Subject: CLPB Mini FAQ
Archive-name: pascal/borland-minifaq
Posting-Frequency: Every Week
Last-modified: 1999/07/31
Version: 1.27
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LATEST NEWS: Borland releases some TP versions for download. See Section 4.
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This document is posted weekly as an aid to new readers of these Newsgroups.
It provides background knowledge of the group, answers to the most frequently
asked questions, a listing of Pascal resources and netiquette in posting to
the groups. Please do take the time to read through this information.
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This is the comp.lang.pascal.borland Mini-FAQ, created by Tom Wheeley
and maintained until Feb 98 by Chris Mathews. Currently maintained by
Pedt Scragg <mailto:newsmas...@pedt.demon.co.uk>.
Crossposted to borland.public.turbopascal from 1998/12/27. Note that as
this FAQ is not injected at Borland's Server so those who read news from
that Server will not see the Mini-FAQ. Please be aware of this when you
answer FAQ's on b.p.tp
You can avoid seeing this Mini-FAQ again by killfiling on X-KILLFILE: CLPB
Please note that follow-up to this article is set to "poster"
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Contents:
1 What is comp.lang.pascal.borland?
1.1 History of the Group
1.2 Posting Guidelines
2 Where can I find {more?} Information - Pascal FAQ's?
2.1 FTP sites
2.2 Notable sources of information
2.3 Uploading your masterpieces to an FTP site
3 Very Frequently Asked Questions.
3.1 Pointers to info for assorted questions
4 Borland compilers for download
APPENDIX A - FTP site mirrors
APPENDIX B - Credits
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1. What is comp.lang.pascal.borland?
*************************************************************************
This is the group for discussion on Borland Pascal, Turbo Pascal and
Pascal for Windows systems. All users are welcome, and this group is
not moderated. In order to keep Usenet confusion down, we request that
you post only questions or discussions concerning Pascal on the Borland
Pascal compilers.
Please note that Delphi does not belong in this group. There are many
groups for Delphi discussion. Prof. Timo Salmi posts a FAQ regarding
the newsgroup reorganization of comp.lang.pascal.* weekly. Please read this
before posting your question in *any* of the pascal or delphi groups. It is
also available from Garbo (see 'FTP sites')
Also there is the Turbovision group described as "Borland's text application
libraries." It is C-biased, but Pascal does get a look-in:
comp.os.msdos.programmer.turbovision
Please do not post to the obsolete groups:
alt.comp.lang.borland-delphi
comp.lang.pascal
comp.lang.pascal.delphi.components
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1.1 History of the Group
*************************************************************************
comp.lang.pascal.borland was created by popular vote on June 12, 1995.
Information on the group is available from:
ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/doc-net/pasgroup.zip
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1.2 Posting Guidelines
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- "A problem well stated is a problem half solved" Charles F. Kettering
- Put as much information as you can in the subject line.
*Subjects like "help me" or "question about Pascal" are silly.*
Also note that some newsreaders truncate the subject line early.
- Usually, it will be sufficient to post to a single one of the Pascal
groups. But if you ever need to post to more than one group, be sure
to use a single cross-posted article rather than multiple postings;
the Newsgroups entry lists the groups, separated by commas.
- Please do not request the answer to your question solely via e-mail!
Someone else will be interested, and it is only polite to the readers
of this newsgroup. Remember also that public replies are subject to
scutiny
- We will not do your homework for you! We will, however, give advice
on specific topics and look at code that you have a problem with.
Show us what you have done already and pointers and fixes will be
forthcoming. Just posting the assignment and asking for it to be
done will not get you any help.
- Be aware of limits. Many newsreaders have difficulty with subject
lines over 40 characters (which get chopped up). Try to keep
your posting text lines to 70 characters or LESS. If you use more,
your posts will look messy when quoted.
- *Binaries must NOT be posted to this group.* Nor MIME Attachments.
