Improving Lazarus IDE...

[marcov]

Then you should simply agree that it is better and only state that nobody have time to implement it so far as usual.

If I would agree, I would have agreed. Your style of argumentation is very annoying.

[eny]

Then you should simply agree that it is better and only state that nobody have time to implement it so far as usual.
Eclipse, Netbeans, Visual Studio, Monodevelop, Codeblocks, Monkey Studio, Embarcadero RAD Studio, mikroelekronika IDE and many more already proved it is better.

Those people in England must be really stupid that they still are driving on the left hand side of the road.
The main land has proven that right side driving is much better because so many more do it....

In other words: you can have your opinion but please don't state it as a fact and don't try to enforce it on others.

[Leledumbo]

Then you should simply agree that it is better and only state that nobody have time to implement it so far as usual.

Should I? Well I don't think I should, even if all other ever existing or future IDEs use docked interface, doesn't mean having undocked interface is worse. When you say it's better then at some point it becomes the default, many previous users will start complaining. We can't satisfy everybody, that's why many things are given as a choice. Install what you need, don't force others to follow.

[JanRoza]

Like I already said before: it's all a matter of taste.
And you can't force a taste on someone, it's personal.
You like, I hate it, or the other way around but it's just your personal taste.
How many people are there on this planet? Well that's how many personal tastes you have.

[Deepaak]

It is matter of taste, for me anchordocking makes lazarus a cool studio, but if forms are docked it will really be awesome,

The main reason for this argument is some developers came from docked ide era and some from undocked ide era. Here everyone is right,

I can only say lets join together and make Lazarus a better ide then others, some thing really cool. Why not there's be a option for docked form and undocked form,

For every programmer ide is the first place for starting a project. So it really does matter. Everybody can share their thought and code for making the ide even better.

[Chronos]

...

Yeah, useless fighting is last what is needed here. I just wrote my opinion founded by some known facts. You can think that docked IDE is crap but industry already proved that it is useful and desired. This is not my point of view, it is simple measurable fact. I can provide links to screenshots for many mentioned IDEs if you want.

Then your "so called" counter argument is funny because in case of left or right side driving non is better or worse. I am not aware of any logical argument for neither. It have only some historic background...

it's all a matter of taste.

I am not aware I wrote somewhere that docked IDE should be only option. Delphi IDE already demonstrated since version 2006 that docked IDE is useful and it can be simply turned off to old undocked style. Project leaders should decide which should be default.
So discussion shouldn't be made about which one you love or hate. You don't want to tell me, that Lazarus is ugly because old Turbo Pascal turbo vision text mode is cool.

Anchordocking is on good way but lack some significant features to be useful in real world.

And yes, I am aware that FPC & Lazarus are volunteer projects and great effort was put into them. I was also able to create some commercial product with Lazarus after all. But that all it is simply not enough. There are many challenges what are not addressed for many years. And there are not even signs that something should change in near future. That is why I am somehow upset and not polite.

Maybe answer to kamrava, who just registered to give us a feed back what something is not so good as one might think, should be: "Welcome to Lazarus community. Yes, this feature is planned and not yet implemented." Then add link to bugtracker record with description of issue/new feature) similar as we can answer by posting wiki link. Simple and effective yet with professional approach. Also some info about ways to support project can be given.

For now I can do only one thing to help, offer 1000 EUR bounty to implement components for "damn" docked IDE. As it may look simple there many issues what have to be solved before docking could be successfully implemented. Open source model is clear here, project code is open and free but somebody have to pay development or devote own time to move project forward.

Live long and prosper...

[JuhaManninen]

For now I can do only one thing to help, offer 1000 EUR bounty to implement components for "damn" docked IDE. As it may look simple there many issues what have to be solved before docking could be successfully implemented. Open source model is clear here, project code is open and free but somebody have to pay development or devote own time to move project forward.

