Lazarus 0.9.30 released

[Salvatore]

Look, ALL windows versions between 98 and win7 are listed, except WinXP, which is a most popular of them! It looks like a direct descrimination.

Windows ME is missing as well 

Windows ME
not a great loss!
I'm one of unlucky people that got it 

Thanks to all of you, developpers, reporters etc.!

[marcov]

There were bugreports about this. Afaik it does not work, because the widestring manager uses options not in NT4. After some discussion it was decided to copy NT4 from the officially supported list.

However maybe this can be circumvented by having an own NT4 widestring manager.

See http://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=18803

And you re-compile the fpc tools (and maybe even the compiler) with this NT4 widestring manager.

If they use widestrings. But afaik non do. Most use either (c)charset or none at all.

But that is regarded from the Unix side. There might be cases where win32 tools use widestring manager where they don't in Unix.

[xenblaise]

Lazarus kicks all the Languages, I told you before, this year?, Lazarus Lives at Top 10 most popular programming Language.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus/files/stats/timeline?dates=2011-01-01+to+2011-04-04

Go and spread that Lazarus lives and Rocks.

[Leledumbo]

Lazarus kicks all the Languages, I told you before, this year?, Lazarus Lives at Top 10 most popular programming Language.

Correction: Lazarus is the IDE, FPC is the compiler, (Object / Modern) Pascal is the language

[xenblaise]

detailed 

[Vincent Snijders]

However maybe this can be circumvented by having an own NT4 widestring manager.

See http://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=18803

And you re-compile the fpc tools (and maybe even the compiler) with this NT4 widestring manager.

If they use widestrings. But afaik non do. Most use either (c)charset or none at all.

But that is regarded from the Unix side. There might be cases where win32 tools use widestring manager where they don't in Unix.

FPCRES does use it. If doesn't use a correct widestring manager, it cannot build lazarus.

[marcov]

 
But that is regarded from the Unix side. There might be cases where win32 tools use widestring manager where they don't in Unix.

FPCRES does use it. If doesn't use a correct widestring manager, it cannot build lazarus.

It seems coffreader/write and resreader/writer use widestrings. Probably because certain strings in windows resource/binary structures are unicode.

One could argue if this really should be done over the widestring manager, but as said, I'm not terribly interested in fixing this at all. And even less so for NT4 as development system. (and for non-development (running lazarus files only) target, the widestringmgr fix is enough).

I don't like the idea that the RTL becomes a minefield due to  support for totally outdated targets that only one or two people can actually test on.   If it is really, really necessary, they should split off to a separate target, so that, like dos, the legacy platforms don't hinder general windows RTL progress.

Edited: fixed quoting.

[Jishaxe]

Cool, if I install it can I still keep my configuration and installed components?

[fabienwang]

no you'll have to reinstall your components

By the way, about the lazarus 0.9.30 release,
is it planned to submit packages to repositories like Ubuntu Debian etc. ?

To submit it on Debian Testing repository (for the next Debian version),
http://mentors.debian.net/cgi-bin/welcome



Thanks.

[Jishaxe]

no you'll have to reinstall your components

Ah, okay cheers

[TurboRascal]

Hum and what about the LCL win32/64 Jurassic look ?
No plan to have it more XXI millennium like ?

Huh?
Are you saying that your LCL apps look as in windoze <= 2000? LCL by default uses newer controls if available, not the "jurassic" ones...

Do you have XP Manifest option enabled for your projects? It should be checked by default...

Or are you referring to the few new components introduced by Vista?

[Fred vS]

@TurboRascal.

Hello  

Hum and what about the LCL win32/64 Jurassic look ?

In fact there are 2 objects i do not find very fine in Windows :

-ScrollBars.
-Trackbars.

See pictures : Linux GTK2 are good, Windows not too nice...

Do you have XP Manifest option enabled for your projects?

What that XP Manifest ? I do not understand  

Or are you referring to the few new components introduced by Vista?

Not really, but if it is possible to have trackbars-scrollbars with that look, why not...

By the way, thanks for the answer.  

[TurboRascal]

What that XP Manifest ? I do not understand 
...
... but if it is possible to have trackbars-scrollbars with that look, why not...

By the way, thanks for the answer. 

You're quite welcome

The so called "XP Manifest" is a thingy that makes programs use comctrls 6 which introduced more "modern looking" GUI widgets. Lazarus should do that by default, but you can check it under Project Options / Application (the very first item), the option is named Use Manifest File... and it should be checked.

However, on your Win32 screenshot the trackbars do look ancient... What components did you use exactly?

[Fred vS]

@ TurboRascal.

Thank-you for your answer.  

Code: [Select]

What components did you use exactly?
I use TTrackBar...

Code: [Select]

XP Manifest
Indeed, the components are more up-to-date (but trackbar is nearly the same).

But..., could you try this code in Windows 7 ?

Code: [Select]

unit Unit1;

{$mode objfpc}{$H+}

interface

uses

 Classes, SysUtils, FileUtil, Forms, Controls, Graphics, Dialogs, StdCtrls;

type

  { TForm1 }

  TForm1 = class(TForm)

  procedure FormCreate(Sender: TObject);

  private

    { private declarations }

  public

    { public declarations }

  end;

var

  Form1: TForm1;

implementation

{$R *.lfm}

{ TForm1 }

procedure TForm1.FormCreate(Sender: TObject);

begin

  if DirectoryExists(pchar('C:\Program Files\test')) then else

       ForceDirectories(pchar('C:\Program Files\test'));

   if DirectoryExists(pchar('C:\Program Files\test')) then

   MessageDlg('\test\ exists...'  ,mtInformation, [mbYes], 0)

   else MessageDlg('\test\ do not exist...'  ,mtWarning, [mbYes], 0) ;

 if DirectoryExists(pchar('C:\Program Files\test')) then

 removedir(pchar('C:\Program Files\test')) ;

   end;
         end;
end.
In Windows 7
First try to compile without Manifest enabled.
You should get message \test\ exists...
Now compile it with Manifest : the directory is not created and you get \test\ do NOT exist !

The new policy of Microsoft redirects all files created in C:\Program Files to
C:\Users\your_user_name\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\

It seems that Manifest do not care about that...

[TurboRascal]

In Windows 7
First try to compile without Manifest enabled.
You should get message \test\ exists...
Now compile it with Manifest : the directory is not created and you get \test\ do NOT exist !

The new policy of Microsoft redirects all files created in C:\Program Files to
C:\Users\your_user_name\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\

It seems that Manifest do not care about that...

I don't know much about win7, but I think that is what happens when an ordinary user tries to write to \Program Files  which is a system directory to which only an administrator i.e. user with elevated rights can write. You should not access the directory by hardcoding the path anyway - that would create problems for the non-English windows users which have that directory named according to their language. You should get the environment variable 'ProgramFiles' which will point you to the right directory.

And, I don't understand what has manifest file to do with this?