[Lazarus] Delphi XE2 uses FPC, plus VCL just not portable

[Florian Klaempfl]

Am 07.08.2011 17:46, schrieb Graeme Geldenhuys:
> On 7 August 2011 16:11, Florian Klaempfl wrote:
>>> Imagine Mozilla Firefox simply
>>> wanted to be a clone of IE.
>>
>> This would have no advantage
> 
> It would have had, just not for the better. If Firefox simply cloned
> IE, web designers would only have had to code for ONE broken browser
> (ignoring HTML standards while they are at it, but at least all
> websites would have worked on all platforms), and they [web designers]
> could have reused there broken-HTML syntax knowledge for all
> platforms. My point was simply that cloning has very little benefits
> at all, and is always two steps behind - never as good as the real
> deal.   

As said before, for me the indicator of the success of an OSS product is
the number of contributors, so this narrows it down.

> Think iPad vs XXXX Tablet. 1-2 years later, with hundreds of
> clones, and still iPad is better than the rest with no real
> competition in sight.
> 
> 
>> ...while being VCL compatible allows people to
>> reuse a lot of their knowledge when using the LCL.
> 
> Yes, Object Pascal knowledge and some VCL knowledge. And
> realistically, LCL has many differences between VCL and many
> differences between LCL on different platforms (again, look at Mantis
> if you don't believe me). Not to mention a different compiler too,
> different deployment rules etc etc. No matter how much you clone,
> there is still LOTS to learn when moving your products cross platform.
> To have truly cross-platform products you have to think cross-platform
> from the start. Trying to convert your Windows-ism's to Linux or Mac
> simply doesn't work! You will end up with a half-baked product that
> will not sell. Embarcadero realized this too.

You know that the CLX was not VCL compatible either, aimed a cross
platform compatibility (Qt) and required basically a complete rewrite?
Result is known ...

>From what I saw of FireMonkey so far (admitted little): I don't think
that it competes with classical gui toolkits but it seems to aim at new
gui concepts as mobiles or tablets require. So the situation is
different here and FireMonkey has good chances to be a success.