NEW - NEW -NEW - NEW
====================

  GraphiX/FP/Win32 v0.99 is out ...
  Now GraphiX/FP is available for Windows95/98/2000  
  At least DirectX 5 is requiered

What is GraphiX ?
=================

   GraphiX for Freepascal is a 32bit-protected-mode graphics library
   *) It is designed for providing an easy and fast access to various
      graphics modes within DOS or Windows
   *) It supports the direct-RGB-modes (15/16/24/32bit) with resolutions
      from 320x200 upto 1600x1200 and higher
      but it supports 8bit modes as
      RGB-modes (3bit red, 3bit green, 2bit blue) with all features, too
   *) GraphiX contains ...
      ... a mouse-library
      ... an image-handling-library
          loading of BMP, GIF, ICO, JPG, PCX,
          PBM/PGM/PPM, PNG, TGA and TIF images
          saving of images as BMP, PPM or TGA
      ... a font-library which supports FNT-bitmap-fonts, CHR-BGI-fonts
          and the VGA-BIOS 8x16 font
      ... a graphics-effects-library: alphablending, masking operations,
          rotating, scaling, ...
      ... a triangle-output-library which can be used for 3D things
          flat, gouraud-shaded and textured triangles
      ... a video & animation-library, which supports AVI, FLI, FLC and
          MOV (Quicktime) formats
      ... AND A LOT MORE ...

==========================================
     --- MORE INFO AND DOWNLOAD ---
http://programmierer.freepage.de/graphix
http://graphix4pascal.freeservers.com/
==========================================
--
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Michael Knapp - Mauerbach - Nieder?sterreich - Austria - Europe |
| E-Mail: mkn...@gmx.at                             ICQ: 36542787 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
|   G r a p h i X  -  Freeware Graphics Library for Freepascal    |
|            http://graphix4pascal.freeservers.com                |
|           http://programmierer.freepage.de/graphix              |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+

Hi!

Michael, let me say you one thing, although it may sound quite
hard: forget it! There's no real "market" anymore for packages
like our ones. DOS is - unfortunately, as I think - almost dead
and Windows has already its own API's since a long time. I think
everybody would prefer Delphi instead of FP in Windows. The
popularity of BP/DOS has just the reason in the unavailibility
of good alternatives (FP is also not as good as it should be -
the IDE is still not what everybody needs).
I could give you some hints for more success: change the
old-fashioned BGI-design of your unit, make it more flexible.
Linux is still a place where units like your one are gladly
seen. Maybe there under Delphi for Linux (I'm pretty sure
that it'll have more success than FP over a longer period).

Bye,
Stefan
--
please remove the P in my email-adress to answer me
take a look @ my homepage: http://sourcenet.home.pages.de/

Hallo,

Stefan Goehler schrieb:

The FPC team might want to comment on download statistics.

I'm rather sure, on the other hand, that the Linux community will not
get used to paying large sums of money for software any time soon.

 - Sebastian

Tens of thousands through the years. Two major linux distributions.

And using a Windows emulator library. And QT that isn't entirely free afaik.

Another big mistake is if FPC needs to be bigger or equally big then Delphi.

Simply 10% of the Delphi audience that use FPC on the side for multiplatform
/free stuff is big enough to keep FPC afloat. Moreover, since that probably
will be the best 10% of the Delphi programmers.

There is nothing sold afaik. Please could you btw add references so that we
can statiscally verify your allegations?

Which only runs on Win9x. Currently there is a long thread in FPC lists
about how bad NT supports DirectX :-)

Not the people that have to port it to another system. Linux inclusive.

Personally I think you focus to much on the GUI. Delphi is more than wacking
a visual program together. For all non visual stuff FPC is as much suited as
Delphi.

Sad language/compiler then, if the IDE is the only thing that matters to
you.

Afaik Graphix uses LFB which is probably faster tahn directX.

If it gets rid of the winelib. Otherwise it will be a success too, but less
for new programming.

Hi,

Marco van de Voort wrote:

It's not the only thing, but apparently many people value the
availablility of IDE as an indicator of how much of a "product" FPC
is. No offense meant, but: Among these you will probably find the guys
who ask how to "change the colours in Pascal" :-)

Personally, I wouldn't use the IDE even if it were stable. I have a
rather expensive flatscreen monitor, and I didn't buy it to look at
large interlaced text-mode letters! (Plus, my favourite debugging
tool is called "writeln".)

