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Lazarus 2.0 RC3 – Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE

forum.lazarus-ide.org

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Re: Lazarus 2.0 RC3 – Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE

#61

Post by nenadst »

nenadst wrote: post #56
tabtab wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss WYSIWYG IDE's like Delphi, VB-classic, and Lazarus. Dealing with HTML "autoflow" and Bootstrap is a royal pain. You sketch a draft GUI that seems a good fit for the application and users, and then realize you have to jump through hoops backward on a unicycle while chewing gum blindfolded to get it right on web browsers. Jetsons WYSIWYG technology yanked from my happy fingers by an LSD "standard". (I'm assuming…

you could have a look at https://www.tmssoftware.com/site/tmswebcore.asp or https://www.elevatesoft.com/products?category=ewb or https://smartmobilestudio.com/ All three claim to be a form of "Delphi for the Web"

and for some Frameworks integrated in Delphi (first two sadly still not available for Lazarus)

http://www.unigui.com/explore/what-is-unigui

https://www.atozed.com/intraweb/

This one seems to be also available for Lazarus ! http://www.raudus.com/

I wrote an old desktop app for medical laboratories in Delphi (started with D2 ...) and am still quite unsure if this would allow me to port at least some part of it for the web in an (cost and time ) efficient and secure way ...

Does anybody have some experience really using them ?

Re: Lazarus 2.0 RC3 – Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE

#62

Post by marmaduke »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #16

I love the idea of a WYSIWYG IDE that's integrated with the language like this, or like VB used to be, but personally I just can't stomach the whole "have to learn yet another language to use it" problem. From what little I've played with Lazarus and FPC it seems really nice though, and I might make use of it for some smaller projects at work in the near future. I'm sick of trying to make web apps and all the ridicul…

> let me just tie events to a command pipeline and dump the result into another widget, basically just letting a GUI be part of the composable toolset following the UNIX philosophy

I think that's how the editors in Plan 9 support extensions/plugins/scripting by exposing parts of the editor on the filesystem.

Something with FUSE might do the trick, though mounts are always tricky. Kakoune supports JSON RPC over a fifo, for example:

https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/wiki/JSON-RPC#input-keys--o...

Re: Lazarus 2.0 RC3 – Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE

#63

Post by 4thaccount »

tabtab wrote: post #41
dragonwriter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, instead of language bindings for the UI builder, you need an in-language implementation of or binding to a client for the GUI markup language output by the UI builder? While I like the idea of a generic UI markup languages, it sounds like you've replaced the problem you want to avoid with a bigger one.

Generic GUI API's that fit a wide variety of application programming languages has proven a very tricky task. I know of none that do it close to right. Data structures and object models vary too much between languages. If you "solve" this by extracting out anything potentially programming-language-specific (such as variable types and data structure "types"), you end up with something that looks like a markup language…

I would say that Rebol did this very well with their builtin VIEW DSL. You can effortlessly build a very complex desktop app in this manner. If you scroll down a little bit you can see a lot of simple GUI apps like paint that require nearly zero boiler plate.

http://re-bol.com/rebol.html

Re: Lazarus 2.0 RC3 – Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE

#64

Post by vram22 »

tabtab wrote: post #31
jenkstom wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We just need a Lazarus target for webassembly and we'll be good.

Hmmm, can Lazarus be used to build a "GUI browser"? For example, can one send a "create button" command or tag to it and have it draw one dynamically? What about new panels and forms? How "meta" can its GUI engine be at run-time.

Yes, it may be able to. At least, Delphi, the idea (and language) of which Lazarus is based on, was written in itself, at least for v1, I've read. Probably for later versions too, because Object Pascal (although IIRC the language is now called Delphi, like the product), is a powerful general-purpose programming language, with OOP support, module (units) support, and even some sort of generics (IIRC) in later versions.

Re: Lazarus 2.0 RC3 – Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE

#65

Post by geff82 »

I just recently loaded it to make a simple prototype application with it and it was a smooth and easy process. I still hesitate to fully do a big project with it in almost 2020 (I was proficient with Delphi 20 years ago). But if you leave the tech-coolness factor aside, Lazarus is a powerful tool.

Re: Lazarus 2.0 RC3 – Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE

#66

Post by michielr »

jenkstom wrote: post #7
tabtab wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss WYSIWYG IDE's like Delphi, VB-classic, and Lazarus. Dealing with HTML "autoflow" and Bootstrap is a royal pain. You sketch a draft GUI that seems a good fit for the application and users, and then realize you have to jump through hoops backward on a unicycle while chewing gum blindfolded to get it right on web browsers. Jetsons WYSIWYG technology yanked from my happy fingers by an LSD "standard". (I'm assuming…

We just need a Lazarus target for webassembly and we'll be good.

Pretty sure this is being worked on! If you're really interested I can check with an ex-colleague who is involved in Free Pascal.

Re: Lazarus 2.0 RC3 – Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE

#67

Post by zerr »

badsectoracula wrote: post #38
zerr wrote: post #8

Adding C++ support will really make this project much more popular and viable option.

It is viable just fine as it is, i'm not sure what you have in mind. In any case C++ support for Lazarus is almost impossible due to the work needed and the projects that will need to cooperate - i go into details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15893362

I meant, unless you have some very specific reasons, Pascal is not the first language to pick for a new project nowadays.

Re: Lazarus 2.0 RC3 – Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE

#68

Post by esistgut »

meredydd wrote: post #48
pkphilip wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice product but it may have been better to release this as a opensource product because there will always be a fear that if your company goes bottoms-up, those companies who used your platform will be left high and dry.

The thing is, making Anvil open source now would virtually guarantee that outcome. The market has spent the last few years demonstrating that the sustainable number of large companies whose main product is open source is...One. (Red Hat, if you were wondering.) Even trying to become that kind of company requires a highly speculative VC-fuelled trajectory, which is famous for turning sustainable 100m-scale companies i…

Did you consider a mixed approach like the one Telerik is using with Nativescript?

Re: Lazarus 2.0 RC3 – Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE

#69

Post by tabtab »

whitten wrote: post #46
tabtab wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I view the problem, what's lacking is a GUI markup standard roughly comparable to HTML. HTML browsers were not originally meant to build full-on GUI's in, but the industry has accepted the habit of forcing them to "do" GUI's using convoluted tricks and giant JavaScript libraries. By the way, the "GUI markup language" doesn't necessarily have to be XML-only. Maybe JSON or CSV versions can be defined also. However,…

Weren't XAML and XUL supposed to be user interface markup languages ? Wikipedia thinks so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XUL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Application_Markup_...

If the "industry" adopts them as a standard, then they could take off (and if not encumbered by intellectual property lawsuit risk). XUL also looked "too Webby" to me, closer aligned to HTML than desktop-like GUI's.

Re: Lazarus 2.0 RC3 – Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE

#70

Post by tabtab »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #39
tabtab wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since it's more income to bill for rocket science than bicycle science, there's no incentive for many to simplify UI standards. Right now we are stuck with "rocket science" web-based UI's and JavaScript brain surgery. Don't get me wrong, HTML browsers are fine for most documents and document navigation, but don't scale to real GUI's easily.

Since we're talking web and not native, your metaphor works only if your "rocket science" is performed with used swimming pool materials and your "brain surgery" with gardening tools.

The metaphor was more about complexity than success or quality.
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