[Lazarus] Is Lazarus project in a downward spiral?

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Mon, 8 Mar 2010, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:

> On 7 March 2010 20:47, Michael Van Canneyt <michael at freepascal.org> wrote:
>>
>> Yes, but you disregard the native look and feel. As soon as you must
>> introduce that, there will be less common code.
>
> The benefits of a custom drawn toolkit - we can choose what features
> to support. :-)
>
>
>
>> This is manifestly uncorrect. Show your product and a competing product
>> with roughly similar features but using 'standard' windows controls, and you
>> can be assured that the user will choose for the standard one.
>
> I can assure you that if I disable the gradient color selection,
> enable system color detection, then most common components are to the
> pixel accurate with Win2000 or WinXP un-themed look - default theme in
> fpGUI. I should probably mention that most of our clients are still
> running Win98 and Win2000, so this helps us too. I've spent many hours
> with 'xmag' observing Win98, Win2000 and WinXP screenshots so I can
> recreate the look - to the pixel.

I do not doubt this, but this is what I meant when I said that
it is tailored to your needs, or better, the needs of your target
audience.

I invite you to come and look here in Flanders. You'd realize that
you have a lot of work ahead. More systems, many themes.

>
> This year I'll be enabling the same for WinXP, Vista, Motif and
> Clearlooks. WinXP and Motif are each about 90% complete. This should
> be sufficient to fool most common end-users.

And theme changes are observed in your implementation ?

Because that is what 'native look' is all about.

Your app should look like a native app, no matter what version
of windows/linux or one of the themes you are running on. 
it's much more than a matter of colors.

Michael.