[Lazarus] First impressions of Lazarus under Mac OS X

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

On 06/23/2011 10:07 PM, Mattias Gaertner wrote:
>> 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?

Yes, I'll supply a patch.



>> 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.

So what... is it set to always use 100% of screen width? If so, that's a
lousy default. The 21.5" iMac screen resolution is +-1920 pixels wide.
That's big. The 27" iMac is well over 2560 pixels wide - makes the
problem even worse!

If you haven't noticed, Apple doesn't even have a "Maximize" button like
Windows or Linux. Because it doesn't always make sense (or looks pretty)
to have windows that wide or tall.

I'd say, default the main form width to something like 1024 pixels. Then
let the developer adjust it further if need be.


>> 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.

I guess that's another "Windows legacy" feature. ;-) Having
"anti-aliased" enabled by default makes more sense, seeing that all
platforms default to anti-aliased text for years already. But then, the
most popular Windows release, WinXP, anti-aliased text is disabled by
default. I don't know what Win7 does. Either way, having in enabled by
default seems like a more sensible default.

Oh, and the other reason I probably overlooked that checkbox, is because
I thought its functionality wasn't actually implemented. It does nothing
under Linux (or Win2000 - the only Windows version I use for testing) -
checked or not. No idea if it works for WinXP and later.


>> 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.

Well it doesn't do that under Linux-GTK2. I just tested with a non mono
spaced font.



> It seems your main problems are the defaults.

Mostly yes. Hence my comment of "not a good first impression of
Lazarus". Defaults are very important in any product. That makes are
breaks if someone will bother any further with that product.


I'll retest all the new ideas tonight and when appropriate, report
bugs/issues in Mantis.


Regards,
  - Graeme -

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