[fpc-pascal] GUI confusion

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

On 29/09/13 14:24, Patrick wrote:
> Could anyone point 
> me to resources on how to build GUI applications without Lazarus?


There are alternatives, but first a distinction needs to me made. When
you say "Lazarus", do you mean simply the IDE, or do you mean the LCL
(Lazarus Component Library)?

>From your earlier remard about IDE's I assume you simply don't like IDE,
but you might not mind building LCL-based applications.

Obviously you can create LCL-based GUI applications without using
Lazarus IDE. It is a bit more work though. Just in case you didn't know,
LCL uses other underlying widgetset's. So LCL can target GTK1, GTK2,
Win32, fpGUI and Carbon toolkits.

Another alternatives is to use fpGUI, which is a 100% custom drawn GUI
toolkit, that doesn't rely on any other underlying toolkits. fpGUI talks
directly to X11 or GDI. fpGUI isn't tied to any specific editor or IDE,
so you are free to code with Notepad or VI if you wanted to. fpGUI does
come with its own tools to help you with some tasks, but in is still not
a requirement to use them. For example, fpGUI includes a stand-alone GUI
Designer for visually designing forms. All that the GUI Designer does,
is generated Object Pascal source code, just like you would have done by
had. It doesn't use external files like the *.lfm files which Lazarus
IDE produces - which ain't Object Pascal source files.

Yet another alternative is MSEide+MSEgui, but as the name says, it is
recommended to use the MSEide to write code.

Regards,
  Graeme

-- 
fpGUI Toolkit - a cross-platform GUI toolkit using Free Pascal
http://fpgui.sourceforge.net/