This version requires DirectX.

 - Sebastian

Hi,

Marco van de Voort wrote:

But I hope that the Windows version contributes a lot to this too?

To make it short, Kylix will probably be completely unusable for Open
Source development projects. I also doubt that it will do much for the
spreading of Pascal as a language for Linux programming. The simple
reason is that a) you cannot give the compiler away, and b) the
compiler costs money, and not a small sum. I predict that most Kylix
applications will be distributed as binaries (optionally including
source code).

Which is not Delphi's dominion anyway. It has a stronghold in in-house
projects, and that's where Kylix will be of good service too. Another
large contingent will be Windows developers who are looking forward to
be able to "do Linux" within the alleged 10 minutes (and without
messing with all this complicated Linux stuff).

Or so I speculate. Only time will tell.

 - Sebastian

Certainly. I think Windows <-> Linux is about 50-50.

I think Kylix isn't likely to be used for new, linux only work at all. It
will thrive on the bulk of Delphi software already in the open.
Borland seems to realise that too, and rather use a windows emulation
library than setting things up system-independant. The old source MUST run
:-)

Yup, and expect a lot of linux bins that only work on a few supported
distributions.

Exactly.

Hmm. So gcc is still in alpha stage then :_)

I know. But also these guys need to realise what FPC is: A project run by
volunteers(which moreover have their hands full working on the
compiler/RTL/FCL). If people want an IDE, than contribute to it!

However I directly admit that the FreeVision problems are partially
responsable for that.

I actually use the IDE btw. Not much but regularly.

I was talking about the dos version, since the main complaint was "Dos is
dead"

"Stefan Goehler" <stefan.goeh...@gmxP.de> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:3997f601$1@news.uni-rostock.de...
I disagree, Windows' graphics API is often called to be very
difficult to use, especially Direct3D, cause of the many functions for
similiar things, what one can see in the size of the docs...
But such packages, just like GraphiX or your GrafX can simplify
and abstract these APIs even under Windows and help people
which program in Pascal to have an easier use of DirectX and
OpenGl, which are written for C coders primarly...
So, if I have a program for GraphiX, I can compile it with FP for
Windows, DOS, and perhaps in the future with Linux, I just have
to have GraphiX and FP for those platforms. Under Windows,
DirectX (or OGL) will be used, under Linux OpenGL and under
DOS direct access will be performed...

I for myself would prefer FP and not Delphi, I'm sure some
graphical disadvantages could be accomplished by extra
tools, which are similiar to Delphi's ones...

Martin

Hi!

I think some guys should read my postings better twice...

Of course no sold. That's why I wrote "market" and not market.

The decrease of postings in pascal groups over the years. 4 years
ago there where about 300% more postings in such groups.
The statistics of my own page. I had days with more than 70 hits.
Not so today. I can say the maximum is about 30 hits. Mostly 20..25...

I tested only few games under W2k, but ALL of them worked. That's
a good sign for me. BTW, some of them even worked better than under
W9x.

-> Delphi/Linux

That's ok. But there are not much programs without a GUI interface today.
That's the point.

I can't work without a good IDE. It's not only me who critisized
this disadvantage of FPC. I'd have used FPC in the past, if I had
a good IDE. That was not the case.

I meant the API. He still uses the simple BGI-style. That's
combined with alot of disadvantages. I saw how he copied alot
of the functions of GrafX2. Yes, he's got now similar routines - but
they aren't as flexible as they could be.
BTW, you can also have direct screen access under DirectX - so
it's almost as easy to use as the LFB and as fast.

We'll see...

Some comments to the other postings: we are speaking as a minority.
I don't know much companies which use these "free" libraries we
produced. At least, I had little success with GrafX. But also not
as much as it should be. I made the first posting just to say that
all these things are nice playings, but aren't really useful. And
I tried to explain some useful aims.

Bye,
Stefan
--
please remove the P in my email-adress to answer me
take a look @ my homepage: http://sourcenet.home.pages.de/

Hi!

