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Author Topic: [CLOSED] What is the Pascal convention?  (Read 9088 times)

guest65109

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Re: What is the Pascal convention?
« Reply #45 on: January 13, 2020, 05:04:21 pm »
Please do not say it is stupid or ridiculous before you really understand the reasons. It's only make you seem like a troll. I don't know why you gone but came back again and again. But I'm glad to see, your language now 'better' than previously. That's a good improvement.

So you recognized me? I'm not a troll. At least, I'm not intended to be but somehow I behaved exactly like one. If you want to know, the reason is: I expected too much from Free Pascal and Lazarus because people here are too good at convincing. Anytime I concluded Free Pascal and Lazarus sucks, they could counter me and through their words every faults come back into myself. It's always my faults but not Free Pascal and Lazarus. I'm partially convinced and try again and again. Another factor is I want my programs, if I could make any, could be compiled and run across all of the platforms I used: windows, linux, 4 bsds, openindiana and haikuos. Only Free Pascal and Lazarus could fulfill this, apart from Java. I started from Java, but I never really love it. I found it to be complicated. Plus many bashing arguments from people there. Finally, I realized. I don't like the RAD approach at all. I'm happy with console programs. I have to admit, Object Pascal as a language is better than C and simpler than C++. I could do these console programs in any language, but I choose Pascal, because of the Lazarus IDE. It is not the best IDE but it will compile and available everywhere. For example, NetBSD. You could check on pkgsrc.se they really has many IDEs for many languages available. But the fact is, none of them really work. Some of them even not possible to build, you see the port for them but there is no binary packages to install them because the porter themselves, can't get the software to be build. The FOSS world is Linux centric, making any efforts the port software to non Linux platforms even Unix based, is a nontrivial task. With Lazarus, I have a good enough IDE for the OS I use. The fact is I use so many OSes, the same Lazarus IDE running across all of them, I would definitely prefer one IDE, one language other than a bunch of languages and different IDEs that I can't even possible to learn all of them. If you in my position, I'm sure you would choose like me. But Lazarus has problem with displaying the output of console programs on platforms other than windows. I have asked the developers so many times, a virtual terminal emulator, or vte, is the answer for everything, but they always ignore me or ask me to provide patches myself. You know, if I could provide these patches, I would happily with the gui programs development, no need for console programs, at all. I expected from Free Pascal and Lazarus so much. This is my biggest fault. This expectation, and the stress, converted into hate.

marcov

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Re: What is the Pascal convention?
« Reply #46 on: January 13, 2020, 05:50:39 pm »
My suggestion is, try to develop a 'real' software instead of a hello world program. Maybe a simple game, stock control, personal todo and note book. By doing a real project, then you will see the beauty of Pascal, you will understand why readability and maintainability is important and why the conventions are needed. Experience it yourself is best way to learn.

One learns the most from projects where one can't change the conditions/deliverables to suit a favoured (easy) solution. E.g. an administration application for some local non-profit is the ultimate test I think.

MarkMLl

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Re: What is the Pascal convention?
« Reply #47 on: January 13, 2020, 05:58:53 pm »
One learns the most from projects where one can't change the conditions/deliverables to suit a favoured (easy) solution. E.g. an administration application for some local non-profit is the ultimate test I think.

One learns even more when ones boss can- and does change things, without regard to the ease of solution.

MarkMLl
MT+86 & Turbo Pascal v1 on CCP/M-86, multitasking with LAN & graphics in 128Kb.
Pet hate: people who boast about the size and sophistication of their computer.
GitHub repositories: https://github.com/MarkMLl?tab=repositories

Handoko

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Re: [CLOSED] What is the Pascal convention?
« Reply #48 on: January 13, 2020, 06:10:22 pm »
@mr.coll

I knew you're not a troll. And yeah, impatient and expecting too much can sometimes cause problems.

Actually, it's not fully your fault nor Lazarus/FPC nor someone else. You're wanting some features but they haven't implemented yet.

And what you said about the console issue, we knew about it. On recent Lazarus 2.0.6 Linux, I clearly saw some improvements about the Console Output, but still it hasn't really solve the problem. I rarely write console programs. But I if do, I usually test running it directly from the Terminal not Console Output window.

The great thing about Lazarus/FPC is it has a lot of awesome features unfortunately some of them still need works to be really useful. And the biggest challenge is - I guess you already know - manpower.

Hey, you can help. You don't need to be clever enough to write the patch yourself. If you find something not working as what it should be, instead of complaining, you can provide the details. Steps to reproduce, the source code, screenshots, etc. So the developers will be able to understand and solve the issue faster.