You have offered this 1000 EUR earlier, too. I think you are serious about it.
Currently I am out of job (and income) and I might be interested.
However I don't know much about AnchorDocking and I would be asking questions from Mattias who knows.
A fair deal would be to split the sum half/half between me and Mattias, in case he can spend time for it. I must ask him.
The clear goals must be agreed and the money is delivered only after they are fulfilled.

If someone else is eager to accept the bounty and implement the missing features, I am happily with it. For some reason there were not any eager people taking your first offer though.

[JanRoza]

I know that CodeTyphon is working on their version 4.30 that should have a docked Lazarus IDE.
Should be out any day now.
Maybe Sternas can enlighting us about it, as it may be what you want.

[Giu]

@chronos

You must understand thath, 80% in this forum? Comes from earlier versions of Delphi when anchor was not an important factor. I'm sure for many people anchordocking is so important but when you are accustomed to one thing, it's difficult to change. Me (and a lot of this forums I guess), for example, don't have time to invest in anchordocking due to time and lack of knowledge of Laz architecture, sum to this, I'm happy how Laz works now. Maybe, if anchordocking works ok, i'll be happy to try and who knows, change to this behaviour, but its not a priority for me, because, as I said, I'm happy how it is right now. For me could be most important right now to get a more visual IDE and apps, a better visual appearance to report designer, forms inheritance, and so on (just examples)

For now I can do only one thing to help, offer 1000 EUR bounty to implement components for "damn" docked IDE. As it may look simple there many issues what have to be solved before docking could be successfully implemented. Open source model is clear here, project code is open and free but somebody have to pay development or devote own time to move project forward.

You have all my respect on this. It's normal this in opensource. People works on bug fixing, and improvements everyone needs or have time to invest. I think bounties is one of the best things this project has over other open source projects.

@janroza

I know that CodeTyphon is working on their version 4.30 that should have a docked Lazarus IDE.
Should be out any day now.
Maybe Sternas can enlighting us about it, as it may be what you want.

And this improvement is open source?

[zamtmn]

Giu

Me (and a lot of this forums I guess), for example, don't have time to invest in anchordocking due to time and lack of knowledge of Laz architecture, sum to this, I'm happy how Laz works now. Maybe, if anchordocking works ok, i'll be happy to try and who knows, change to this behaviour, but its not a priority for me, because, as I said, I'm happy how it is right now

Of course everyone has their own interests. But without a docking application does not appear on the modern. It's light and right way to give the user ability to customize the interface as it needs. In my opinion AnchorDocking and TCoolBar are very important.
Unfortunately except for communication in our bugtracker my knowledge does not allow help((

[JuhaManninen]

I know that CodeTyphon is working on their version 4.30 that should have a docked Lazarus IDE.
Should be out any day now.
Maybe Sternas can enlighting us about it, as it may be what you want.

Sternas has been rather secretive about their policies. For example the question "why do they always fork instead of contributing back?" is still not answered.

Is their docking solution based on Anchordocking or is it their own new system? And indeed, is it GPL?
Their modifications for IDE code must remain GPL, but they can provide installable packages with a different license.

My interpretation of the situation is:
CodeTyphon is building a fully integrated solution with a professional attitude. They have a clear vision and they put it in action. They fork everything because then they have full control over their development. Otherwise they would have to argue with geeks on mailing lists and furums which is (admittedly) mostly wasted time.

Sternas Stefanos and CodeTyphon somehow remind me of Mark Shuttleworth and Ubuntu.
Mark Shuttleworth has great social and business skills, and a vision of what had to be done. He made Ubuntu the best and most popular Linux distro in just ~2 years. He also dumped the original Debian compliant repositories so that he could improve the system instead of arguing endlessly with some Debian geeks. Even the latest development clearly has a vision of bringing Ubuntu to future devices.

My prediction is that CodeTyphon will make Lazarus project obsolete in maybe 5 years. Same thing happens with many of the libraries they forked.
Is it bad? No, the quality of SW matters. If they make a better system then Lazarus deserves to be obsolete.
Maybe they hire some Lazarus core developers then ...

