[Lazarus] First impressions of Lazarus under Mac OS X

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

Hi,

I have just downloaded FPC 2.4.4 and Lazarus 0.9.30 from SourceForge.
This is the first time I use any development tools under Mac OS X, so
this is the experience from a "newbie" point of view [yes, I'm
normally working under Linux only]. I hope you take these comments as
constructive criticism and not as negative ranting.

1) The Lazarus installer displayed a readme file. There was many
punctuation errors in the readme file displayed.

2) The readme files font was rather small (compared to my experience
with other Mac software installations that also display readme files).

3) Kudos for placing a Lazarus IDE icon in the Applications folder.
Xcode's installation didn't do it, and I had to hunt through the
filesystem to find the executable of Xcode. :-)

4) My application dock is aligned to the left edge of my screen -
unlike the default bottom centre. Launching Lazarus IDE for the first
time, the Object Inspector and the Main Form of the IDE was hidden
behind the dock. I've got a screenshot of it if that will help explain
it.

5) The main form of the IDE was HUGE. Spanning the whole width of the
iMac's display. That just looked totally out of place, but that's
maybe just my opinion.

6) The default font in the Lazarus Source window is absolutely
hideous! Very pixelated and not anti-aliased. Going to the editor
settings, it said it is using Monaco-12, but what is actually being
used is a mystery, because it definitely was not Monaco font. I
launched the font dialog to select a different font. The OS font
dialog showed a preview of Monaco font, and again - nothing like what
is used in the editor. I have a screenshot of that too, if it will
help. Selecting Monaco-12 in the font dialog and closing the dialog,
Lazarus IDE did not update the editor font. I had to physically change
the font size to something other than 12pt before the editor options
preview window updated. Strangely enough, select Close to accept the
new editor changes, the editor font still displayed the very pixelated
text. Still not Monaco font either. It seems Lazarus IDE doesn't like
Monaco font at all. :)

7) Still being stuck on the unknown font in the editor window, there
is some rather strange behaviours. eg: Select a line of text from left
to right makes the text "jiggle" (changing there widths) as I select
more and more text.

8) To got the source code editor to some sane font, I had to resort to
selecting a totally different font, Courier-13 for example, and
pressing OK, finally updated the editor. But still the editor text is
not anti-aliased, which it was in the Options Dialog preview window!


Anyway, that's my first experience with Lazarus IDE under Mac OS X
10.6.6 on my iMac. Using Lazarus 0.9.30 r30219 FPC 2.4.2
i386-darwin-carbon (as downloaded from SourceForge). Anyway, it wasn't
a very impressive first impression of Lazarus. Just thought I would
mention this. It seems the Mac version still needs a LOT of work.

-- 
Regards,
  - Graeme -


_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://fpgui.sourceforge.net