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Author Topic: Any clue as to what the limitations of Free Pascal are?  (Read 1506 times)
Paul Keith
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« on: September 18, 2011, 06:28:35 PM »
Just saw this program and it absolutely floored me how simple it is. (1 file!) http://hjsplit.org/linux/

This is the first I've seen of a Linux application that literally screams portable. It makes me wonder how complex a cross-platform program could be made from this since from my newbish eyes file splitters seem like complex programs.

On the opposite end, looking at the site more, it seems that it can't handle a Treepad program.

Realistically how powerful can this language be? Could it produce say a clone of The Form Letter Machine or PopUp Wisdom for Linux?
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wraith808
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« Reply #1 on: September 18, 2011, 08:10:18 PM »
It took me a second to get what you meant... maybe it's just me and because I'm sleepy, but just to be sure.

The link that you gave to HJSplit is a program written in Lazarus.  So you're wondering how complex a cross-platform program could be made in Lazarus, correct?  And what makes you think it can't handle treepad... just because he wrote it in another language?

I've used Lazarus before- to me it's not as polished as Delphi, but that's just the IDE.  I'd think there aren't too many limitations on it, other than what libraries are available from what I've seen.  Sort of like the difference between SharpDevelop and Visual Studio.  And Delphi is pretty much capable of anything that you can do in any other language.  It's just a tool.  So it should be the same with Lazarus- including something like Treepad.  Especially as KeyNote was written in Delphi.
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Paul Keith
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« Reply #2 on: September 18, 2011, 08:40:39 PM »
I really should be careful with using these terms. It's not that Treepad was written in another language but I had assumed once something is written in another language then it would be easier to transport it to a different language but it seems Treepad is taking a while to be moved to Lazarus.

Is there any specific difference with calling it Lazarus from Free Pascal? The tutorial page even refers to it as Free Pascal documentation so I assumed both were the same.

Quote
So you're wondering how complex a cross-platform program could be made in Lazarus, correct?

As I'm not a programmer, my expectation may be different.

It's not just the complexity but how HJSplit was 1 file. I've never seen a GUI program in Linux that can be one file. Even Adobe Air is installable. Even easy "unpacking" tar.gz had several connected folders that requires Java to run.

To see a complex program in Linux done 1 file, makes me wonder what the limits of it are. Why people for example uses python or other software even for simpler programs like notetakers. Complexity is one thing but I would assume every developer who gets their skill level up to the idea that every language is a tool can make something complex seem arbitrary but "portable" complexity I'm not so sure. Even PortableApps had a history of making portable versions somewhat buggy so I guess what I'm asking here is if Free Pascal/Lazarus is the most powerful language to learn for a cross platform that can fit something complex in 1 portable-like file and if it is, how complex of a program can it handle if it's just 1 file?
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wraith808
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« Reply #3 on: September 18, 2011, 08:53:43 PM »
Quote from: Paul Keith on September 18, 2011, 08:40:39 PM
I really should be careful with using these terms. It's not that Treepad was written in another language but I had assumed once something is written in another language then it would be easier to transport it to a different language but it seems Treepad is taking a while to be moved to Lazarus.

No, this is not necessarily the case.  It depends on the two languages.  And it's not so much the terms, as it is that the pronouns in the post were referring to the name in the title which hadn't been said in the post proper.  Just the way I'm used to reading things, I suppose.

Quote from: Paul Keith on September 18, 2011, 08:40:39 PM
Is there any specific difference with calling it Lazarus from Free Pascal?

Lazarus is the IDEw, and FreePascal is the compilerw.  Basically Lazarus is an application development environment, made so that programmers can rapidly create programs without doing a lot of low level work.  You can actually make pascal code in a text editor and run it through the compiler, but it would be a pain.  The compiler then takes that code, however it is written, and transforms it into another language (usually a lower level one, closer to the machine code that the operating system natively uses).
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Paul Keith
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« Reply #4 on: September 18, 2011, 09:05:29 PM »
Thanks. You really made IDE much easier to understand.

I had originally assumed that IDE and compilers were always one and the same where an IDE was merely a more convenient and powerful text editor much in way Wordpad and Word processors are for text and that compilers were what the actual programming languages were. It never occured to me that an IDE could be a more proper pronoun.
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