[DUG] Embarcadero article

[David Brennan]

Fair points, but then it isn't really cross platform is it if you can't
single source your application? It is just one more way to develop
applications for Macs or Linux. Now maybe if there is a real dearth of
visual development tools for those OS's then it makes business sense for
them to try to fill that niche... but without single source compilation to
multiple platforms doesn't it become rather incidental that it is Delphi?

For what it is worth the reason CLX died in my view was that it was a
completely new VCL. For us to use it we would have had to completely redo
the interface for our application which made it something we never even
considered.

As for VCL.NET, the reason that died is that there was very little point in
it. If you could already compile your Delphi application and run it on a
Win32 computer then do you really care about running the same application
more slowly under .NET on a Win32 computer? 

BTW I agree with you that you want the application to look native on each OS
if you can manage it. I also agree that user interaction schemes differ etc.
I don't know what the answer is to all this. I do know that we wouldn't mind
compiling our application to run on different OS's BUT we have no interest
at all in developing and maintaining multiple GUI's for it. This probably
means we aren't the target audience which makes sense to me - I just don't
know who is the target audience.

David.


-----Original Message-----
From: delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz [mailto:delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz] On
Behalf Of Jolyon Smith
Sent: Monday, 15 June 2009 8:03 p.m.
To: 'NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List'
Subject: Re: [DUG] Embarcadero article

|> I just don't see it working unless it is possible to take
|> sophisticated applications using the current VCL (ie VCL32) and 
|> with some effort but not a complete rewrite <snip> modify the 
|> code using ifdefs etc so that you have single source that can compile
|> to either platform.

I disagree.  This is exactly the approach that Borland tried to take with
VCL.NET with disastrous results.  Even in that case, where the GUI "toolkit"
was essentially the same, a simple "recompile for this platform" approach
results in an application that is not well suited for the platform at all.
Far from it.

In the case of the Mac and Linux, those platforms are also quite visually
different and in the case of the Mac in particular provide a quite different
interaction with the user in many cases.  How would you single-source VCL
apps that assume a regular 3 button mouse with chording support when running
on a 1 button Mac or even a Mighty Mouse equipped Mac?

It's not necessarily a simple question of $ifdef'ing some event handling
code - the different user input devices (and the difference in available
user input/interaction controls, if you wish to exploit the "native" look
and feel of the respective platforms) mean that you will almost certainly
need to implement a quite different GUI on each version.

Either that or dumb your GUI down to the lowest common denominator,
resulting in an app that is unacceptably retarded in the UI department to be
considered appealing on any of the platforms you choose to support.

(for simple apps this might be viable, but you specifically referenced
"sophisticated" applications, and this is my area of interest also).

Any NON-visual code should be easily single-source'able, but the V part of
the VCL really has to be different for each platform.  "Visual" classes
will, by definition, need to be different from platform to platform because,
visually, those platforms ARE different.


Didn't CLX try to achieve single source cross platform support?

How did that work out again?  ;)


--
 "Smile", they said "it could be worse!"
 So I did.  And it was.

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