[Lazarus] Project conversion Delphi -> FreePascal: success!

[Birger Jansen]

Hi Bo,

> Really great! I have a similar problem in conversion to FPC/Lazarus of a
> visualization package of physical data. But this package uses number
> crunching DLL:s created using an Intel Fortran compiler...

I didn't have a look at the processing part of the application, but I believe this is done in Fortran as well. 

> Nevertheless I would like to know your solutions to the programmatic
> conversion problems because our package also uses MDI forms and the
> graphics is OpenGL via GLScene.
> Ideally I would like to be able to move it to 64 bit to enhance the
> computational speed and model sizes.

I did try to make the MDI forms work, but didn't found a good working solution. As a temp solution the main form keeps a list of all opened forms and has some functions to provide ActiveMDIChild and other MDI values. This works, but some interface redesign will make it better.

Graphics were also provide by (a modified version of) GLScene, and I had very little problems with making this work. However, an older version of GLScene was used and while it supported Lazarus under Windows, Linux support was not available in that version.

The reason for the conversion was also to be able to handle larger model sizes, we managed to load some models up to 4GB without problems.

> And of course compile also for Linux...
> Did you test your conversion also on Linux?

We did some command line tests with Linux. Loading a model into memory and performing some basic calculations was no problem. However, in the available time that I had for this project I couldn't get the newer GLScene with Linux support to work, but I am convinced that it should be possible given enough time.

> Finally a little hint:
> JPG -> PNG

Thanks, I knew one of the two was better and I choose the wrong one. I'll remember for the next time.

Kind regards,
  Birger