(Especially {*word*193} are those mailers which convert '=' to '=3D', a very
bad thing to do to *any* Pascal source code.)
If you want to distribute binaries or large source files then you could
upload it to your own web site or to one of the FTP sites. See the section
'Uploading your masterpieces to an FTP site'
If you are wondering *why* binaries are banned, read this:
ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tsfaqn.zip
13. *****
Q: May I just go ahead and post binaries to discussion newsgroups?
Expressly forbidden is posting of any commercial material, for
example Turbo Pascal 7, or even just GRAPH.TPU. *This is illegal*
Do not even ask for these. Contact Borland if you have a problem.
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2. Where can I find more information?
*************************************************************************
* Pascal FAQs:
- The infamous, ubiquitous, mandatory and downright useful
Timo Salmi's 'Common Turbo Pascal Questions and Timo's answers'
is available at ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tsfaqp.zip
Note that this runs to over 150 questions and answers and a list
of Question Titles is posted monthly to comp.lang.pascal.borland
- Jon Shemitz' original comp.lang.pascal FAQ
http://www.midnightbeach.com/jon/pubs/clp-faq.htm
- Pascal Turbo Vision FAQ
http://www.zeta.org.au/~grove/pasfhome.html (see WWW section)
* Learning Pascal
- If you are beginning Pascal, or want to learn some new techniques,
you could do far worse than take a look at Glenn Grotzinger's TP
Tutorial, in section 2.2
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2.1 FTP sites: See Appendix A for *some* mirrors
*************************************************************************
'Garbo' The primary Turbo Pascal source/unit site.
ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ {turbopa* directories}
http://garbo.uwasa.fi
'Oulu' Lots of files related to game (and demo?) programming.
ftp://x2ftp.oulu.fi/pub/msdos/programming/
http://x2ftp.oulu.fi
'Simtel' Enormous MS-DOS archive
ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet
http://www.simtel.net/simtel.net/
'Borland' Borland's Web site
ftp://ftp.borland.com/
http://www.inprise.com/index.html
TV site Turbovision source/applications ?
ftp://jam.cog.brown.edu/pub/turbo-vision
These may be referred to by the name in the left hand column, both in
this FAQ, and on the newsgroup. For Simtel and Garbo at least, the
contents of the primary site are mirrored in a number of locations
throughout the world. Please use a mirror site close to you if possible
both to save load on the primary site and to keep the distance between
you and the download site as short as possible. Info on Garbo and Simtel
mirrors is in Appendix A.
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2.2 WWW sites
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If you have a Web site concentrating on Pascal (esp. Borland), then why
not get it added to the list in the FAQ? Just send the URL and a short
description to me, <URL:mailto:newsmas...@pedt.demon.co.uk>.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Turbo Pascal Programmers Page
http://www.programmers.org/languages/pascal/resources/
This page is supposed to give a quick overview of what is available
on the net for programmers in Turbo/Borland Pascal.
Official successor to Jeroen Prins' Pages.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Pascal Central
http://pascal-central.com/
The intent of Pascal Central is to provide the Pascal community one place
to obtain Pascal technical information, Pascal source code, and
Pascal-related internet links. Mainly Pascal for the MAC.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Franz Glaser's TP Links
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/2926/tp.html
Franz Glaser has a very large number of resources available to Pascal
programmers available from the links page listed. Includes a full set
of resources for the RunError 200 problem, which is a VFAQ in clpb.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
* SWAG.
See http://www.gdsoft.com/swag/swag.html
Available from Garbo and Simtel directory turbopas/
get swaga-c.zip...swags-z.zip + swag.zip.
A free archive of Turbo Pascal code, produced by the 'Source Ware
Archival Group'. Note that the download is ~5Mb
Many people would consider SWAG essential before posting here!
The last SWAG Archive update SWAG9711.ZIP contains a new file:
LASTSWAG.TXT. They've decided to cease the current distribution and move
to a web-based library concentrating on Delphi.
...
