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Freepascal, and an Open-source version of Delphi

http://www.lazarus.freepascal....

http://lazarus.freepascal.org/...
It just compiles to Linux, MacOSX and even Windows. And for all three you get a statically linked library. And in all three you get a native GUI with the GUI elements the user expects.

I haven't tried Android or Windows CE support, but they are claimed to work.

There is a Free Pascal compiler that compiles various dialects of Pascal and Delphi and runs on and targets more than just Windows (and x86 processors). It Supports Linux.

Oh one other thing: anybody who says that using "Delphi" is somehow not "open-source" while using Java is "open source" doesn't understand the difference between a programming language in the abstract and a particular piece of software that compiles or interprets code written in the language in the concrete needs a head exam.

Something tells me these guys: http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/ would get offended if you tell them that they hate open source because they have an open source implementation of Delphi. Since Delphi is a descendant of Pascal, which has a long history in software education, it's not some evil conspiracy to use Delphi in a classroom setting.

Basically if you aren't teaching them to make games or something internet related then you are wasting your time.

When I was in high school, I managed to expose a bunch of classmates to TI-83 graphing calculator programming when I showed them how to load programs that run the formulas seen in unit conversion problems, stoichiometry, and the like. Tie the programming assignments in to the rest of the curriculum and you'll get the point across that computers are tools to automate things.

according to the rules you must teach the students the only approved language: Pascal.

Why can't Free Pascal be recompiled for the Raspberry Pi?

Lazarus can be a good alternative... but it is delphi based (not so fashion). Anyway, very nice IDE :D

I haven't used Qt so I can't speak to the comparison, but VCL is actually pretty awesome. I've always liked CBuilder. It was doing RAD well and correctly back when MS solution was to make the dlls in Visual C and the UI in Visual Basic. Remember that mess? I will always have a fond spot in my heart for CBuilder for being a better alternative.

So take VCL, and couple that with Project Jedi and you've got a great dev environment. Scores of smart widgets, panels, sliders, panes, etc. If there is anything that rich for Qt I'd really like to see it. Seriously - I would! Not being snarky. I'd love to see something that rich as open source. I keep hoping and praying that the Jedi guys will do a port that will work on Lazarus, but so far no luck.

I haven't used it but there is a Delphi clone: http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/

I read somewhere that .NET and C# were developed by the guy that developed Delphi.

Another vote for Lazuras (clone of Delphi): http://lazarus.freepascal.org/. Free IDE including a debugger.

General programming for personal uses or your own company: Object Pascal with Free Pascal (and Lazarus).
http://freepascal.org/
http://lazarus.freepascal.org/

General programming for personal uses or your own company: Object Pascal with Free Pascal (and Lazarus).
http://freepascal.org/
http://lazarus.freepascal.org/

It evolved into Delphi, which still could be set to do the Turbo-Pascal object model. If you miss TP, Freepascal can do the "Borland Turbo Pascal-style" dialect. http://www.freepascal.org/

You stand corrected coward.

http://lazarus.freepascal.org/

That is about as cross platform (delphi/pascal) as it gets.

The new assignment operator ":="

Oh look, someone revived the Clipper dBASE compiler / Pascal syntax.

No, someone revived the the ALGOL 58 syntax (yes, that is 1958) . Everything old will be new again ...

What do you mean revive it? I still use Turbo Pascal... I mean http://www.freepascal.org/

I don't know Spanish, so I had to go with the translation (which, by the way, is 2 links away from TFS - why not link to it directly?). Here's what the guy actually said:

The executive, however, said that the two models - open source and closed - will continue to coexist.

...

Rincon also needled competition betting on open standards and free of charge, such as Google. "When you do not can compete, you are declaring open. This masks incompetence."

The executive added: "When convenient, the companies say they are open. They use it for your own benefit."

It's fairly clear from this that he is not saying that "open means incompetent" here, but rather than some "incompetent" companies that shall remain un-named *cough* are playing the "openness" card to mask their deficiencies in other departments. Which is quite a different thing.

There are other things in that (translated) speech that could be picked apart in typical /. fashion, which might even make a decent article. But, it seems, the chase for flamebaiting headlines stimulates editors' imagination yet again...

He said:

"Quando você não pode competir, você se declara aberto. Isso mascara a incompetência".

from:

http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/tec/798606-microsoft-critica-posicao-do-governo-brasileiro-sobre-o-software-livre.shtml

linked from:

http://lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php?topic=10523.0

which was linked from TFA.