And please be patient. Fixing bugs isn't an easy task. I'm very good fixing my own bugs but there were times I tried fix the bugs in the Bugtracker, unfortunately I can't. They were too hard for me. If you visit the Bugtracker, there you will see the developers are really working hard fixing them. But there are too many items in the list.
« Last Edit: January 13, 2020, 06:15:15 pm by Handoko »

bee

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Re: [CLOSED] What is the Pascal convention?
« Reply #49 on: January 14, 2020, 02:11:16 am »
I write a lot of console programs, especially for Linux, because I made a lot of web services and server tools using Free Pascal. If you don't do GUI programming, I think Lazarus IDE is overkill. And its console window is still unable to handle ANSI code and unicode correctly.

My favourite editor to write console program using Free Pascal is Microsoft's VS Code with OmniPascal extension. VS Code's integrated terminal panel is awesome. Also its git built-in integration, ability to connect to remote server through ssh, etc are also very useful and better than Lazarus IDE. Using VS Code, you don't need Lazarus IDE, just pure FPC (the compiler, RTL, and FCL).

I've written a tutorial how to use Free Pascal with VS Code, but it's written in Bahasa Indonesia. You may use Google Translate to read it in you favourite language though. You may read it here. In that blog, I also wrote some other Pascal tutorials (using VS Code) as well.
-Bee-

A long time pascal lover.

guest65109

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Re: [CLOSED] What is the Pascal convention?
« Reply #50 on: January 14, 2020, 05:44:08 am »
I'm not yet give up on Free Pascal and Lazarus. I fired up VirtualBox and setup the free trial Windows 7 IE Development image from Microsoft. You know how disappointed I am? Lazarus can't rebuild itself because of an stupid error:
Quote
Fatal: Unable to open file C:UsersIEUserAppDataLocallazarusidemake.cfg -di386
I have to use the version from getlazarus.org because it's already docked.

MarkMLl

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Re: [CLOSED] What is the Pascal convention?
« Reply #51 on: January 14, 2020, 10:01:10 am »
I write a lot of console programs, especially for Linux, because I made a lot of web services and server tools using Free Pascal. If you don't do GUI programming, I think Lazarus IDE is overkill. And its console window is still unable to handle ANSI code and unicode correctly.

I did some work on that about a year ago. From what I could see the major issue is a Pascal language one, i.e. how to accept a stream (term used loosely) of arbitrary data from gdb and emit is as either 8-bit codepoints or UTF-8 etc.

MarkMLl
MT+86 & Turbo Pascal v1 on CCP/M-86, multitasking with LAN & graphics in 128Kb.
Pet hate: people who boast about the size and sophistication of their computer.
GitHub repositories: https://github.com/MarkMLl?tab=repositories

marcov

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Re: What is the Pascal convention?
« Reply #52 on: January 14, 2020, 10:41:01 am »
One learns the most from projects where one can't change the conditions/deliverables to suit a favoured (easy) solution. E.g. an administration application for some local non-profit is the ultimate test I think.

One learns even more when ones boss can- and does change things, without regard to the ease of solution.

Yes. I'd generalize that to not being entirely top-down overviewable at the start. It is the first thing you learn after college. Specs are not always up front, not always logic or complete and not always set in stone.

Due to PHB or other reasons. Firsts of its kind often has intrinsic problems too, working with remote customers too.

guest65109

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Re: [CLOSED] What is the Pascal convention?
« Reply #53 on: January 14, 2020, 12:05:03 pm »
I'm using the Free Pascal text IDE. Glad that it also works on Linux. But on systems other than Linux and Windows, it's broke. It seemed it's some issues with curses so mouse click will not work under the terminal emulator.

Frankly, no one care about the text mode IDE at all because everything now focus on the superior Lazarus IDE. I hope the text mode IDE should get more attention.

MarkMLl

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Re: [CLOSED] What is the Pascal convention?
« Reply #54 on: January 14, 2020, 12:27:41 pm »
Frankly, no one care about the text mode IDE at all because everything now focus on the superior Lazarus IDE. I hope the text mode IDE should get more attention.

Congratulations, and we all look forward to seeing your patches :-)

It's a while since I've looked at the text IDE on Solaris, but I'm pretty sure that I had it working. I agree that the mouse side is a problem, but in fairness we didn't have that sort of thing in the late Turbo Pascal era which is approximately what that IDE seeks to emulate. What other OSes are you interested in here, and do they actually have any text-mode mouse support?

