[fpc-devel] Pascal Standard, and what we can do.

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Sun, 19 Jul 2015, Jonas Maebe wrote:

> Den wrote:
>> Just like ECMAScript,
>> C++, PHP, most languages now have a 'standards' document behind it.
>> That's their *roadmap*. Their *leadership*. Design it and the
>> *community* will show *support*.
>
> ISO Pascal and ISO Extended Pascal were like that in the early 90s:
> 1) there was an official ISO standard and standards committee for it
> 2) there were a number commercial compilers supporting it such as HP Pascal 
> and IBM's compiler for its System/370
> 3) later on (in 1996) a GCC-based implementation arrived for it (the 
> equivalent of the LLVM of the moment)
>
> And still almost no one uses ISO/Extended Pascal anymore. Why? Possibly 
> because the de facto Pascal standards had already become Think Pascal on the 
> Mac and Turbo Pascal on the PC by then, and none of those programmers wanted 
> to rewrite all of their code (although Think Pascal was a bit closer to ISO 
> Pascal). Or maybe because in general, many people just preferred those 
> language dialects for one reason or another. In any case, introducing one new 
> standard to rule them all seldom (if ever) works

It doesn't even work for magical rings. Although it took 3000 years to find that out.

Nevertheless, I must agree a roadmap for FPC with some detailed proposals would be nice.

Michael.