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<DIV>I sort of disagree - A common VCL is the ideal solution.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>What makes Delphi a success on Windows is that it is Pascal and also close
enough to the Windows controls that it produces what looks like native Windows
applications, using the best of Windows XP/Vista/7 appearances.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>If they do a Mac version I reckon to be cool and admired has to be the same
– it has to be close to the Cocoa interface and make native Mac
applications. Each VCL control has to to give most or all of the
latest mac control equivalents.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>That way there will be some differences – some properties of controls and
events on Windows will not have an exact matching mac equivalent....probably the
best is to just the property or event map to the matching equivalent on mac if
its close, otherwise ignored. That way code can be moved back and forth,
and some parts – eg some events will not work – so the programmers can attack
them one at a time to insert the mac equivalent...</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>cases like that you have almost no alternative but to have ifdef’d code,
but hopefully manageably small cases.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>This is better than having a bland lowest common demominator VCL.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>There are some examples out there of cross platform applications and
frameworks – these are quite a long way ahead of Delphi as far as cross
platform, so unless Delphi can do it in a more elegant way than its been done
already it may cater for Delphi apps but won’t pick up programmers from other
languages. I think the main other successes out there are Webkit
(whatever is used as core of Chrome and Safari) QT which I think is
underneath Opera, XULRunner which is behind Firefox and Thunderbird.
Apple have made cross platform versions of iTunes as well, and MS has mac
versions of MSOffice – so these also must have some strategy for managing code
across different OS’s. Java too – although in that case its mainly
the JVM that is tailored to each OS? I would be most interested to
hear more of how they all do it compared to what Delphi could do better.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I am also involved in the Firefox community and one of the main debates
there is how much the code and UI should be same across all and how much it
should blend in with the OS themes and styling – the next version of Firefox
(V4) for instance will get quite different appearances (more than now for
instance) on XP, Windows 7, mac and linux to better fit in with each OS
styling.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: 10pt">John</DIV>
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<DIV class=gmail_quote>On 30 November 2010 09:56, Jolyon Smith <SPAN
dir=ltr><<A
href="mailto:jsmith@deltics.co.nz">jsmith@deltics.co.nz</A>></SPAN>
wrote:<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex"
class=gmail_quote><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT><BR>What we need is a Delphi
for Cocoa.<BR><BR>What we *don't* need is a Delphi (or a VCL) for a Lowest
Common Denominator<BR>that fits Windows and Mac and Linux and phones and
toasters and key-fobs.<BR><BR></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Totally agree with Jolyon. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Initially, I was really looking forward to Delphi for Mac. But the more I
think about it, solutions that are not based on the native GUI frameworks for
each platform will most likely result in sub-par applications. If I want to
design a cross-platform app for both Windows and Mac, then my design decision
would be to refactor out all of the non-gui logic into their own units and then
build separate user interfaces using the native UI components for each
platform.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>As Jolyon stated, what makes sense/looks good in a Mac application does not
necessarily make it appropriate for a Windows application and vice versa. If you
want to do a proper job, you will most likely create seperate UI's for each
platform. If that, being the case, it makes no sense to aim for that lowest
common denominator because in the end you will please neither of your Windows or
Mac users.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I think Embarcadero's plan to use a common 'VCL" will initially satisfy the
uninitiated who wants to go cross-platform "easily" and "quickly" but will be
annoying if you want to create apps that are designed specifically for the
platform that they are to be hosted on. I see this as the same problem with the
attempt to get existing Delphi applications Unicode-ready. The ideas was to make
it "easy" for existing code to become Unicode but it made it confusing for new
apps going forward. I think this will be the same for cross platform development
for Delphi using this common VCL approach.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Colin</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
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