This traditional open source model has serious problems. An example is this fruitless arguing about if docking is good or bad.
This kind of discussion should go to FaceBook. There could be thumb buttons for "I like docking" and "I don't like docking".
Another example was the infamous endless splash-screen discussion.
The fact is that in this kind of non-professional environment the "signal/noise ratio" drops very low. Very little substance (source code, documentation...) is created to balance the endless debates. Sad but true.

[JanRoza]

I fully agree with you Juha.
When the new CodeTyphon comes out i'll try to find out what the licence status is.
Better would be if Sternas would explain it here himself, he knows best and we have the same goal in mind: a better Pascal development environment.

[Chronos]

If I talked about forms docking a didn't mean Anchordocking. Although it supports some "advanced" docked positioning, I would rather choose more traditional simpler way with hierarchical structure as RAD Studio and many other does. In the end it may supports some more complicated positioning but now we even haven't working components for "simple" docking.

Also I should write some contract specification. It may be described simple as "be able to do what RAD Studio can". But there are some limitations even with RAD Studio solution which could be "enhanced".

I can summarize some of my previous goals during docking implementation:

• allow hierarchical dock region division
• Support PageControl style docking style
• Support animated popup forms with pinning (TDockTabSet style)
• be able to save/load layout/desktop to (streams, file, registry, xml, ini)
• Allow to change visual look&feel (colors, fonts, buttons)
• allow lock/unlock docking to prevent accidentally undock something
• Offer prebuild customization dialog (manage layouts, multilingual interface)
• multiplatform support (hard to maintain but windows and gtk2 is really required, qt and apple os support would be good)
• Allow to switch on/off to support "old undocked style"

Bounty would be paid to one person. It is up to him how he will manage to get work done and to who want he pay part of bounty.

After all it will be good experiment and way of supporting free software with "pay for feature" open source model.

I should create wiki page which should collect all useful informations to help achieve the goal.

[JuhaManninen]

CodeTyphon 4.3 is out. I downloaded and installed it. This is the first time I am really checking what it has.
The amount of bundled components is impressive, yes.
There are some changes in the IDE, too, but I don't see any docking solution other than AnchorDocking which has no improvements over the Lazarus version.
Can somebody please verify this.

Some IDE changes are good, for example the down arrow at the end of component palette. Otherwise the IDE is too crowded already because of their new toolbar and the massive component palette.
Usually I only need few external libs installed at one time. All others are just useless distraction. In practice my productivety would possibly drop with CodeTyphon compared to Lazarus.

I must correct a little my earlier comment. Yes, after 5 years CodeTyphon may indeed be the system that most people want to install, but Lazarus will not be obsolete. I should have thought it more before writing.
Lazarus development has good speed. There are new ideas boiling and waiting on ToDo lists. Some core developers are extremely talented.
CodeTyphon will have hard times making a better IDE than Lazarus. Untill now they have concentrated on easy installation, component bundle and cross-compilation. Those are good ways to differentiate their product, but now they have decided to fork Lazarus IDE, and it was a stupid move IMO!
The more they change their fork, the more difficult it gets for them to merge improvements from Lazarus.
If Lazarus was a dying abandoned project, their fork would make sense. Now it does not.
My new prediction is that they will realize the problem at some point and maybe start contributing to Lazarus project.

Comparing with Linux distros, Lazarus matches better with Linux kernel, while CodeTyphon matches with a distro.
None of the Linux kernel forks has become popular because the kernel development is healthy, strong and well organized. Lazarus development must do the same.

So, I am taking my words back partly. Making such forking decision, Sternas Stefanos is not as clever as Mark Shuttleworth.
I would love to read Sternas' own opinion on this issue.

[miquelmatas]

There are some changes in the IDE, too, but I don't see any docking solution other than AnchorDocking which has no improvements over the Lazarus version.
Can somebody please verify this.

Dear Juha,

Please, drag yellow borders window on to other window.