Way back, MS had a Visual Basic IDE for DOS which was really not at all bad: the only downside is that you had to swap between form designer and editor modes due to memory etc. limitations. I've always felt that it was a great pity that something like that wasn't available for Linux etc. using Curses.

MarkMLl
MT+86 & Turbo Pascal v1 on CCP/M-86, multitasking with LAN & graphics in 128Kb.
Pet hate: people who boast about the size and sophistication of their computer.
GitHub repositories: https://github.com/MarkMLl?tab=repositories

lucamar

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Re: [CLOSED] What is the Pascal convention?
« Reply #55 on: January 14, 2020, 03:00:22 pm »
[...] in fairness we didn't have that sort of thing in the late Turbo Pascal era which is approximately what that IDE seeks to emulate.

Mouse support was introduced in Turbo Pascal's IDE in version 6.0, in 1990, with the advent of Turbo Vision. The problems in Free Pascal IDE's mouse support arise basically from its multi-platform nature and the differing way each OS has of managing the rodent; much more so when the IDE has to "mmic" TP and appear to work exactly the same in all platforms. It's not exactly an easy task and it is worsened by the lack of development, modernization and maintenance of Free Vision.

Which is really a pity: there's still place in the world for a modern, advanced TUI framework. :(
Turbo Pascal 3 CP/M - Amstrad PCW 8256 (512 KB !!!) :P
Lazarus/FPC 2.0.8/3.0.4 & 2.0.12/3.2.0 - 32/64 bits on:
(K|L|X)Ubuntu 12..18, Windows XP, 7, 10 and various DOSes.

bee

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Re: [CLOSED] What is the Pascal convention?
« Reply #56 on: January 14, 2020, 03:11:53 pm »
Sometimes it's easier to just work from a remote machine, even from within the same local network. That's what I've done since I knew VS Code. I could work on my local Raspberry Pi or my remote Linux VPS from my lovely Macbook Pro using Free Pascal with VS Code through ssh. No need to work directly on the target machine. I think ssh does work on BSDs, am I right? :)
-Bee-

A long time pascal lover.

MarkMLl

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Re: [CLOSED] What is the Pascal convention?
« Reply #57 on: January 14, 2020, 03:27:14 pm »
I think ssh does work on BSDs, am I right? :)

I believe so, but mouse support (libgpm) possibly doesn't- particularly remotely.

MarkMLl
MT+86 & Turbo Pascal v1 on CCP/M-86, multitasking with LAN & graphics in 128Kb.
Pet hate: people who boast about the size and sophistication of their computer.
GitHub repositories: https://github.com/MarkMLl?tab=repositories

marcov

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Re: [CLOSED] What is the Pascal convention?
« Reply #58 on: January 14, 2020, 03:40:33 pm »
I'm using the Free Pascal text IDE. Glad that it also works on Linux. But on systems other than Linux and Windows, it's broke. It seemed it's some issues with curses so mouse click will not work under the terminal emulator.

Frankly, no one care about the text mode IDE at all because everything now focus on the superior Lazarus IDE. I hope the text mode IDE should get more attention.

A bit. After Lazarus matured in 2007-2008 new development for the textmode IDE petered out. But that was also a bit because the few devels doing it simply lost steam. Peter left FPC, and Pierre is still there, but doesn't work on Lazarus.

I from time to time also tried to further it (e.g. replacing the helpsystem with the CHM based system), but realized that  the textmode IDE has a hopelessly dated design ( copy of something early nineties pieced together from clones):
  • Turbo Pascal (not Delphi) object model
  • Turbo Pascal (not Delphi) string support (255 chars max)
  • no unicode
  • TUI entirely managed in code, no designer, hard to maintain
  • Streaming also manual. No RTTI

So basically if you really want to further it, you need to start over and bring the textmode system to Delphi technology (late nineties).

And yes, the sad state of *nix consoles (difficult to program, variable, underdocumented) doesn't help either.

The textmode IDE always has worked best with XTerm.




guest65109

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Re: [CLOSED] What is the Pascal convention?
« Reply #59 on: January 14, 2020, 04:32:04 pm »
Sometimes it's easier to just work from a remote machine, even from within the same local network. That's what I've done since I knew VS Code. I could work on my local Raspberry Pi or my remote Linux VPS from my lovely Macbook Pro using Free Pascal with VS Code through ssh. No need to work directly on the target machine. I think ssh does work on BSDs, am I right? :)

X11 port forwarding over ssh? How could you do this with an heavy gui software like VS Code without unbearable lagging, I wonder? Do you use solution like NX or X2Go?

 

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