[fpc-pascal] The names of the various FPC documentation

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Mon, 7 Sep 2009, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:

> Michael Van Canneyt het geskryf:
>>
>> If there is a more or less consensus about such things, I don't see why
>> we couldn't rename them.
>
> Glad to hear you are willing to consider this. ;-)
>
>
>> The names actually stem from the TP documentation, which was divided into 3
>> books:
>> Language Reference
>> User's manual
>> Programmer's manual
>
> That's what I gather -- or vaguely remember from my TP days. But with
> todays IDE and built-in help, I don't even know which document the IDE
> is referencing when I press F1 or Ctrl+F1. So when I look at the actual
> document files and names as you listed above, it is not immediately
> clear which document I should open to look for help.

Since you now discovered what each document describes, the problem has
solved itself :-)

>
> OK, in the list above "Language Reference" seems obvious, but everywhere
> else (as far as I remember) it is listed as FPC Reference Guide, which
> isn't obvious.
>
> FPC = Free Pascal Compiler.
> ...so FPC Reference Guide might mean a reference about the Free Pascal
> Compiler and not about the Object Pascal Language or as I suggested (and
> which is used in Kylix.
>
> Also, does the documentation about the language reference "Object
> Pascal" as the language or "Free Pascal" as the language? I hope it's
> Object Pascal, because using Free Pascal as the language would be just
> as confusing as what Borland did what they changed the language name
> from Object Pascal to Delphi. In forums and mailing lists, when they
> mention Delphi, I never know if they are talking about the IDE or the
> Language. The Object Pascal name was nice and clear.

It's not "Object Pascal". It's Pascal, because it treats plain pascal,
the old TP objects and Delphi's 'Object Pascal'.

That's why I refrain from using 'object pascal' or just 'pascal' in the 
title, and use FPC Reference guide. It could be changed to
"FPC Language Reference guide".

Michael.