Since you bring up VistA, there are three items to fill in the gaps in the list you show:

1. "Ancient" can be two kinds, ancient like old cabbage or ancient like a shark is an ancient design. With M, aka MUMPS, it is more of a case of being ancient like a shark. The style is a little different, but it is really powerful. With the resurgance of interest in NoSQL databases, it should be top on your list to at least look at for larger projects. Like with anything else, it's a matter of choosing the right tool for the job and in some cases a hierachical database, as opposed to an object database or an SQL database, is just what the doctor ordered. (Pun intended.)

2: MUMPS (aka "M") is a very powerful and, in the health sector, rather widely used hierarchical database standard and language. It's ISO/IEC 11756 (2005) and has several engines that support it. GT.M, MDH, ANSI MUMPS. There are situations where a hierarchical database like M is more appropriate than the more widely used database standard, SQL aka ISO/IEC 9075(1-4,9-11,13,14):2008.

3: AFAIK the only example of a cross-platform GUI for VistA is Ovid. The most widely used client is still CRPS which is still dependent on Delphi (pascal) and kind of works with WINE or might do ok with tweaking on Lazarus. It's possible to write one, there are bindings for Python and Java. However, getting up to speed means at least one experienced clinician spending a lot of time with the system and at least two programmers (real ones, without Windows) with some clinical experience getting up to speed with VistA. R

4. The design is quite modular, but since all kinds of shysters and carpetbaggers are wanting a piece of the Brewster's Millions spent on electronic health care, there is all kinds of external politics interfering with development and deployment. For example, it is common for some shysters to peddle solutions built around M$ imitation of Java rather than sticking with actual Java for their extensions.

That said, there are also a good dozen open source health care systems designed around various types of clinics and demographics. Some are very good. Good luck finding them though. Wikipedia won't show them, being the playground of marketing corporations and lobbyists. Google won't find them unless you already know the name. Even then there is a good chance a competitor has been jamming the search engines with chaff.

We've been using Delphi to develop our project [but]
1. No 64bit compiler.
2. No mobile platform support (except maybe .NET for WinCE devices, but those are dying out due to iPhone/BB/Android and even WinMo7 which is turning into an even more simplified iPhoneish design).

According to Wikipedia, Free Pascal seems to have 64 support on Linux, OSX, and Windows.

As for mobile platforms, Free Pascal appears to be able to target the iPhone, but Jobs squashed any chance for fun there, eh? WinCE is supported (no idea on WinMo), and with Linux support you should be able to target Maemo/Meego devices with very little extra effort.

Android, WebOS, and Symbian? No idea there... but probably too much pain to be worth it to write something.

I guess a bigger question would be why one would want to target the mobile platforms with Pascal/Delphi at all. I did a little Pascal programming back in the day and didn't really see too much to love when compared to other environments.

But in the end, I guess it doesn't really matter, especially if general-purpose Linux-based OSes like Meego actually take off on mobile phones. Then all you have to do is target a Linux-based stack, add a couple of different front-ends for your application (one mouse/keyboard based, one touch-based), and you're off to the races.

Apple's new terms forbid applications written in any language that is not called C, C++ or Objective-C. For example, I work on the Free Pascal Compiler and added iPhone support a couple of years ago (it compiles straight to ARM assembler, no intermediate code or frameworks are involved). Most people that use it write their GUI in Objective-C and reuse Delphi or other existing Pascal code for their backend, just like other people would reuse C or C++ code.

But simply because FPC stands for Free Pascal Compiler rather than for Fast Progressive C, this way of working is no longer allowed. That just does not make any sense to me. Why on earth would the name of the programming language matter in any way? I could understand it if they would limit you to using their tool chain (although I'd still disagree with it), but limiting to a particular set of programming languages?

The fact that I can't even discuss this on the iPhone developer forums without first signing the new developer agreement (and thereby make it illegal for me to continue working on that project) only adds insult to the injury.

We are talking about software here not religion.

But there is FreeDOS which is probably what a good number of these DOS like embedded systems are running. Frankly that is why I didn't say MS-DOS. A lot of people use FreeDOS for this kind of work now. Some use DR-DOS and still others used MS-DOS. Frankly I would use FreeDOS myself unless there is some good reason not to but that is just me.
Please at this point you are just being silly. Linux is overkill for something like a CNC controller or radiation counter.
Plus for many of these applications it just will not work. Educate yourself just a little and you might actually stop wasting peoples time.
BTW if you need something that has a bit more capability than DOS does but still lighter than Linux there are options.
RTEMS will work for realtime systems but it is a lot more complex to set up than DOS but it runs on more CPUs and is general more flexible.
Another option is Contiki http://www.sics.se/contiki/about-contiki.html
But again the thing about DOS is simply so many people know everything there is to know about it. It is super well documented and the Development tools are everywhere and well known.
If you don't like DJCPP or the free Borland toolset you still have a ton of options left open including http://www.freepascal.org/
Linux is a great embedded tool when you need it. The thing is for a lot of tasks it is overkill and frankly just will not do the job as reliably and as cheaply as good old DOS will.
So go read up and and stop treating FOSS as a religion and start using it as a tool. And stop being a tool.

