On Monday 23 July 2001 17:53, Claudio Saccavini wrote:
> We believe that Open Source is not against someone (Windows) but Open
> Source means free knowledge.
> We choose to develope our project using Delphi & Kylix (Borland) in order
> to use the software with Windows or Linux: the operative system is a free
> choice of the user himself.
> What do you think about this solution?
Although I have grown up with Pascal (Turbo Pascal, to be specific) and I
still like the benefits of Pascal (a safe and *readable* programming
language), especially in it's newer object oriented incarnations, I would not
use Kylix/Delphi for a number of reasons:
1.) Borland/Inprise show similar attitudes as Microsoft. Their products have
a limited life span in order to focre the customer to buy new products or
upgrades. That had been fatal in the case of Turbo Pascal, where I
wentthrough the 3rd party library upgrade rigmarole with eachand every
version from 3.0 - I said STOP to this nonsense at version 7.0.
2.) Kylix/Delphi limits you to only Linux and Windows. There are more
platforms out there
3.) When you develop open source, you want to speak the same language as the
open sourcers. While there are Delphi compatible free Pascal compilers
available, they are not much used yet (lack of 3rd party libraries probably
the reason).
4.) GUI libraries like QT or wxWindows (www.wxwindows.org) give you some
STANDARD, they give you a guarantee that you will be able to use them in the
future (due to source availability), and they are more portable (especially
including Macs). wxWindows is really free, available for C, C++, Perl, Python
on Windows, GTK (Linux/Unixes), Motif (GTK/Unixes), Macs (incl. OS/X), OS/2
in work, and a universal "easiest port" framebuffer almost finished. Writing
a wrapper for FreePascal or the gcc Pascal compiler would probably take the
best of a weekened, and then you could use it from those too if your heart is
with Delphi.
QT has a free GUI designer tool available (QT Designer, excellent!), and
wxWindows at preseent only a commercial one (wxDesigner, www.roebling.de -
written by a German MD, costs some $80 or a fraction of that for students)
but an open source one is in progress (wxWorkshop). wxDesigner doubles as a
RAD IDE, and in fact you can produce portable user interfaces in no time with
it (and the output in wxDesigner is pure source code in C++, Python, Perl or
XML)
Thus, my advice would be:
- if your heart is with Delphi, use FreePascal or gcc Pascal. Write a wrapper
for wxWindows or QT. This opens you vast personal ressources as more *open
source* fevelopers will be familiar ith those tools (and willing to write
free software with them).
- if the language is not that crucial, rather switch to C++ and Python, as
even more people will rush into your project wiling to help. We could even
join some efforts between projects (like with our gnumed)
Horst
