[fpc-devel] Forwarded message about FPC status

[Sven Barth]

On 23.12.2012 01:50, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:
> On 22/12/12 16:43, Marco van de Voort wrote:
>> I think you have a wrong idea on what the core list contains.
>
> LOL. And how is anybody supposed to know what goes on - it is a PRIVATE
> mailing list.
>
>
>> I don't think direction on unicode (or even general) came up since the last
>> unicode discussions on fpc-devel/pascal.
>
> OK, so once again it is proven that Unicode is just not "sexy" enough
> for the core team, so it will stay stagnant for a few more years. That's
> unless a member ignores all discussions and does his own thing [or gets
> paid for the job]. As Florian likes to says so often, whoever implements
> it decides. Unfortunately that courtesy is not extended to non-members,
> because what good is a patch [of such magnitude and effort] with no
> chance of ever being committed. So we are at the mercy of the FPC gods.
>

Did you know that my addition of target NativeNT was published as patch 
to the bug tracker? Did you know that I wrote patches for the cppclass 
feature to get it a bit more working than before? It was only the class 
helpers where I got access to a personal branch in SVN and only the 
generics when I got access to trunk.

You need to show the others that they can trust you and that you mean no 
harm and then they'll treat you accordingly.

The best example is this: I had problems commenting on closed/resolved 
bugs which were assigned to me, so Florian simply made me from 
"developer" to "manager". It's all about trust....

> Well, let me just say that the idea of two RTL's is rather ridiculous
> too!! You guys keep bitching about not having enough developers, so how
> on earth do you think you are going to be able to maintain developing
> two RTL's, patching too RTL's when bugs are reported, inform the public
> to remember to mention which RTL they are using when reporting bugs,
> keeps those two RTL's in sync over time etc. Yeah, it seams you guys are
> sometimes not to knowledgeable either. All you are going to do is create
> more work for yourselves. But hey, who are we to state the obvious.

The two RTLs isn't as difficult as you think:

=== System.System.pp begin ===

{$define USE_UNICODE}
{$include system.pp}

=== System.System.pp end ===

=== system.pp begin ===

// where the mode is set:
{$mode objfpc}
{$ifdef USE_UNICODE}
{$modeswitch UNICODESTRINGS}
{$endif}

=== system.pp end ===

The same for the other units.

Then one just needs to pay attention whether USE_UNICODE is defined or 
not inside those units and write the code accordingly. I don't say it's 
a pencake, but it isn't "ridiculous" and the only approach that is 
really viable for us as - as you said - we only have so much developers.

Regards,
Sven