Lazarus is a fun IDE/RAD if you don't mind using Object Pascal, which I don't mind. http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/

What about this http://wiki.freepascal.org/MSEide_&_MSEgui which uses free pascal, is lightning fast, and compiles on each platform.

You run it by getting set up with Lazarus. There is also Free Pascal for you. Both have good Delphi capabilities. GPC has merits, too. So you do have options if you were working on an electronic health records system.

Someone has to "save your nation", in both senses. Why not you? Follow the Good $RANDOMCOLORGROUP Road with your hands, not just your pie hole.

Well, while Python is definitively an interesting language, the original teaching language (created to teach programming, and taught before the first compiler for it existed) is Pascal. The original Pascal is of course somewhat outdated by now, but the useful version was pushed onto the PC by Borland in the form of 'Turbo Pascal' (dirt cheap, graphics capable, screamingly fast - in '86!).
The language (later called 'Delphi' under Windoze) managed to stay around for a long time despite Borlands best efforts at lousy support. I still use it quite a bit, especially as the compiler is still extremely fast.

These days you'd want something like FreePascal using the Lazarus interface (http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/), which is not only free but runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. A 'Hello World' is done within minutes by an absolute beginner, who can then concentrate on the code itself instead of the interface :)

Give lazarus a whirl!

http://lazarus.freepascal.org/

Is someone going to build a delphi clone better? Not likely this one has been in development
nearly 10 years and it is as close as you are going to get.

Opera/Firefox (whichever has a newer version that still supports 98)

That would be Opera. Firefox, as of Firefox 3, no longer supports Windows 98 (this caused a lot of grumbling on Firefox's support forums), but the latest Opera happily runs on Windows 98.

I can also write my own apps for it in Delphi7 (Delphi does not work on Linux)

If you're an old-school Delphi programmer, you might look in to Lazarus. It's 95% Delphi, but FOSS software.

While I'm mainly a C programmer these days, I've quite impressed with Delphi: There is an excellent tiny little Civilization clone, C-evo, out there written in Delphi (that fits on a single floppy if you remove the sounds and 7-zip compress it), as well as a free (beer) office suite called SSuiteSoft.

Why not try Free Pascal and Lazarus? You can use a lot of the material found in learning Delphi 5+ books for it. Is fully object oriented. It is seriously cross-platform also.

From: http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Overview_of_Free_Pascal_and_Lazarus

Free Pascal (FPC) is an open-source Pascal compiler with two notable features: a high degree of Delphi compatibility and availability on a variety of platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Free Pascal's compatibility with Delphi includes not only support for the same Object Pascal programming language that Delphi uses, but also for many of the same libraries of powerful routines and classes that Delphi is justly known for. This includes familiar units such as System, SysUtils, StrUtils, DateUtils, Classes, Variants, Math, IniFiles and Registry, which are included with Free Pascal on all supported platforms. Free Pascal also includes units such as Windows, ShellAPI, BaseUnix, Unix and DynLibs for accessing features specific to an operating system. These dozen or so units make up the core of what is usually referred to as the Free Pascal run-time library (RTL).

Lazarus is an open-source development system that builds on the Free Pascal compiler by adding an integrated development environment (IDE) that includes a syntax-highlighting code editor and visual form designer, as well as a component library that's highly compatible with Delphi's Visual Component Library (VCL). The Lazarus Component Library (LCL) includes equivalents for many of the familiar VCL controls such as forms, buttons, text boxes and so on that are used to create applications that have a graphical user interface (GUI).

The distortion by LCD's not running at their resolution are way worse than that. Hell, we even got a bug report from someone about our graph unit supposedly being buggy because text rendered in full screen mode was illegible, while the only problem was that he was using an 800x600 resolution on an LCD monitor with a different native size.

If you download the attachment to that bug report and unzip it, there's a picture of the screen inside. And in fact, it does look quite bad. Of course, there's nothing that we can do about that.

No, you don't.

Gambas doesn't even match VB 6. And what I mean by VB is an all in one integrated RAD development environment where Forms, Event Handling are built into the one thing. That pretty much means, Gambas...

Lazarus fulfills this requirement excellently.

