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
Thanks again Sven.
Hi Graeme
This was a very helpful post. I will definitely give fpGUI a try, along
with Lazarus.
I don't really know anything about using LCL outside of Lazarus yet.
Your point about LCL is super helpful. I hope no one minds the
constructive criticism but my lack of understanding of this was the
tipping point that sent me away last time. I tried Lazarus but it did
not seem to be creating GTK code or QT, it was just some sort of weirdo
Lazarus only stuff and then in tandem with the QT binding statement I
mentioned earlier, it wasn't even obvious whether or not it could
generate GUI code outside of the IDE. The FUD circling around Pascal is
that it is for teaching only. It would be painful to learn an IDE to
only find out later that it is for teaching purposes.
I have family members with urgent care needs and I don't have too much
time. However I would really like to start posting on the net about my
experiences, maybe I can help to clear away the FUD.
BTW, Would it be correct to compare LCL to WxWidgets ? In the sense that
it is a meta-widget toolkit?
Thanks ! -Patrick
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