[DUG] Turbo Delphi
John Bird
johnkbird at paradise.net.nz
Thu Aug 10 22:28:50 NZST 2006
No one has mentioned yet......but it seems to me the other real platforms
for desktop applications would be wonderful to target for Delphi if it were
feasible. This is the "holy grail" of software development - GUI software
that could run on any platform. Think Windows. And OSX. And Linux......
So far a bit of this market has been done by Java and browser based
software. I personally am very impressed by the quality of a lot of the
browser software, think of the banking/airline and Google applications
(Gmail etc). For this reason I do all my help in HTML as the same files can
be used for help or put on the web. Maybe this is the way it will go more
in future....browser based rather than any compiled language?
This is getting quite visionary, but I am fairly sure this is where the big
achievement could be.....and certainly none of Microsoft or Apple or Sun or
any of the proprietary OS people can do it as they all want their own only
to dominate.
Anyone thought of Delphi for Apple OSX - with some kind of VCL to talk to
the Apple OS??? Imagine a language portable across Windows, Apple and/or
Ubuntu. And then there is the next generation of pc's - not pc's but smart
phones and PDA's etc. A language portable across all of these seems to me
to be the prime need of today.
If noone cracks it with a language like Delphi I am guessing more and more
software will end up being browser based, and browsers will continue to
expand sort of as the OS within an OS which are universally available......
or another approach was the PHP IDE that was based on the Delphi IDE but
generated PHP code instead (mentioned here some weeks back)....
I know it can be done if someone sets out to do it!!--well at least from
some practical experience--for 20 years I managed a suite of software that
was source code portable from PDP's to Windows to SCO Unix - it was not GUI
but was pretty sophisticated and complex all the same - and all the OS
differences were buried nicely in a few library calls that had conditional
compilation flags. (To this day clients are still running this software on
SCO, Linux and Windows). These library calls held all of the differences
between OS, versions of Windows (eg 9x and NT) and also several different
compilers used over the years....ie it was an abstraction layer, but not one
with a performance penalty as on each platform the code relevant for that
platform and compiler was the one compiled in using conditional compilation
flags.
For example to run or spawn a shell command there was a standard call used,
something like "RunCommand(Commandline)" , and inside this was code for
Windows 9x (which called Command/C) or Unix (called a system call to spawn a
Bourne shell), or NT/XP created a CMD/C shell. And so on. Similarly for
all screen handling, function key processing, file commands and printing,
and screen windowing etc...
The upshot was hundreds of source files that literally could be moved from a
Windows box to a Unix one and recompiled there with no editing. When the
library source files were altered, it meant just copying the source files
and setting the appropriate conditional compilation flags, and building the
library.
I am itching to see Delphi and Devco do something like this....but you have
to do it as fairly full and even on all platforms, not a rich brother and
poor brother as Delphi and Kylix look to have been. For Borland it would
mean designing a layer under the VCL that had a full implementation in
native Win32, .NET, OSX and linux calls......its a big project but it could
be done....but it in the end depends on how hopelessly wedded to the
underlying Win API Delphi really is.
I guess however MS would like to write Windows and .NET to make it as hard
as possible to do this though....making it deliberately different from how
other GUI's work.
I note that LINUX flags are still there right through the Delphi 2006 source
units (system, forms etc) if you go looking.....so maybe someone is
intending to use them again ;)
Here is an example from the top of Sysutils in Delphi....
{$IFDEF LINUX}
fmOpenRead = O_RDONLY;
fmOpenWrite = O_WRONLY;
fmOpenReadWrite = O_RDWR;
// fmShareCompat not supported
fmShareExclusive = $0010;
fmShareDenyWrite = $0020;
// fmShareDenyRead not supported
fmShareDenyNone = $0030;
{$ENDIF}
{$IFDEF MSWINDOWS}
fmOpenRead = $0000;
fmOpenWrite = $0001;
fmOpenReadWrite = $0002;
fmShareCompat = $0000 platform; // DOS compatibility mode is not
portable
fmShareExclusive = $0010;
fmShareDenyWrite = $0020;
fmShareDenyRead = $0030 platform; // write-only not supported on all
platforms
fmShareDenyNone = $0040;
{$ENDIF}
(I am betting these are still there for a reason.....it would not have been
much work to remove them....)
John
-----Original Message-----
From: delphi-bounces at ns3.123.co.nz [mailto:delphi-bounces at ns3.123.co.nz] On
Behalf Of Rob van der Linde
Sent: Thursday, 10 August 2006 6:32 p.m.
To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List
Subject: RE: [DUG] Turbo Delphi
I agree, Linux has changed a lot in the last two years. I am a strong
supporter of Ubuntu Linux, I just love that distro. We actually sell Ubuntu
based PC's as an alternative, the main target for Linux based PC's, believe
it or not is new users, that just want to play a few games and get on the
Internet, but don't want to go through the hassle of constantly getting
infected with spyware and viruses, which is the burden that comes with
running Windows. Off course they need to be notified that you cannot run all
off-the-self software, but then again there are often better and free
alternative programs available anyway, so most of these people seem to not
mind making this sacrifice so much anymore, and the current status of
spyware in Windows really helps this along. Ubuntu is a great alternative
for just browsing the net, chatting and playing basic games, even word
processing using Open Office, etc.
Ubuntu makes installing new applications a breeze too, in fact it's easier
than Windows, just click Add/Remove in the Applications menu, and tick what
you want, then it installs it directly over the Internet, you can't get any
easier than that. To new users, it is often easier than Windows. And there
are over 16 thousand packages available in the repository, so you can't
really say there isn't much software available for Linux anymore, those days
have long since gone.
On Thu, 2006-08-10 at 17:31 +1200, Paul Eggleton wrote:
> James Sugrue wrote on Thursday, 10 August 2006 12:04 p.m.:
> > It's fairly easy to blame Borland for the Kylix implementation five
> > years after the fact. A lot has happened in the Linux world since
> > then.
>
> True, but I think it's important to recognise why it didn't work out.
> I don't believe it's for the reasons that are usually given ("open
> source zealots prefer GCC").
>
> > At the time of release most Linux developers (probably still
> > are I guess) were complete zealots and used GCC and Emacs and
> > would never have paid for an IDE.
>
> But those people will never convert. The target market has to be
> commercial developers who are already building Windows applications
> and want to make them cross platform - but Kylix was not really very
> good for that because it was difficult and therefore expensive for a
> developer to port existing VCL applications, and developers of new
> applications would have struggled with the limitations of CLX. If it
> was much easier, and there was a business advantage (eg. reduced
> platform licensing costs) in providing a Linux version then I'm sure
> many companies would be interested.
>
> > I still think Linux is way over hyped, particularly on the
> > Business Desktop.
>
> Personally I'd say it's not hyped enough, or at least not in the right
> way. I have found that many of the people who criticize Linux either
> have not used it recently or haven't even tried it seriously at all.
> That's not to say Linux is perfect, but in my opinion it has already
> reached a stage where it is usable for many desktop users. Surely if
> Linux is to make any further headway on the desktop it *will* be on
> the business desktop, because that's the place where administrators
> take care of setting up the system and solving any technical issues.
>
> Cheers,
> Paul
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> Paul Eggleton Ph: +64-9-4154790
> Software Developer Fax: +64-9-4154791
> CJN Technologies Ltd. DDI: +64-9-4154795
> http://www.cjntech.co.nz Email: paule at cjntech.co.nz
> ---------------------------------------------------------
>
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