[Lazarus] First impressions of Lazarus under Mac OS X

Mattias Gaertner nc-gaertnma at netcologne.de
Thu Jun 23 22:07:58 CEST 2011


On Thu, 23 Jun 2011 21:12:06 +0200
Graeme Geldenhuys <graemeg.lists at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.

Needs fixing. Can you create a list/patch?

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

As far as I remember this is common on OS X.

 
> 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.

Please create a bug report.

 
> 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.

It simply used percentage values. No maximums.
Maybe some maximums can be added.
This is on all platforms, not only OS X.

 
> 6) The default font in the Lazarus Source window is absolutely
> hideous! Very pixelated and not anti-aliased. 

Yes. The default is disabled antialiased for all platforms not only OS
X. 
The option is just below the font size.

> 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. :)

Apparently you didn't see the option.

Maybe we should set antialiasing by default to true.

 
> 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.

This happens with non mono space fonts. Not only under carbon. Also on
Linux/qt.

 
> 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!

This works here.
Can you give more details?

 
> 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.

It seems your main problems are the defaults.

Mattias
 




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