Don't forget the open source Lazarus

Or actually, maybe do forget it. Object Pascal and C++ have virtually identical capabilities with slightly different syntax. But C++ is so widely used that there are always more available libraries, IDEs and sources of support. And I say this as someone who used to program in Pascal myself. If you want to go for an obscure language, at least make it something interesting like Dylan...

The Borland Museum has the old Turbo series of Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, and Turbo C++ for MS-DOS downloadable for free.

Turbo Pascal and Delphi got replaced by Free Pascal, and Turbo C++ got replaced with GNU C++ and MinGW C++ for Windows which are open source alternatives to them. Which I think is why the Borland Museum got opened and why the command line version of Borland C++ was given away for free.

While people were waiting for the Borland Museum to release Delphi 1.0 the Lazarus Project was developed based on Free Pascal to replace Delphi.

The Borland Museum has the old Turbo series of Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, and Turbo C++ for MS-DOS downloadable for free.

Turbo Pascal and Delphi got replaced by Free Pascal, and Turbo C++ got replaced with GNU C++ and MinGW C++ for Windows which are open source alternatives to them. Which I think is why the Borland Museum got opened and why the command line version of Borland C++ was given away for free.

While people were waiting for the Borland Museum to release Delphi 1.0 the Lazarus Project was developed based on Free Pascal to replace Delphi.

I used Lazarus a freepascal ide.

Give this a try: http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/

if I do wind up with an everyday linux desktop, it's probably going to have some species of both Windows and real DOS running fulltime in VMs.

I doubt I would, mostly because Wine is much better when it's working. The advantage of Parallels, for me, is mostly anything that doesn't work in Wine, and doesn't require a great video card -- if I remember, Parallels actually borrows some Wine code in order to make the DirectX -> OpenGL layer necessary to have decent Windows game performance on Linux.

There are a few old DOS apps I can't live without either, including one I need for business that I've never found a wholly-suitable replacement for.

For DOS, there's already a very good, independent program called DOSBox. I imagine that's going to be a lot more efficient than booting an entire VM. But you may not need either...

I do have source, but it's in Pascal.

Does it compile with this?

If someone would compile Vern Buerg's LIST (source for v6 is public domain, but is in assembly) for linux, that would get me further than anything else

Couldn't find it in a quick Google, but if it's got anything to do with LISP, there are all kinds of LISP dialects for Linux.

I think it's perfectly normal to peer at a binary's innards or to read a document in hex mode.

The few times I've wanted to do that, there are hex editors.

along with a certain lack of patience when it comes to long strings of esoteric switches and CL arguments...

I haven't often found that to be the case. Most commands have tons of switches, but there are only a few you need to memorize, and manpages help a lot.

And once you know it, well, I'm never going back from anything Unix-like to anything DOS-like, without very good reason.

Nowadays ... me and most middle-aged people, even advanced users elsewise, just don't have youth's time and patience for slogging through and absorbing new material.

Neither do I, really. I make time.

Never stop learning. And that's not just about Linux. I suppose I could get a job programming COBOL and not have to learn anything else, but at my current job, most weeks, I learn something incidentally. Most months, there's at least one thing I am forced to learn.

What I'd really like is a linux config interface that works like some HTML editors: a nice GUI where you're shown the available choices, and a second panel where the actual changes are being made in realtime (where you could also edit, if you felt brave).

I think that would be marginally useful in a few really confusing places (like xorg.conf, fstab, and cron), but not much everywhere else.

Really, it's not that hard to edit the text. And it's also not that hard to edit text. Start with a good sample config file, and it'll be littered with comments explaining what does what.

I'd also recommend KDE if you want GUI configurability. It's mostly better at configuring itself -- still not quite what you want -- but at least in KDE 3.5, if I want my panel to be tiny, transparent, at the top of a particular monitor, and possible to maximize over, I can.

It's also got a nice textual config file layout -- check out ~/.kde/share/config -- nice and consistent, for all KDE apps.

Since most (all?) linux config stuff reputedly lives in textfiles, and since such a dual interface has been in some HTML editors for at least 12 years, ISTM it wouldn't be that hard to implement.

For things which already have GUI and textual tools, that might be easy. And maybe not.

But they are fundamentally different animals.

See, an HTML editor can just pull in any rendering engine it wants -- Webkit, Gecko, even Trident. I wouldn't go so far as to call i

Object Pascal reference & C reference.

Oh please. Pascal does everything C++ can now.

