maintain
the widget layers. You
fix one thing and break another. This happens over and over again.
Also this is where it differs from the IDE's goals and why I talk
about them as separate
subjects. LCL has a goal which will only work 'in theory'. LCL is
trying to catch a ever
moving target and tries to be to much compatible with VCL. It has
done a great job so
far, but all still a pipe dream as far as I'm concerned.
Copycat products (feature-to-feature) will always come in a
distant second place to the
original product. Also you limit your scope for being creative
with new solutions to old problems.
This is why I created fpGUI. I'm not trying to be VCL compatible, but
also not as radically different as MSEgui. A nice middle ground and it
gives me the scope to be creative (if I want) with some design
choices. I use Lazarus as my IDE of choice and fpGUI as my widget
toolkit. This works beautifully. I also don't mind implementing new
features or bug fixes to the IDE. Extending the IDE is great and
relatively easy to accomplish. I have no objections in supporting the
IDE and have done so over the last three years and will continue to do
so in the future. Lazarus (as in the IDE) has given me a lot and I
will return the favour. Ciprian, ever thought of looking at fpGUI
for that fork? ;-)
Regards,
- Graeme -
_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/
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