[fpc-pascal] Standardization of Modern Pascal

[Gilles MARCOU]

Hi Marco,

I found your answers to my naive questions really interesting. And
certainly I agree. Would it be possible to make them more visible on the
web site of Free Pascal? In practice, include the texts you pointed to
(iso-ansi discussion and delphilater) in the web site? Or did I missed
them?

A few comments before I turn back to work.

I think that Modern Pascal is not so fuzzy.  Indeed my feeling is also
that the Free Pascal community plus CodeGear's Delphi constitutes most
of what is today Modern or Object Pascal. So the current implementations
(FPC2.2 and Delphi2008?) are making the langage.

If this is so, there is no point to discuss a standard. As much as I can
see, the situation, in practice, is analogous to Sun and Java. Only that
CodeGear is not going to collaborate anyhow with Free Pascal. If there
is something like a "reference" it is rather Delphi. In the sense that
the FPC try to be compatible with Delphi.

Considering that who wants a standard wants to write a code as
independant of a given compiler, the question resumes to write code that
can be easily ported between Delphi and Free Pascal. The answer shall be
to write it Delphi6/7 compliant and forget about .NET. This is only how
I see things.

An important addition is that "Delphi extensions are examined (...) if
it fits FPC tradition...". I believe you refer to this text?

http://www.stack.nl/~marcov/delphilater.txt

I understood also that programing concepts are more elaborate into FPC.
You stated that generic classes (isn't it?) for instance, are already
implemented while they are only scheduled in Delphi. While most
exclusive features of Delphi are related to .NET functions. In that
sense, it is relevant to port Delphi code to Free Pascal but it might be
hasardous to port Free Pascal code on Delphi...

Concerning .NET, the concept is useless for a compiler that is far more
crossplatform than the Microsoft's framework will ever be.

Thanks again for your kind answers.
Gilles Marcou