Lazarus is the best desktop application builder out there for *NIX. It brought the right way of developing visually from Windows without forcing the developer to suffer the braindead design of GTK or Qt Designer.
We already have servers, daemons, databases, security, libraries, etc. Heck! Even on 3D first person shooters we're more advanced than in desktop programming, so we seriously need something better than Glade or Qt Designer to become the standard for desktop development, and albeit not perfect Lazarus is much better than the other two.
Offering bounties for the inclusion of a C++ compiler/object library would also be killer.

The iPhone uses an ARM CPU for its processor. I did a Google search on any DateTime-related problems, and found two of interest, one of which was solved by disabling code optimizations. Someone with more experience should look into this idea.
http://readlist.com/lists/lists.ximian.com/mono-list/1/5148.html
http://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=9080

1. Openoffice (NeoOffice sucks and I don't want to use openoffice X on the mac and deal with strangeness. And so I'm reliant on MS Office

I have and use NeoOffice and there's no problem with it, not even with MS Office 2007 docs I downloaded from the web. Maybe you tried an older version if NeoOffice didn't work. Also MS Office runs on Macs, but not on Linux without WINE or CrossOver. Though I won't use it a trialware version came on my MBP.

2. I do some computations (code in fortran)

This I can see, a special app. Maybe XCode 2 or the new version 3 will work. I don't plan on trying Fortran on the Mac but I plan to tryout Free Pascal and want to learn Smalltalk.

4. I don't want to use Fink on mac I'd rather just use native apps on linux (I'm not a programmer, but I like to tinker)

I tried to use Fink to install HTTrack but for some reason it wouldn't download. Just as well though, I want to create an OS X native port install of use the X11 port.

So mostly it's not that you can't use Macs but that you want to use specific brand named apps that don't run on Macs instead of an app that does the same thing.

Thanks. I've programmed on Windows PCs but not on Macs or Linux, other than some scripts about 10 years ago. As for what languages I'll use, because though it's been about 10 years since I have programmed with it, I'm more familiar with C/C++ so I'll start with it. I'd like to try out Pascal as well, and have downloaded Free Pascal, and maybe Smalltalk. Before I do though I'll see what needs to be done for software written in these languages to run in Linux.

It was not a fair comparison in 1981, and it's insanely ridiculous in 2007 counting this paper as a proof of pascal is toy language.
It's still not convenient writing C in Pascal :), but almost all objections proposed in this paper against Pascal language/implementations is not applicable anymore.

http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/classic/message4322.html#4671
http://www.freepascal.org/

The Linux kernel is already a masterpiece wrt modularity, stability and portability. It's the user side we must concentrate on.
What a lot of developers need is a well designed and fast GUI library with its interface builder to help the creation or painless porting of desktop applications.
I've tried almost every system out there, GTK+Glade, Qt+Kdevelop+designer, Fox, wxWindows->widgets etc, and they all have usability problems to the point none of them could actually compete even with the old Delphi2 (that's over 10 years ago, folks!) when it comes to creating a working gui without shooting yourself in the foot. GUI creation is a 95% visual and psychological and 5% technical issue. If a GUI library and its builder are so badly conceived I've to take brain time usually
allocated for algorythms and more technical problems for it, then there's a problem somewhere.

In my opinion this is the way to go. What Borland attempted and failed, those folks did successfully: native code both on Linux and Windows (no Wine), a functional GUI builder and a pretty darn good library, clone of the original VCL from Borland. The people at Trolltech should seriously take some ideas from this project.
Too bad it's not for C or C++, which isn't a problem when creating apps from scratch because Object Pascal is a pretty decent, fast and complete language to write software on (forget the Pascal you've learned at school), but that doesn't help to port a lot of software written in C and C++. Nevertheless, from a GUI point of view this is the way to go.

Why so they can end of life the product again and leave you holding the bag?

Fully cross platform open source object pascal IDE

http://lazarus.freepascal.org/

Have you tried Lazarus and Free Pascal?

http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php

It looks very promising for people familiar with the Delphi brand of RAD (Rapid Application Devel., I don't even know if that acronym is still hip or not). I myself haven't written a project in it yet, but the few tests I've thrown at it seem to work OK. Its the most functional IDE I've seen for Linux/X11 yet.

Lazarus is as close to Delphi-for-Linux as you'll get. It uses GTK 1.2 in Linux though. (2.x is still a bit unstable.)

And in general, Lazarus isn't there yet. It can do very simple things at most (with executables starting at 7MB), but for anything non-trivial, forget it. And its development seems to be totally stalled. A pity that, considering the amount of Delphi code in existence, it would be a great thing.

Lazarus is as close to Delphi-for-Linux as you'll get. It uses GTK 1.2 in Linux though. (2.x is still a bit unstable.)