But that's the problem I personally have with all these free
solutions: you don't get all you need at once. Somebody has to
program a solution for something. And then this solution doesn't
work as good as it should and so on... with packages like Delphi,
you get almost all you need and don't have to look for every little
detail... that saves alot of time!
AFAIK you also like Linux. Well, I don't. But I think everybody
who likes Linux also likes FPC - not that I dislike it, but it's
got its disadvantages for me. It's not a whole thing you can use
directly after you installed it. That's a problem for me.
But I don't want to go into details, as FPC was not the reason
for my first posting.

Bye,
Stefan
--
please remove the P in my email-adress to answer me
take a look @ my homepage: http://sourcenet.home.pages.de/

Still. Even a "market" suggests a trade. Could you please elaborate what you
think the "price" for a free package is?
For Free software a market exists too, but the principles are different (see
Cathedral and the Bazaar, available on your nearest GNU/FSF mirror)

Decreasing is still not dead. I agree that the BP area's are decreasing, and
maybe even more in quality. But most of the real FPC users are on the
e-maillists. Probably a lot of FPC usign writers here in c.l.p.m are still
subscribed to the FPC maillists.

The question is not if it is decreasing, but if it is still large enough. I
think it is still large enough. The responses we as FPC team get are still
rising, both in quantity, but even more so in quality. Seems that a lot of
initial newbies seem to have made it into intermediates or professionals.

Did you modernise your page? With current material that isn't available from
a huge quantity of sites?

I said NT. But I tried some older games under W2k too, but had a lot of
problems. So probably only the newer games work under W2k?

So? That could still mean 60-40%? If you are the only one in the 40%, or
compete with 100 commercial tool developpers for the 60 (or 90%) GUI market
(which also sponsor them with their revenues in the OS business like
Microsoft), what do you think is best to select as Open Source compiler
creator?

That is a problem. But still FPC is an alternative for BP. Only the IDE is
no replacement for the BP IDE.
That you have a problem with commandline compilers has nothing to do with
the compiler itself.

New news meanwhile. Kylix programs won't use winelib. Maybe kylix itself
does, but that is less important.
But still I'm not afraid of Kylix impact on FPC.

You can see that on Win32. Quite a lot of FPC Win32 users also use Delphi
(and bought it). They simply use FPC on the side for things that
Delphi can't do, and invest some extra time to keep their code compilable
with both Delphi and FPC. (e.g. inherit from GUI widgets on relatively late,
not using dynamic arrays etc). In return their codebase is more flexible and
portable.

This also selects the users FPC gets: it gets users from Delphi that do
things for which Delphi isn't flexible enough, IOW the top 10%, not the
people that drag and drop make the zillionth screepsaver.
This is quite important.

Who said something about companies? Why would we care for companies?

Usefull in your view, which seems to be rather limited.

The main problem is that you think too big, and too much in numbers.

Too big: You don't have to be number one to gain enough momemtum. Why bother
competing for the GUI market with VB, Delphi, Clarion and a zillion more RAD
stuff, if you can be number one in a "niche" market? Companies have been
founded on less. As long as the niche is sufficiently large, this is no
problem.

Second:
For free software the number of users are nearly unimportant. The number of
*active* users is the only thing that is important. (since they provide
feedback, enhancements etc). The silent larger crowd is only interesting as
possible growing area for more advanced users.

This is partially the other way around then the commercial world. The large
majority is the big cashflow, the people that do difficult things, are only
a burden for the support departments budget.

For DOS games yes. NT is not DOS and the NTVDM isn't DOS either. NT does not
claim full DOS compatibility. So why do you expect such just if it looks the
same.
Linux and the DosEMU emulator doesn't allow direct hardware access for games
either. See the NTVDM as a DosEMU for NT which is a much more correct view.
The only DOS game working really perfectly (with SB sound) I know of is
Dynablasters/Bomberman (if someone cares).

For Win9x games: Most older games check for the OS version but not for the
availability of the DirectX API. So blaming the OS because of the program
doing illegal version checking, e.g. bad coding ? As you've read in the
mailing list the DirectX 5 patch for NT works fine (although it is
unofficial). But still DX 3 fully works there.
That's why older Win9x games don't work with Win2k (NT 5) either. For some
games there are patches available.

