[fpc-devel] PR: Advocates needed

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Fri, 20 Jan 2006, Vincent Snijders wrote:

> Bisma Jayadi wrote:
>>  > It's not the advocacy that is needed but rather they need code for it
>>  > to work. It says right in the article.
>> 
>> I think we should stop the VB vs Pascal discussion now. It's useless since 
>> we all here already know which is the winner. Even Alex himself had already 
>> knew about this, no need to convince him more.
>> 
>> So, let's back to the main topic that had started this thread: The 
>> TurboCash Delphi-to-FPC convertion project. Let's do some (real) actions! 
>> First, somebody has to convince the TurboCash guys over there that 
>> FPC/Lazarus is the best alternative compiler and IDE to make TurboCash 
>> compiled and run natively on Linux (and other platforms as well). But don't 
>> make Python look bad... good Pascal guys don't like to say bad things about 
>> other programming languages. Just list the advantages of FPC/Lazarus over 
>> Python, regarding to this project.
>> 
>> Second, some other person has to do some PR things on this issue. This 
>> could be done on FreshMeat or NewsForge or any open-source news media that 
>> had published this issue before. Convince other people that FPC/Lazarus can 
>> do the work, even it's the best alternative.
>> 
>> The last and the most important is... make a developer team who will do the 
>> convertion work. There are LOTS of things need to be done since TurboCash 
>> is very Delphi and win32 specific application.
>
> Thanks for this insight.
>
> I believe indeed that FPC/Lazarus is a superior technological solution, being 
> a compiled language and having a good IDE.
>
> Porting Delphi code to FPC/Lazarus is easier than porting it to Python.
>
> OTOH, Python might have its strong points too (I am not sure how true these 
> are). Maybe there are much more 'components' available for Python.
>
> I also think there are more Python developers on linux, than FPC/Lazarus 
> developers. This is an important factor, if you want the 'community' do a 
> large part of the port.

They cannot help much.

You must understand the Delphi paradigma to do this.
Moreover you need Delphi to be able to see/edit the form files.
All queries are in the form files. If they are in binary format:
bye-bye.

Try converting a VB app to Delphi. Not easy unless you actually have VB.

So this restricts your available helpers pretty much to the people who
own and know delphi. (for porting, I mean. Not talking about extensions)

Someone should point this out to them. (no time to start looking up
things)

Michael.