Agree here. All 'modern' OS'es are event driven and their biggest advantage
is that more than one app may be accessing the same device at another time.
The first time he let allow the user press the Alt-Tab key GraphiX will bomb
out irrevocably. Even at the moment GraphiX depends that the pointer to the
video memory does not change during the whole program - which is not a
recommened practice (actually it's on the list what-you-should-never-do).
Just because GraphiX has no way to tell the user such changes and GraphiX
does not interact with the API after initialization has been done...
The current design does not allow device sharing. On the Win32 platform you
may come over it by disabling the task switching keys. This can't be done on
Linux without root permissions (and tell me one real Linux user which allows
a 'fun program' having root access ?) and even there it's not considered
good practice. Apart from that why do I have an OS being capable of running
several programs at once ?

GraphiX is a huge monolithic block. Everything depends on everything else
which makes it quite hard to maintain (I believe so) or understand as
somebody interested in it. For example I (and several other people) tried to
extract the image loading / saving stuff which would be very interesting for
other purposes too - but after a few hours it was clear that a complete
rewrite would be easier and less tedious work. Too less comments, too less
documentation and changing the slightest nuance of the code breaks it at
twenty other places.

I disagree. DirectX drivers usually serve as extended graphics BIOS. That
means they enable one or two hardware register contents (e.g. PII Write
Combining) which DOS does not. This quite pleasant feature also causes
Linux' drivers not to detect devices (due to very paranoid behaviour btw)
when it is booted via e.g. loadlin after a Windows was running.
But it can be done in another way too - for example BeOS starts perfectly
right out of the box.
Well, in effect the difference between running GraphiX under Win9x DOS box
and pure DOS is 3 times as fast LFB write access on a PPro system.

I guess that far the majority of FPC users are still doing GO32V2
programming. Either for compatibility reasons (the software _must_ run as, I
think, you said) or for being the least complex in the beginning. The rest
is probably equally divided by Linux and Win32 - but only for Console Apps,
e.g. stuff originally written for DOS but ported to Win32 because of LFN
etc. Small tools which make life easier.

The graphical side of both OSes is in a experimental stage on Linux but
Win32 GUI programming is a very rare exception, may it be DX / GDI
programming.

Rather which don't fire up a GUI just for fourty lines of code. Delphi can
basically do the same things as FPC - and a Delphi programmers doing a small
console tool with FPC doesn't make him a FPC programmer. And as you have
outlined they keep their sources compilable at both platforms so they won't
use FPC for its' extensions. Just because the commandline compiler has a
smaller turnaround time.

You won't need to install them all ;)

Which company wants to give away its sources (technology) for free ? Still
they need to earn a living for that...
If they did most probably nothing would change, at the very least in short
to middle term. Why would I download the NS sources ? It doesn't change for
me whether it's available or not. I will certainly never have a look at it
for any reason and even change something (or anyone else). NS keeps
implementing propretiary extensions and nobody simply makes an alternative
free browser out of them. In effect Navigator development kept at Netscape
and still it crashes at simple style sheet tags.
It makes no difference. The browser did not get better just because it got
'available for free'. As a user I don't have much gain if I can say I
*could* change something here and there. It's simply not the way it goes.
(Impressing people with that 'argument' is another thing)

Regards,
    Thomas

"Marco van de Voort" <mar...@snail.stack.nl> wrote...

I agree with most of what Thomas Schatzl wrote. However, I still have a
question regarding Marco's posting:

Tell me where the current Delphi version lacks functionnality or where it
isn't flexible enough (under Win32) compared to the current version of FPC.
What features do you think of? I just cannot remember anything I've been
missing in Delphi that would be in FPC instead. Delphi also creates console
applications with no problem (one compiler switch and that's it) and comes
with a command line version (DCC32.EXE and the other command-line tools).
And if I really need DOS compatibility, using a freeware DOS extender
(WDOSX) I can even create native 32-bit flat mode applications for DOS.

So, what were you thinking of missing in Delphi?
--
Arsne von Wyss - a...@gmx.ch
 Pascal, Delphi & Personal stuff: http://bsn.ch/avonwyss
 Programming Contest Problems Archive: http://bsn.ch/contest
 Webmaster von Roger's Equine Pages: http://bsn.ch/pferde